Liz Kirkland – Denver, Colorado … Edrey Santos, lead pastor in the northeast Wyoming district of the Rocky Mountain Conference (RMC), a legal resident of the United States and Bible teacher in Dallas, Texas, at the time, found himself detained for five weeks by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency upon returning from a mission trip with students in 2012.
Santos, and the students he was traveling with, entered back into the United States through Houston, Texas, from an international trip. As they were going through the reentry process, Santos was flagged for a criminal offense he was convicted of at the age of 18, over a decade prior. The authorities informed him that it would just take a couple of hours to meet with an immigration judge to deem him safe for reentry in the United States.
A couple of hours turned into a couple of days in which Santos was moved to a holding facility near the airport. And despite promises of a quick resolution, Santos ended up being held at the detention center for five weeks, never seeing an immigration judge. He was released with the help of legal assistance obtained from his family and agreed to return upon the scheduling of the court date. This was essentially a parole-like period with a pending decision on his residency status.
The experience gave Santos compassion for detainees but he did emphasize that his treatment in detention facility was humane and respectful, challenging some negative public perceptions: “The facility was clean, there were three meals a day, and we each had a bunk to sleep in. A guard was always present to make sure detainees were safe, and we were treated fairly.”
“I was so frightened being in there, though, because it was practically jail and I was with real criminals being deported. I didn’t know what was going to happen, and I said, ‘I’m going to pray to God three times a day,’ which I did. And my prayers drew the attention of some detainees. They would ask me if they could pray with me,” he recalled. “And before you knew it, there were over 25 of us having Bible studies and prayer sessions.”
Santos was involved in one small altercation while detained involving leaving a snack in the microwave available to detainees. Two fellow detainees, both raised in the Catholic faith and being deported for murder and drug dealing charges, ended up coming to his aid. They knew he was a pastor, calling him “Padre,” and stepped into the situation saying that no one could do anything to him as he was a man of God, and the situation was diffused.
Over the next decade, Santos would go through a series of postponed court dates in which he would travel to Houston with his personal money only to have his scheduled court session canceled. “A blessing is that I grew up in Houston and my family is still there, so I would go and visit them, but I wouldn’t see a judge. I was angry, I was frustrated, I blamed the government, and I blamed this person and that person,” Sanots recalled.
“But eventually, I learned how to just take ownership and say, ‘You know what? God is still good’,” he continued. “He’s allowed me to travel within the country. I can’t leave the country, but I can still do my work. I can still be with my students. I can still be with my wife and family. So, all of these were blessings, and, by the time I finally saw the judge, I wasn’t even upset anymore. My experience gave me a better understanding of both sides, immigrants and those that have a responsibility to carry out immigration laws.”
The judge did grant Santos an official reentry in the United States in 2022 considering his profession in ministry and no additional charges on file, but there was no record of his permanent residency status anymore after the long duration. He was encouraged to apply both for residency and citizenship simultaneously. What Santos thought was going to be just an interview in the process ended up being a final citizenship interview in which he got his naturalization certificate.
“I went in for my interview thinking they were going to ask me, ‘Why do I feel like I should be qualified for citizenship?’ But that was not the interview. This was the actual interview to become a citizen,” reflected Santos. “It was a big surprise, and I was humbled. I remember being emotional in the agent’s office, and then he was touched by it. My wife was touched by it. So, I was finally a citizen.”
The experience deepened Santos’s relationship with God, teaching him humility, trust, and the limits of personal control. He found strength through prayer and saw his faith tested and affirmed during this prolonged ordeal: “I learned that we, as humans, really only have so much control of our lives, while the rest of what happens to us, we cannot control. That is why we need faith and need to trust in God and walk faithfully through the path that he gives us.”
—Liz Kirkland is the RMC Communication director. Photo supplied.
