[Excerpt]

Mary Immaculate hosted a Dallas Area Interfaith meeting in late October where school, police and mental health officials committed to working with one another to better residents’ access to resources by placing a community health worker with the church and communicating better.

“We will not bury our loved ones anymore because of lack of access to mental health services,”

parishioner Natalia Valenzuela said at the meeting. “By getting the services we need and building unity, we will overcome.”

[Photo Credit: Shelby Tauber, Dallas Morning News]

This North Texas Church Lost Six Members to Suicide. Here’s What It’s Doing to Get Families Help, Dallas Morning News [pdf]

For the first time in North Texas, immigrants without state ID will be allowed to use parish identification cards to identify themselves with Farmers Branch, Carrollton and Dallas Police Department officers.  DAI leaders negotiated this ground breaking police department policy change in the aftermath of the passage of anti-immigrant State Senate Bill 4, as a necessary step to promote trust between police and immigrants.

More than 1,500 immigrant leaders filled the sanctuary at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Farmers Branch in a standing-room-only assembly of leaders across multiple faiths and denominations.  Three women shared stories of anti-immigrant abuse and community fears about reporting crimes to the police while lacking access to state-issued IDs.  Friar Luis Arraza of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes and Fr. Mike Walsh explicitly challenged the chiefs of Farmers Branch, Carrollton and Dallas Police Departments to publicly commit to accepting parish identification cards as a means of identifying oneself during a police stop.  All three said, ‘yes,’ to thunderous applause.

The largest applause, however, was reserved for Catholic Bishop Edward Burns who pledged, “the Church will do whatever it needs to do to stand with immigrants.”

Nine years prior, Farmers Branch was best-known for being the first Texas city to pass an anti-immigrant ordinance, which included fines for landlords renting to undocumented immigrants.  The police department paid a price in community trust — one motivation for publicly pledging to accept parish IDs.

[Photo Credit: Elvia Limon, Dallas Morning News and Catholic Diocese of Dallas]