A Philadelphia Nun Sits With Unaccompanied Children at Texas Deportation Hearings

Sister Rose Kuhn drives to the Harlingen immigration court every week to pray beside children who face a judge alone, some as young as four.

Sister Rose Kuhn of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary holds a child at an immigrant center in Mexico, just south of McAllen, Texas, where she ministers. Kuhn keeps a weekly vigil at the Harlingen immigration court. (Courtesy of Sister Rose Kuhn / Global Sisters Report)

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Sister Rose Kuhn goes to Mass in McAllen, Texas, on Wednesday mornings and then drives roughly forty miles east to the federal immigration court in Harlingen. She has no client in the building. What she is doing there, she tells the children who come before the judge, fits in one sentence:

“I introduce myself as a Catholic nun, I tell them I went to Mass this morning for you, and I’m not a hearing officer, I have nothing to do with the whole process, I’m here to accompany you,” she told Dan Stockman of Global Sisters Report in July.

Kuhn belongs to the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the congregation headquartered in Immaculata, Pennsylvania, whose sisters taught generations of Philadelphia schoolchildren.

She moved to McAllen in 2022 with two other sisters as part of a joint mission of the three IHM congregations. Last year, she started attending hearings in Harlingen with two Jesuit priests. Since then, she has gone on her own every week.

Here’s her full story.