Walking out of Catholic mass at St. John XXIII parish in Evanston Thursday morning, Lois Farley Shuford expressed alarm that the parish’s two priests, who both came to the United States with a mission to serve the poor, might be forced to leave the country.

The possibility of losing the immigrant priests intensifies the worry for people in the parish, where about half the congregants are immigrants from Mexico. They’re facing heightened fears as they see news reports about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seizing immigrants on the streets.

The priests, Rev. Koudjo K. Jean-Philippe Lokpo, of the west African nation of Togo, and Rev. José Manuel Ortiz, of Mexico, are here on R1 religious worker visas that permit them to serve in the United States. But the federal government is so b

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