MISSION, Texas (Border Report) -- For over 30 years, Father Roy Snipes has been a priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church and at La Lomita Chapel in Mission, Texas. He says many parishioners are undocumented but faithful churchgoers who he fears will stop coming to services if federal agents raid churches and other places of worship, as well as schools, looking for undocumented migrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a directive allowing its agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to enter these once safe spaces in search of migrants they deem a criminal threat. Border Report Live: Trump’s immigration orders grip border communities In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said, "This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens — including murders and rapists — who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense." "It's scary. It bothers me a lot," Snipes said. "They’re couching it in that setting that what we’re going on is drug dealers and cartel and everyone agrees with all of that. But what about Grandma and Grandpa who lived here all their lives and don’t have papers. What about them?" he said. "It’s all kind of a potential horror.” Sitting inside a backroom Thursday at his sprawling parish, surrounded by the dozens of stray dogs that he takes in, Snipes said sanctuaries need to remain sacred places of space where people can worship freely without fear. Father Roy Snipes of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Mission, Texas, has taken in over 30 stray dogs, goats and other animals at his parish in Mission, Texas. (Sandra Sanchez/Border Report) "Church is a place you want people to come and feel at home and even if they're sinners you want them to come and ask forgiveness. It's not a place to be accused or hunted down or despised. It should not be," he said. During the first Trump administration, Snipes led hundreds of cars and walkers on a 4-mile procession along the border -- from his parish in Mission to the 100-year-old historic La Lomita Chapel -- to protest plans to build a border wall separating the chapel. The attention worked and Congress eventually passed a measure exempting La Lomita from future border wall expansion. But given the many immigration-related orders signed and directives and proclamations approved by the Trump administration this week, Snipes acknowledges that those protections could change. He deems the threat of law enforcement entering houses of worship as even more egregious, and he tells Border Report that he is praying for those issuing these new orders. "We're just waiting to see what's going to happen next," he said. "We can't imagine what it must be like, say for a child who knows his parents don't have papers ... he would live in just stark terror that they could take his Mom and Dad away." In addition, his parish runs a Catholic education center for Catechism students. WATCH: CBP officers in riot gear march through South Texas border crossing Rabbi Claudio Kogan also worries about law enforcement entering houses of worship. Kogan ran a synagogue in McAllen for several years and is the former director of the Institute of Bioethics and Social Justice at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. He now lives in Florida and tells Border Report that he is very aware of the immigration challenges on the border and calls it a "crisis." "We have a crisis that has to be taken care of. And I think that we are now, in some ways, thinking about treatments without understanding and without taking care of the theology of the situation," Kogan said. "A house of worship is a safe house. It's a place in which everybody is able to attend to feel comfortable," he said. "And I think that if this will happen, people may not feel safe, and if people may not feel safe in the place that they gather to maintain their faith, we may be against one of the principles, one of the pillars of the United States of America." Kogan is an immigrant from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He came to America and worked his way through school and even has a medical doctor's degree. He believes illegal immigration is driven by migrants seeking to escape poverty and crime and other injustices in their home countries. And he thinks the best way to stop illegal crossings is to attack it at its root causes. "I am a medical doctor as well. When we have a headache, we can take an aspirin and probably the headache will go away, but if the theology that create that headache is still there, the headache will come back. So we need to treat the complete disease. And I think so far, there were aspirins that were taking care and not the whole story. We have a crisis that has to be taken care. And I think that we are now, in some ways, thinking about treatments without understanding and without taking care of the theology of the situation," he said. Kogan said he was honored to twice lead the opening morning prayer for the U.S. Congress in 2015 and in 2017 — during the second Obama administration and first Trump administration. "I am an immigrant. I came to the country with no money and by studying and studying, I was able and honored to study and complete my degrees in four American universities. And this is the way for me, with means to become an American, to be able to come legally, to be able to study, to be able to accomplish your dreams, the American dream, which I think, and I do believe, is feasible, going through the right steps," he said. Sandra Sanchez can be reached at [email protected].