{"id":94989,"date":"2025-12-20T03:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T03:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/94989\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T03:45:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T03:45:15","slug":"episcopal-priest-arrested-by-ice-agrees-to-voluntarily-leave-for-kenya-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/94989\/","title":{"rendered":"Episcopal priest arrested by ICE agrees to voluntarily leave for Kenya \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Immigration<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/Alex Brandon<\/p>\n

FILE \u2013 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers wait to detain a person, Monday, Jan. 27, 2025, in Silver Spring, Md.<\/p>\n

An Episcopal priest has agreed to voluntarily leave the United States for Kenya, where he was born, after months of being held in an immigration detention center, his lawyer said.<\/p>\n

James Eliud Ngahu Mwangi, a Kenyan immigrant, was arrested Oct. 24<\/a>, according to a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). He was accused of overstaying his B1 Visa, which ICE said required him to leave the United States on May 16, 2024.<\/p>\n

After his arrest, Mwangi’s attorney, Laban Opande, told Houston Public Media he had fallen ill. Difficulties in getting medical care, as well as a feeling of having “no choice,” drove his decision to voluntarily leave the country.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

“The conditions that most detainees find themselves in, they\u2019re quite challenging,” Opande said. “It\u2019s a very difficult position for most people who find themselves in that kind of situation where Reverend James is. And so, as difficult as it may be, then the fear is, \u2018I\u2019d rather be free than be in this kind of condition.'”<\/p>\n

Opande said Mwangi will likely depart the United States for his home country of Kenya in early January.<\/p>\n

Mwangi had been an employee of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, his attorney said. He has been in detention in Conroe since his October arrest.<\/p>\n

Several episcopal congregations and other immigration advocates criticized Mwangi’s arrest. In a prayer vigil outside of a federal detention center in Houston, Reverend Jonathan Maresca, an episcopal priest who worked in Huntsville, said the Swahili-speaking congregation that Mwangi helped lead has gone from three leaders to just two.<\/p>\n

“People in our Swahili-speaking congregation want you to share his story, to raise awareness, to share that if this can happen to him, it can happen to anyone, that this is not God\u2019s justice,” he said. “This is not what the kingdom of God looks like, and it is a stain on our conscience.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AP Photo\/Alex Brandon FILE \u2013 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers wait to detain a person, Monday, Jan.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[44273,23613,56,58,57,6487,1829,3647,66,223,1968,7577],"class_list":["post-94989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-episcopal-church","tag-episcopal-diocese-of-texas","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-huntsville","tag-ice","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-local","tag-news","tag-religion","tag-texas-department-of-criminal-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}