Former Gainesville Mayor Holds Vigil for Immigrants with Local Churches at City Hall
Former Gainesville mayor and Greater Gainesville International Center (GGIC) Director Lauren Poe held a vigil for immigrants Saturday evening at City Hall with members of local churches.
Participating churches included the Gainesville First United Methodist Church, Holy Trinity Episcopal Migration Ministry, Gainesville Quaker Church and Westminster Presbyterian church.
Ignite Life Center (ILC) church (404 NW 14th Ave), where GGIC is located, was not present at the vigil.
Many vigil attendees held signs calling for the release of a family of Iranian refugees, Hamid, Mitra and Janan, who were living in Gainesville before being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and taken to a detention facility in Texas.
A promotional image for the event includes the GGIC logo and a caption directing inquiries to Holy Trinity Episcopal Migration Ministry.
Before refugee resettlement was shut down by the federal government in January, GGIC was an affiliate partner with the International Rescue Committee.
In a speech, Poe told attendees of the vigil, “We helped five families start their life anew in Gainesville from Afghanistan, from Guatemala, from Venezuela, and we also helped in Ukraine.”
Poe didn’t mention in his speech that he allowed the refugee families in his care to temporarily stay at ILC church despite multiple people from the congregation being arrested for child sexual abuse.
GGIC employee Terrence Ho said in an interview with GnvInfo that ILC is “just an office space,” however, he also admitted that the refugee families were housed at the church.
Until the summer of 2024, ILC housed unaccompanied immigrant minors with Urban Strategies. The program ended after Urban Strategies stopped using ILC as one of their housing facilities.
Social media posts and publicized reports indicate ILC formally worked with ICE.
A December 2019 Facebook post by the Alachua County Human Rights Coalition states, “Ignite Life Center, an evangelical church here in Gainesville, has entered into an agreement with ICE to house unaccompanied minors. We don't know much other than these will be children under 16. Ignite has worked previously with ICE and is also the church which sponsored the conversion therapy conference to help churches ‘pray the gay’ away.”
According to a 2015 TRAC Immigration report, “Three detainees were recorded as transferred by ICE from the Urban Strategies Ignite Life Center-Gainesville…. A total of 21 detainees housed at the Urban Strategies Ignite Life Center-Gainesville left that facility because they were deported, were released under supervision while their cases were being decided, or left ICE detention for one of a variety of other reasons. This is a special facility for housing juveniles.”
Attendees of the vigil joined each other in prayer for immigrants who’ve been taken into ICE custody.
Vigil attendees pray for immigrants taken into ICE custody (GnvInfo)
Poe said in his speech, “You either came here because in your family, there was an immigrant, a refugee, or a slave… While every immigrant and refugee story is unique, they're also, in many ways, the same. They are all making the most difficult decision they will ever have made in their lives to leave their home, to leave everything they know and everybody they love, because their situation was so unbearable… The violence that they face every day is so oppressive that they needed to start somewhere else… We are now told a story of the criminal that is the immigrant. We're made to believe that every person here is somehow here to do us harm, but in reality, they are the most likely victims of crime. They're the most likely to be abused.”
Poe went on to say that work needs to be done to bring back Hamid, Mitra and Janan, and said, “We work to protect every family past, present, and future who wants to come here and call themselves American.”
Poe concluded his speech, saying, “We are here to fight back against the injustice that is taking place every day.”
The vigil ended with attendees singing Christian songs such as “This Little Light of Mine” and “Let There Be Peace on Earth.”
