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More specifically, the gathering earlier this month marked three years since Rolando Lorenzo Nicolas became a deacon in the 23-county Omaha archdiocese. His 2023 ordination was such a big deal it drew a pope-appointed cardinal from Guatemala and was officiated by the highest-ranking Catholic in northeast Nebraska.
Nicolas has carried the four years of diaconate training invested by the local archdiocese into a service ministry focused on the area’s Maya community. He assists at Masses, counsels couples, inmates and youth and presides over pivotal events such as baptisms, funerals and weddings.
But since mid-April, the migrant who shepherds a few hundred members at St. Francis of Assisi Church has carried a different weight: He must wear an ankle monitor so federal immigration agents can track his every move.
He’s subject to frequent home visits by federal authorities. And he lives in an uncertainty that he could at any moment be detained and deported.
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Indeed, the archdiocese — which oversees 230,000 Catholics in 23 counties of eastern and northeastern Nebraska — has launched a holy intervention on Nicolas’ behalf, including a letter-writing appeal to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A dozen or so clergy, from priests up to Omaha Archbishop Michael McGovern, submitted testimonials vouching for his character.
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Nicolas, who is married and buying a house, has a complex immigration history that began when he crossed into the U.S. without authorization at age 20 more than a quarter-century ago.
According to legal documents, archdiocesan leaders and Nicolas himself, he moved to Omaha less than a year after arriving in Los Angeles in late 1999. It was a time of growing migration from Guatemala, where a civil war traumatized Maya communities.
Nicolas applied for asylum. In the meantime, he was issued a permit to work and a Social Security number. He said asylum was denied and he was removed from the U.S. in 2005. He returned several months later and in 2015 was detained and accused by a federal grand jury of illegal reentry.
By that time he was immersed as a leader in the Maya community and local Catholics went to bat for him then, too. Supporters and Nicolas himself testified that his life would be endangered if he were returned to Guatemala.
They feared reprisal against indigenous Maya leaders who fought for human rights and against government-backed corporate mining methods reportedly causing fertility, health and natural resource problems in Nicolas’ hometown.
Homeland Security pushed back, arguing then that Nicolas failed to prove the Guatemalan government was unwilling or unable to intervene in the persecution of the Maya community.
At the end of the 2015 immigration court proceedings, Immigration Judge Daniel Morris granted “withholding of removal” — a form of relief that doesn’t open the door to permanent U.S. residency status but at least temporarily fended off deportation.
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From then on, he checked in once a year at the local immigration office. What he thought would be another routine January check-in visit, however, ended in what Nicolas said were distressing words from an officer: Are you ready to go?
Nicolas recalled the conversation: “He said, ‘I am giving you three months to pack up your things. If you refuse to go, then we’re going to put you in custody and we’ll find you a country, don’t worry.’”
Nicolas said he recently received a government letter citing a 2002 drunken driving offense. He said he had completed an alcohol education course for that two decades ago. The violation did not come up at his 2015 court hearing, he said, and he thought his record had been cleared. “Now they are mentioning it,” Nicolas said, as an apparent justification for removal.
After losing a $1,500 consultation fee to one attorney who rejected his case, Nicolas hired another who accompanied him to see immigration officials in April. They did not jail him, instead ordering the ankle monitor, twice-a-month check-ins at the local immigration headquarters and monthly home visits by federal officials.
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The post ICE Puts Ankle Monitor, Restrictions on Catholic Deacon Beloved by Nebraska Clergy and Guatemalans appeared first on American Renaissance.
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