“I am very proud of my leaders,” Leandro Fossá, C.S., the pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Melrose Park, Ill., said. “They have not forgotten where they came from. They have not forgotten that the church was with them and the Lord was with them when their parents and grandparents came to this country.”

Our Lady of Mount Carmel is among the Chicago-area parishes that have stepped up their efforts to bring food to the hungry this holiday season. Many community members are too afraid to come to the church pantry because of ongoing deportation efforts ordered by the Department of Homeland Security.

The parish food pantry ministry normally serves around 100 families every month, but during the height of the recent immigration enforcement operations, that number dropped by about a third, according to Father Fossá. While attendance at Mass and parish programs has recovered now that raids have subsided, Father Fossá said many parishioners remain reluctant to leave their homes.

To address this issue, the Scalabrinian parish is reviving some pandemic-era practices, organizing deliveries for those who are unable to come in person to pick up Thanksgiving meals. “Now, we are back to Covid memories and trauma,” he said.

Economic pressure is compounding the impact on the coming holiday. “People are very unsteady and concerned because of the price of food,” Father Fossá said. “They are spending less money because they don’t know what the future holds. For the first time since I became a priest and worked with migrants in the U.S.A., people don’t have the confidence to dream ahead.”

For immigrant communities shaken by this fall’s enforcement operations, the holiday season feels strangely muted, according to Father Fossá. In a season normally marked by celebration and increased spending, he said this “looks like a season of saving.”

After Border Patrol and D.H.S. interventions in Illinois and North Carolina, Catholic parishes and charities have been revising efforts to make sure all the members of their communities can still celebrate Thanksgiving.

“For the holidays, whether you’re food insecure or just coming into the country, people want to celebrate with their family,” Catherine Moore, the director of the food pantry at St. James Catholic Church in Chicago, said. “Yes, our role is to help people have a meal to make ends meet. But during these special times, we want to give not only the staples, but the things that just make people feel a little bit special.”

St. James’s food pantry, which serves over 2,000 clients each month, is one of many Catholic ministries bracing for a holiday season in the wake of a worsening food insecurity crisis exacerbated by threats to SNAP benefits and an immigration enforcement crackdown that has made many afraid to leave their homes.

Many of the Border Patrol agents who had been busy in Chicago have left for Charlotte, N.C. (at least for now), but the trauma of “Operation Midway Blitz” lingers. Father Fossá spoke about the toll the campaign has taken on his parishioners and the broader Latino community in the Chicago metro area.

He described widespread anxiety and confusion regarding the next stages of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. Adding to the communal gloom is the economic uncertainty felt by many families. He added that some immigrants are openly contemplating a return to their countries of origin.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel has been supporting immigrants since Italians began arriving in Chicago over a century ago, but Father Fossá said that he has never seen the community so collectively unsure of the future. 

At Old St. Patrick’s Church in Chicago, pastoral ministry associate Krista Chinchilla-Patzke emphasized that efforts at Old St. Patrick’s to respond to the demands of the holiday season did not start with recent raids. Catholic organizers in Chicago rely on assistance networks built over years of accompaniment. 

Their holiday programs, including gift card-based assistance, are designed to help families absorb the additional costs that come with Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this year, she said, the support feels less like a seasonal bonus and more like a necessity. “It’s still joyous,” she said, “but there is more of a need.”

Like Father Fossá, she also sees a lot of fear in the church’s immigrant community.

In Raleigh, N.C., the rhythm of the holiday season has been similarly upended. The latest phase of the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement campaign, dubbed “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” brought Border Patrol agents into communities across central North Carolina’s Wake County last week. Maty Ferrer Hoppmann, the director of the Center for Hispanic Families in Raleigh, said the center’s food pantry saw a dramatic drop in Latino clients.

Typically, Latino families make up about 55 percent of the pantry’s visitors. After the raids began, that number fell to 28 percent.

With the pantry’s normal holiday preparations disrupted by the operation, “we had to address the needs that we were encountering in the community,” Mrs. Ferrer Hoppmann said. Community members were “stuck at home” and “unable to go out to get resources for themselves and their families because of ICE being in the area.” In response, the center coordinated with other volunteer organizations to facilitate food deliveries.

She has seen regular pantry users returning this week. On Nov. 24, 245 families were served by the pantry, and roughly 40 percent of that group was Latino. “This year, Thanksgiving is going to feel a little bit different for so many families,” Mrs. Ferrer Hoppmann said.

“Even though the risk may have decreased, last week was a big reminder of what the risks are, of maybe one day being separated from your loved ones or being sent back to a home that you haven’t seen in 40 years.”

“This is a very difficult time for our community,” Mrs. Ferrer Hoppmann said, noting that the holiday is coming just one week after the Border Patrol came to Raleigh.

“We just want families to know that they are not invisible,” she said. “They’re not alone. We stand with them…and we remain committed to working alongside them.”

Edward Desciak is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.