IRTF News

For more than four decades, IRTF has welcomed dozens of interns who have helped carry forward our mission of promoting peace, human rights and systemic transformation across the Americas. Each year, our interns enter the living legacy of IRTF: never-ending advocacy, organizing, and accompaniment. Their experiences, like those of Lucia and Maddie, remind us of the importance of this work and of forming the next generation of justice seekers.

Maddie: As a small organization and a tight-knit community, IRTF’s support is direct. This summer, we accompanied migrants to their immigration hearings, speaking with them in a mix of broken English and Spanish, learning their stories and offering them support and companionship. We connected with other community groups to learn how we could best inform local migrant and refugee families through Know Your Rights training. We challenged our own comfort and security by attempting to take on the fear and uncertainty faced by the migrant community.

Lucia: IRTF has been an indispensable part of discerning the world I want to live in, the role I will have in that, and the way I hope to go about it. This haven of social justice, activism, and human-centered civic engagement has become the foundation on which I hope to build a lifetime of advocacy and purposeful action.

Please read more from the reflections of student interns Maddie and Lucia.

This list of 17 lawsuits filed over immigration issues in OH 2025, provides insight on the obscurity of reasoning that leads to people being detained. 

Most of the Americas have suffered from interference from their powerful northern neighbour – and are usually the worse off for it. The US bombardment of Venezuela and the capture of its president, Nicolás Maduro, follow a long history of interventions in South and Central America and the Caribbean over the past two centuries. But they also mark an unprecedented moment as the first direct US military attack on a South American country.

In her 2024 book Sanctuary People: Faith-Based Organizing in Latina/o Communities, Dr. Gina Pérez, Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Oberlin College,  presents a practical political strategy to cultivate safety, trust and belonging in all communities. It includes both physical sanctuary, where sacred space becomes a place of refuge, and a broader commitment to accompaniment and public advocacy.

Here Dr. Pérez reflects on the Catholic Church’s Year of Jubilee of Hope. Pope Leo XIV frames migrants and refugees as “messengers of hope”—a powerful challenge to the stigmatizing narratives that characterize migrants and global migration in our world today.

Dr. Pérez also highlights essays by two young IRTF student interns who are living out their commitment to “welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable…”  By participating in acts of accompaniment and collaboration across faith and secular communities, they credit IRTF with playing a significant role in their formation to become leaders in a new generation for social justice. Student intern Lucia reflects: “IRTF has been an indispensable part of discerning the world I want to live in, the role I will have in that, and the way I hope to go about it.”

The Ohio Immigrant alliance published an article exposing ICE's "Operation Buckeye"  a large-scale immigration enforcement operation carried out by ICE in Ohio, how violently it has been carried out and how the numbers expose a methodology of profiling and arbitrary enforcement. 

This underlined by quotes and reports of the episcopal clergy, civil and human rights activists and indigenous leaders