By Jeremy Lindenfeld Capital and Main
Pastor Kevin Kang had only been at Tujunga United Methodist Church for a couple of years when, in December of last year, he was asked if he could house formerly detained refugees on church grounds. Without telling his congregation, Kang called up some friends to help him clear out furniture from his office and set up some beds. Over the next few days, Kang said rumors began to circulate among church members about the supposed “criminals” he was harboring, so he figured he should set the record straight.
Without warning, Kang arrived at the next trustees meeting with his new guests: two Iranian sisters in their 20s fleeing religious persecution in their home country. Data analyzed by Capital & Main sheds light on why they found themselves needing help. In 2024, only three Iranians were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the seven counties policed by ICE’s Los Angeles field office. In 2025, that number jumped to 154. That 51-fold increase in arrests was proportionally the largest for any nationality in the region.
Most of the half-dozen people in attendance at the trustees meeting in early January were skeptical when Kang introduced the recently released young women, who he had met through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), an interfaith organization that has been coordinating a welcome network for asylum seekers and refugees since 2023.
“At first we didn’t really understand,” said 94-year-old Jean Van Vlear, who was at that meeting and has been attending Tujunga United Methodist for over 60 years. “We were still trying to get used to a new pastor and his ways.”
Some trustees, like 81-year-old George Beach, already had political disagreements with Kang, who is an unapologetic progressive. Beach voted for Trump three times and wishes he could run for another term.
“On church things, we’re 100% [in agreement],” Beach said. “The biggest disagreement is the illegals. I’m with ICE, he’s against it.”
Jean and Wayne Van Vlear hold hands outside Tujunga United Methodist Church following a Sunday morning service.
Van Vlear said that some church members may have left the congregation due to Kang’s abrupt decision to house Iranian refugees, though Kang denied he’d lost any congregants because of his decision. Still, at the January trustees meeting, he could see some in attendance were upset and confused.
Then the sisters shared their stories.
The elder sister, Zohreh — who has gone by Venus since arriving in the United States — spoke to Capital & Main on the condition that her full name not be used for fear of retaliation against her family in Iran. She remembered standing in front of the strangers, most of whom were more than half a century older than her. Despite her limited English, she was eager to share her story and took the next 15 minutes to explain how and why she had travelled thousands of miles from her hometown of Shiraz, Iran, to this small church nestled in a quiet enclave at the foothills of L.A. County’s San Gabriel Mountains.
She spoke about converting from Islam to Christianity, about how the secretive homechurch she and her sister had been attending was discovered by Iranian officials, about fleeing the country in a months-long odyssey across 10 countries. She told them about trudging through the dense jungle of Panama and Colombia’s Darién Gap and wading through chest-high water while her sister battled a chronic infection that made her so weak, she often needed help to stand. She spoke about crossing the border to join their brother, who had been living in the United States since 2022, and about applying for asylum, a process that required multiple hours-long interviews with immigration officials. She talked about settling into their new lives in Los Angeles, where she enrolled at Santa Monica College to study nursing and applied for a work permit.
Venus sits in the pews of Tujunga United Methodist. Her face is not being shown for safety reasons.
Then she described how the new life she had been gradually building was abruptly shattered. In June 2025, Venus was ambushed, handcuffed and forced into a van by masked men just moments after stepping outside the siblings’ apartment. She was taken to a detention center in downtown L.A., where her brother and sister were brought in just minutes later. From there, she was transferred to Adelanto ICE Processing Center in the high desert, where she spent months with no connection to the outside world and with guards often referring to her by her bed number — 38. There, she comforted her distraught sister and learned through a letter from their brother, who was being kept in another wing of the facility, that they had lost their apartment.
She told the trustees seated before her that, despite the trauma of her arrest and detention, she found comfort in prayer and in reading her Farsi-language Bible every chance she got.
She said a surprise visitor — Rev. Maria Ann Pickard, senior pastor at First United Methodist Church of Lakewood — filled the sisters with hope. Later, Venus said that speaking to the minister after all those months in detention made her “feel like I was talking to God.” Pickard is a volunteer with CLUE, the organization that eventually paid the sisters’ $10,000 per-person bond and connected them to housing.
“By the end, most of our trustees are crying,” Kang said. “Others are like ‘I didn’t realize how difficult it was. … You are welcome here. Stay as long as you need.’”
“I thought they were very truthful, very courageous for going through what they went through,” Beach said. “I know [Pastor Kang] has a big heart, so I said, ‘Well, I’ll let him have it.’”
Left: Venus holds the Farsi-language Bible she had while in detention open to her favorite verse. Right: George Beach sits in the pews of Tujunga United Methodist after a Sunday morning service.
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Though Kang has long been a vocal advocate for progressive causes, he was initially doubtful about the effectiveness of CLUE’s work defending immigrants targeted by ICE.
In June 2025 — just days after the Trump administration launched a series of high-visibility immigration raids in Los Angeles — Kang attended pro-immigrant demonstrations organized by CLUE. He came away from those protests thinking the organization’s activism was “performative,” as he wrote in a Facebook post, where he also said he probably wouldn’t join them again. But the day after publishing his skeptical Facebook post, Kang attended another demonstration in front of downtown L.A.’s Metropolitan Detention Center. When police encircled the demonstrators, Kang was among the more than 200 protesters arrested for failing to disperse. Kang was released later that night, but while he was detained, CLUE had almost immediately connected Kang with legal support, which got him thinking that the organization’s advocacy was more methodical and strategic than he had given it credit for.
CLUE organizers also now saw Kang as the kind of dedicated advocate they could rely on.
