Immigration
Across the country, communities are being criminalized for surviving, whether through migration, protest, poverty, or identity.
Systems of policing, incarceration, detention, and deportation punish people rather than addressing the conditions that create harm. They divide communities and reinforce inequality rather than nurturing safety and healing. Criminalization is a tactic used by the powerful to divide and control, and it is not keeping us safe.
We believe in redemption, not retribution. Care, not cages. No person is disposable, and true safety grows from housing, community, dignity, and care, not punishment.
Side With Love organizes alongside movement partners to challenge systems of criminalization and to build communities rooted in healing, accountability, and collective well-being. We offer political education, support for solidarity, and connections to movement partners who are imagining and building something different.
Together, we work toward a future where justice means restoration, where safety is rooted in community care, and where every person is treated as sacred.
Worship, Learn, and Live Your Faith
Take Action
- Side With Love: Decriminalization & Immigrant Justice
- UU Solidarity Initiative: The UU Solidarity Initiative is a nationally coordinated effort of UU and UU-adjacent organizations to provide resources and opportunities to build strong communities of solidarity with immigrant communities who are under attack. Our core members currently are BorderLinks, Unitarian Universalist Association, UUA Side With Love, UUMA, UURISE, UUSC, UUSJ, and the UU State Action Networks.
- Solidarity Sessions: Solidarity Sessions are an opportunity for folks working for immigrant justice to connect with one another and learn about the most recent changes in immigration laws and policies that impact the types of immigration relief available and who is eligible for that relief. They happen the first & third Fridays of the month at 11am PT/2pm ET. Register to join.
- Side With Love Action Center: Each week on Tuesdays at 12pm ET, Side With Love staff share an update with resources, political education, and opportunities for action.
- Six Questions Congregations Need to Answer About Community Safety: This worksheet is an invitation for your congregational leadership and members to have a resourced, grounded, and accountable analysis of your congregation’s capacity to nimbly and resourcefully respond to any crisis.
- Together, We Will Resist ICE – Resources and Links from The Gathering: This May 2025 session of The Gathering dove into two critical (and exciting) campaigns to resist ICE.
Spiritual Grounding
- UUA Statements of Conscience and Actions of Immediate Witness on Immigration
- UUA Press Releases and Public Statements on Immigration
Religious Education Curricula
- With Justice and Compassion: Immigration Sessions for Children’s Religious Education (PDF) (Children) (C)
A program designed for Grades 1 through 8, With Justice and Compassion offers children a structured way to engage with their own family ancestry and to discuss immigration in the U.S. The program includes four 60-minute sessions for each grade group (Gr 1-2, 3-5, 6-8) and involves a service project. - An Ethic of Affirmation and Resistance or An Ethic of Affirmation and Resistance in Folk Tales (Multigen) Both of these activities focus on affirming ethical standards to highlight marginalized peoples’ dignity, identity, and how they live their lives in the world. Through a handout and various folk tales, participants engage and think critically about the issues involving peoples on the margins of a dominant, cultural society.
- Amazing Grace, Universal Love Art (Grade 6): This activity invites participants to create artwork symbolizing the concept of "universal love," an idea that Unitarian Universalism embraces. This concept relates to immigration because the group fosters love, dignity, and respect for families dealing with immigration processes.
- Heeding the Call, Taking It Home on Immigration (Youth): This Taking It Home activity for families activates empathy to engage participants in learning about and striving for immigration justice. Participants imagine what it feels like to migrate to a new place and welcome those in the community who may have emigrated from another place.
- UU World Family pages, Standing with Families on the Side of Love; story, “Separated by a Border” (PDF) (Multigen)
Education
- Welcoming Our Neighbors: General Assembly 2009 workshop
- Books and other resources on immigration from inSpirit Books