DEVELOPING IMMIGRANT LEADERS:
COPS/Metro’s institutions have always included immigrants. Recognizing the Stranger is a multi-year leadership development strategy established by the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation, a network of similar organizations of which COPS/Metro is the first. Supported by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), Recognizing the Stranger helps parishes with large immigrant populations develop stronger relationships both among their own parishioners and with other community institutions.
Recognizing the Stranger trains and supports immigrant leaders to more deeply engage their own parishes, schools and communities, and then to move towards building bridges with sister parishes from more conservative communities to raise a new voice, an imaginative call speaking out for a compassionate and constructive response to the broken immigration system. Launched in 2017, it is creating a new, regional effort to impact the broader civic and political culture of the immigration issue.
PARISH ID's:
In many congregations, leaders heard stories from undocumented neighbors about the terror and the lack of access created by not having a recognized form of identification. Based on a successful effort in Dallas where parishes provided ID’s and negotiated that they would be honored by local police and some banks, COPS/Metro sought to replicate the effort in San Antonio and negotiated an agreement with police chief William McManus to train officers to recognize these ID’s as a legitimate form of identification in the case of traffic stops and other non-criminal interactions. This effort is now growing again post-pandemic.
SUPPORTING IMMIGRANTS IN OUR COMMUNITY
In the past, COPS/Metro brought members of our institutions to Austin with police chief William McManus and other local elected officials to oppose SB4, and successfully lobbied the city of San Antonio to establish a legal defense fund for children whose parents are facing deportation, as well as to include undocumented residents among those eligible for emergency funds during the pandemic.