“I was really touched by his empathy and compassion,” said Guillermo Torres, CLUE’s immigration program director. “I really started getting to know more about Pastor Kevin, how committed he was to immigration justice and bearing witness, and that’s when I realized that he was such a gift to the movement.”
CLUE added Kang to several message groups through which he was eventually connected to the Iranian sisters, who were, at the time, being held at a federal detention center in the Mojave Desert.
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A week after the sisters moved into what used to be Pastor Kang’s office, CLUE bonded their brother out of Adelanto, allowing him to join his siblings at the church, which had only bare bones accommodations at first. The siblings had to shower at a nearby gym until Kang was able to cobble together the $5,000 needed to build a shower on church grounds.
Kang’s wife, Hanna, who is a pastor at another Methodist church, met with Venus weekly to help her process the traumatic experiences she’d endured.
“It was like therapy for me,” Venus said.
A bunkbed in what used to be the office of Tujunga United Methodist.
The sisters were required to wear GPS-tracking ankle monitors for nearly two months after their release and complete regular ICE check-ins.
Venus nevertheless began adjusting to her new life. Both sisters enrolled in Glendale Community College, and their brother got a job delivering food. When they could, the siblings helped out at the church’s food pantry.
After a couple months of hosting the siblings, Tujunga United Methodist welcomed yet another Iranian refugee fleeing religious persecution. Kang is now trying to help that latest Iranian guest — who spoke to Capital & Main on the condition that his name not be used for fear of retaliation from ICE — free his wife from immigration detention at Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana. She has remained at that detention center since shortly after being arrested alongside her husband in December 2024.
Kang did not set out to house refugees from Iran, but with the U.S. at war with Iran and with federal agents continuing to snatch refugees off the streets, “I feel like our church is meeting this moment in history on multiple fronts,” Kang said.
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Other houses of worship across Los Angeles have been stepping up in similar ways.
In June 2025, CLUE established a general bond fund, in partnership with the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, to pay for the release of detained asylum seekers and refugees.
The fund received 6,000 individual donations within 10 days of its inception, according to CLUE’s executive director, Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez.
“We bonded out our first person in September,” Gutierrez said. “September through the end of December, we had spent a million dollars and bonded out over 100 folk.”
Asylum seekers are often required to submit proof of residence to be granted bond, so CLUE has also helped by finding shelter for them at congregations that are part of its welcome network, whose addresses are then registered with immigration officials.
CLUE’s welcome network has provided temporary shelter for about 300 people, according to Sithy Bin, who has led the program’s organizing efforts since its creation in 2023. Over 30 congregations are part of the group’s network across L.A. and San Bernardino counties, with about 18 providing temporary shelter for formerly detained immigrants, he said. The network was initially established to address the immediate needs of migrants being bussed to Los Angeles from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott and has since become an integral part of CLUE’s activism during the second Trump administration.
“We want to be the hands and feet that operate in love — love in action,” Bin said. “Not only are we going to pray for you, but we’re going to stand with you.”
Sithy Bin at one of the congregations participating in CLUE’s welcome network.
Bin has fostered relationships with faith communities across L.A. and San Bernardino counties in hopes that as many congregations as possible will join in the effort to protect vulnerable immigrants. Capital & Main visited three of those faith communities.
In South L.A., René Molina said his nondenominational church, Restauración Los Angeles, has housed four former detainees in the past year — just “a drop in the bucket,” he said, in terms of meeting the overall need. His congregation is determined to “be an essential station in the underground railroad” for vulnerable immigrants, added Molina, who is the church’s executive director and pastor.
Another Los Angeles pastor, who spoke to Capital & Main on the condition that he and his heavily immigrant congregation not be named, said that even though his church has been sheltering refugees for decades, Trump’s immigration raids have hit especially close to home. Last year, the husband of a church member was detained at the car wash where he worked and spent the next four months in detention until he was bonded out with help from CLUE.
René Molina stands in the aisle of Restauración Los Angeles.
Before Kang began providing shelter for refugees, Tujunga United Methodist’s activism largely focused on food and clothing distribution through its nearly half-century-old volunteer organization, the Bailey Human Care Center. Unlike more politically charged activism, that distribution work has long been embraced by congregants with varying ideological perspectives. Kang estimated that at least half of his church’s congregation voted for Trump in the last election. But ever since he joined Tujunga United Methodist, he’s tried to show church members how progressive activism can go hand in hand with a Christian worldview.
“I’m not a believer in a God who intervenes,” Kang said. “I am a believer in a God who speaks to the hearts of people. We are God’s hands and feet. … I think God is speaking and God is using this church.”
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On a Sunday morning in June, as Kang and other church staff prepped for the weekly 9 a.m. service, regular congregants began filing in. Beach sat near the front, with Van Vlear just a couple rows back beside her 69-year-old son Wayne, who still remembers attending nursery school at the church.
About 20 people turned out for a service, many singing along to hymns accompanied by the strumming of an acoustic guitar before listening to Kang’s sermon about generational trauma. Once it wrapped, attendees filed out of the church, greeting each other along the way. Moving slowly up the center aisle, Van Vlear shook hands with church members she had known for decades. At the back of the pews sat some of the church’s newest regulars. Venus and her brother had joined the congregation that morning, as they had most Sundays for the preceding several months.
Van Vlear, who had been skeptical about housing asylum seekers at the church, embraced the Iranians. She now sees them as integral members of their community.
“They’re lovely, wonderful people,” Van Vlear said sitting on a bench outside the church just after the service. “I love them.”
Copyright 2026 Capital & Main.
Photos by Jeremy Lindenfeld.
Ben Poston contributed to this report.
