Aurora First Presbyterian Church is Sanctuary for Immigrants

While the six congregations that share the Aurora First Presbyterian Church worship separately, they often come together for cultural events. One such exchange happened for the service celebrating Pentecost on June 8, when all the congregations attended a shared service.

During the service, people were encouraged to join together and say “Praise God” in their native language. Voices speaking in English, Spanish, French, Burmese and others all came together, sharing a moment of faith together. 

“Our world shouldn’t have so many divisions and barriers between people when we affirm so often that we are one family,” said pastor Doug Friesema. “We’ve been commanded to love one another, so let’s do it.”

Situated right off of Colfax in Northern Aurora, the Aurora First Presbyterian Church has developed into an answer for the need many have for community, spanning disparate cultures and languages under one roof. The church serves as a home for multiple congregations, most of which are composed largely of and help to serve historically disadvantaged groups.

The idea to share the space began twenty years ago, with the pastor from a parish called Living Water requesting to worship there after being moved around several times. “They were just looking for a space,” Friesema said. “They had been worshipping in other spaces and were looking for something that was gonna benefit their needs.”

Over time, other congregations have sought out the space, in need of an adequate area to practice. “One came knocking on the door and said they’d been using homes or storefronts, and they just need more space,” Friesema said.

The church’s partner ministries include Divino Salvador and Iglesia Apostolica de la Fe en Cristo Jesus, which are both Spanish-language ministries; the Neema African Fellowship and Eagle Tabernacle Church, whose communities are built primarily from refugees and immigrants from Africa; and Living Water Christian Center, an African American parish.

“God doesn’t need an empty building,” Friesema said. “It doesn’t serve God at all. The Bible talks a lot about loving your neighbors, caring for your neighbors and serving your neighbors. In this neighborhood, we have been able to do just that by inviting them in. We recognized that our neighborhood has changed a lot from when this church first started a hundred years ago, and that could actually be a real blessing.”

The dramatic increase in ICE operations during the second Trump administration has become a significant source of anxiety and panic among the country’s immigrant communities, many of whom are faced with the threat of their lives and families being upended through deportation.

“There’s a lot of fear,” said pastor Lemuel Velasco, who runs the Spanish-language parish Divino Salvador. “Most of our people work in construction or in cleaning, and now [ICE] is targeting Home Depot and 7-Eleven.”

As a result, a sense of community has become more important than ever. The varied churches and the different backgrounds of the people who compose them allow for spaces that center on the specific experiences of different groups. 

“The church, in a lot of ways, can be a cultural gathering space,” Friesema said. “A lot of churches will try multicultural church or worshiping in one community, and it’s very easy for that to become just one culture. But the way it’s organized here allows each congregation to have leadership that is culturally relevant to them, people who really understand the folks that they’re serving, what they’re struggling with and what they need.”

Aurora First Presbyterian Church has also been involved in other avenues to help provide justice and equity for immigrants. They are part of Journey with Migrants, a group of Presbyterian churches in the Denver area that work to provide funding for basic necessities like food and clothing for people in immigrant communities who need it, along with other resources such as legal counsel.

Friesema himself is a part of the board of directors for RMIAN, or the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, which works in providing free legal representation and education about the rights of immigrants.

“I am so grateful for them,” Friesema said. “They do work that feels so big and hard, and so it’s great for me to help out in little ways. There has been a lot of concern about policy changes when it comes to ICE enforcement and the way they want to operate. We’re a place where we believe what is important about people is how God sees them and recognizing that they’re children of God, so we don’t care so much about immigration status and things like that. It’s not a question we ask when someone comes to church, and we want to be sure that it’s not a question that we have to ask.”

Divino Salvador, one of the church’s Spanish-speaking parishes, is a largely immigrant community, some of whom are undocumented. For many, the church provides a place to find and interact with others that they had previously lacked. 

“The people come because we have a community,” Velasco said. “Most of the people who come, sometimes they are alone; we have a lot of men that live alone, and sometimes they have problems, and so they look for a church and find us and find out that we are a community, and we can share.” 

Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Velasco first came to Colorado in 1997. In 2007, he was approached by someone from the parish while they were looking for leadership for their Hispanic contingent. The congregation helped to fund his time studying in the seminary, and he successfully completed his studies in 2014 and became ordained three years later.

“There was a Hispanic ministry there, but they didn’t have leadership,” Velasco said. “I was not a pastor at the time. They supported me and they sent me to the seminary.”

Several of the communities that comprise these churches have been impacted harshly over fears brought upon by the current administration’s increase in enforcement of deportations, including stripping special protections for churches that prevent ICE agents from conducting operations there. 

“It is very stressful,” Velasco said. “Before we had more people coming to the church, but when these things started happening, our group became less people.”

Things are especially tense in the current climate for Aurora citizens, as the town has been a significant target of Trump throughout his rhetoric surrounding the need for increased ICE activity. At a campaign stop in the city before his election, he claimed that the town had been “invaded and conquered” by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, calling to arrest and deport those linked with crimes in a project he called Operation Aurora.

“Normally, I preach a lot about how churches should have their doors open, in order to help people come feel welcome and at home and accepted here,” Friesema said. “And we’ve had to change our policy now to say we have to keep our doors closed and locked, in order to make the people here feel like they are protected against ICE officials coming in and targeting them here.”

Still, for many, the Aurora First Presbyterian Church provides an essential feeling of community and togetherness, which helps ease the tension of the current climate. 

“Imagine having to move to the opposite side of the world,” Friesema said. “And then you have to settle into a place where you go to the grocery store, and even that feels overwhelming; you can’t find food that feels like home. It’s something as simple as that, where you don’t even know where to start. This congregation here that serves refugees, their pastor would show up and say, ‘There’s a couple of little African shops around; this is where you go to get this certain food,’ and just those little things make someone feel just a little more at home.”

Or, as Divino Salvador’s preacher puts it, “I think, for us to be together is good, no?” Velasco said. “Sunday, after church, we have lunch. I think that’s a good time to share, to talk. And that gives us the opportunity to have friendship with everybody.”