New Jersey Pastor Held by ICE was Denied Bible During Holy Week

A New Jersey pastor is spending Holy Week in federal immigration detention, separated from his congregation, his family, and for nearly seven days, his Bible.

Yeison Cortes Vasquez, 46, was picked up by ICE agents on March 20th while on a delivery route in Newark. He has been held at Delaney Hall Detention Center ever since. The Colombia-born minister has led The Gathering Place Church in New Jersey for years, putting down deep roots in both his community and his faith. His family says an asylum case is actively working through the courts. He has no criminal history of any kind.

The ripple effects at home have been immediate and hard. Community leaders close to the family say one of his three daughters has lost her appetite entirely — the kind of quiet devastation that doesn't make headlines but defines what enforcement actions actually cost families.

Inside Delaney Hall, Cortes Vasquez has apparently kept doing what he knows how to do: showing up for the people around him. Fellow detainees have had him as an informal minister, even as the tools of his ministry were kept from him. For close to a week, attempts by church members to bring him a Bible were refused by the facility. He was ultimately left to purchase one himself through an internal system.

Faith leaders with the National Latino Evangelical Coalition have been among the most vocal in responding. The Coalition's president, Reverend Dr. Gabriel Salguero, called the detention of a minister during Holy Week heartbreaking. Chairwoman Reverend Enid Almanzar said that being denied access to a Bible for nearly a week — particularly as Holy Week began — was deeply painful and troubling for their church family, and called for compassion, dignity, and the protection of religious freedom for citizens and immigrants alike.