A collective of local Christian pastors and community members is standing in solidarity, calling for the immediate halt of the deportation of a beloved pastor and her children.Reverend Rosalind Wanyeki fled persecution from a powerful church leader in Kenya with her two young children, who were four years old and eight months old at the time. She has made Toronto her home for the past five years, only to face deportation back to the very danger she escaped.“I was already established, I had the church, and I had my own business, I have my two kids. I wouldn’t have come all this way, and then asking me to go back …it’s as good as saying if you want me to go back to Kenya, honestly, kill me here,” says Wanyeki.Diana Da Silva with the Migrant Workers Alliance for Change says Wanyeki has become an integral leader in the Torontonian-Kenyan community.“All she has done here is serve her community; she provides countless hours of support in person and online, and why we are meeting here today is because the community itself, the community that she has served, the pastors have all come together today to call for a stop to this deportation.”Even as appeals for risk assessment and permanent residency applications are before the courts, Wanyeki’s deportation is set to take effect on August 7. Local faith leaders say this would cause a ripple effect, tearing a hole in the fabric of the community and flooding an already overwhelmed system.“Within our Kenyan community, we rely on our clergy for counselling, for support, emotional support, mental support. And using the support from our clergy, we are able to see a significant reduction in those who go to hospitals, and those who have to rely on the system, so when the system comes to remove one of our clergy that we as a community rely on, then they are depleting our resources,” said Reverend John Munywoki. “Because you remove one, for example, they remove Reverend Rosalind; she is serving over 1,000 people by herself, who else is going to come and step in?”According to Da Silva, 42 deportations happen every year in Canada, and they are calling on the Canadian government to take action.“In 2021, the prime minister, specifically the Liberal government, made a promise to regularize or to give permanent residency to undocumented people. They still have not done that promise. Every day that goes by, that means people will continue to be ripped from their communities,” Da Silva says.You can learn more about pastor Rosalind’s story and sign the petition to support her here.