Monthly Archives: June 2017

The Islamic State flag is seen atop the al-Hadba minaret of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul in a March 2017 photo. The Iraqi military said the Islamic State blew up the mosque on June 21. (Khalid Al-Mousily/Reuters) By Loveday Morris June 21 at 9:39 PM IRBIL, IRAQ — For more than 800 years,…

Iraqis and supporters rally outside the Theodore Levin United States Courthouse Wednesday in Detroit. A hearing began on a lawsuit that seeks to stop the government from deporting more than 100 Iraqi nationals who were recently rounded up. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in federal court in Detroit against U.S.…

George Hunter, The Detroit News louis akrawi (Photo: Michigan Department of Corrections) A convicted murderer who was known to police as the “Godfather of the Chaldean Mafia” and two of his lieutenants are among the Metro Detroit Iraqi immigrants with…

Britanny Hamama ICE agents pounded on our door at 9:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning as we were getting ready to go to Mass. The agents said that they were doing a house check. They then said that they just needed my dad to come in and be interviewed by the Iraqi consulate. They promised…

The Christian population of Syria continues to experience “general and broad suffering,” the apostolic nuncio in that country told the AsiaNews service. Cardinal Mario Zenari reported that while violence has tapered somewhat in the area around Damascus, heavy fighting continues in other parts of the country. “What is…

The President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Cardinal Daniel N DiNardo of Galveston-Houston as well as the Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration, Bishop Joe S Vásquez of Austin, and Chairman of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace, Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, have sent a letter…

By John Moody Immigration officers have arrested dozens of Iraqi Christians in Michigan. ICE says those arrested have criminal convictions including murder and rape Franklin Graham denounced it in a tweet to President Trump, who is known to check his Twitter account now and again. Newspaper editorials have called it unjust. Still, unless…

Eight-year-old Khloe Marogi, of West Bloomfield, Mich., wears a t-shirt with her detained father’s photo on it at a rally outside the Patrick V. McNamara Federal Building Friday, June 16, 2017, in Detroit to protest the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. (Tanya Moutzalias / AP)…

Iraqi-American Christians disappointed with Trump Niraj Warikoo , Detroit Free Press A daughter of an Iraqi immigrant detained recalls when ICE agents showed up at her home in Sterling Heights on June 11 to arrest him. Niraj…

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey Franklin Graham speaks to Madison, Wis. on June 15, 2016. (DeMoss Group) Prominent evangelist Franklin Graham says he finds it “very disturbing” that immigration authorities have arrested many Iraqi Christians for possible deportation. President Trump promised earlier this year he would prioritize persecuted Christians, but many…

By Samuel Smith , CP Reporter Islamic State militants used one of northern Iraq’s largest Christian sites to imprison and abuse as many as 200 Yazidi girls and women as sex slaves, an Iraqi military official has said. (Photo: Reuters/Jala)Yazidi women targeted by ISIS in this undated photo.…

By Stoyan Zaimov , Christian Post Reporter (Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook)Chaldean-Americans protest against the seizure of family members Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during a rally outside the Mother of God Chaldean church in Southfield, Michigan, U.S., June 12, 2017.…

Dozens of Metro Detroit immigrants rounded up during ICE sweeps By Derick Hutchinson A woman watches as dozens of people are detained by U.S. ICE agents June 11, 2017 in Detroit. (WDIV) DETROIT – Michigan lawmakers wrote a letter Wednesday to the Department of…

World Watch Monitor Three years since the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was taken by Islamic State militants, Iraqi government forces have been able to reclaim a large part of the city, allowing Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad Louis Raphael Sako to visit several churches and monasteries.…

Russian Politics & Diplomacy “We have called on the IICI more than once to give appropriate attention to the crimes that the militant units, including the terrorist ones, committed on the Syrian territory,” Goltiayev said GENEVA, June 14. /TASS/. Independent International Commission of Inquiry (IICI) on…

By jamey keaten, associated press FILE – In this file picture taken Friday, Jan. 20, 2017 from the balcony of the Abdul-Hamid Khatib home, people walk through mounds of rubble which used to be high rise apartment buildings in the once rebel-held Ansari neighborhood in the eastern AleThe Associated Press…

Jardine Malado (Reuters/Rebecca Cook)Chaldean-Americans protest against the seizure of family members Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during a rally outside the Mother of God Chaldean church in Southfield, Michigan, U.S., June 12, 2017.…

Bishop Francis Kalabat, the Chaldean Catholic bishop of the Eparchy of Saint Thomas the Apostle of Detroit, described the federal government’s immigration roundup of dozens of Detroit-area Iraqi Christians as “a very strange and painful day for our community in America.”…

Jardine Malado (Reuters/Umit Bektas/Files)Generations on, Christians fleeing Syria return to Turkish homeland they once fled February 28, 2014 07:40am EST A new report prepared by three Christian advocacy groups has estimated that about 50…

Kim Kozlowski , The Detroit News Following the arrests of dozens of local Chaldeans, community leaders were working Monday to stop an immigration crackdown that they say could send Iraqi Christians back to a country where they face persecution.…