The Rev. Noel Andersen is the national grass-roots organizer for Church World Service in Washington, D.C., and works to encourage church participation in the sanctuary movement. He is an ordained United Church of Christ pastor.

Stephen Yale-Loehr is a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, N.Y. He is co-author of Immigration Law and Procedure, a treatise on U.S. immigration law, and was the founder and original director of Invest in the USA, a trade association of EB-5 immigrant investor regional centers.

The Rev. Bryan Pham is an assistant professor in the department of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He practices immigration law at Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic and is the chaplain to Loyola Law School.

Jehu J. Hanciles is an associate professor of world Christianity at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. He studies global Christian expansion, especially in Africa.

Silas W. Allard is a scholar of law and religious ethics with a focus on immigration and human rights. He is associate director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University in Atlanta and managing editor of the Journal of Law and Religion.

Marie Marquardt is a scholar-in-residence at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta. She studies Latin American immigrants, gender and migration, multiethnic and multicultural congregations, religious diversity in immigrant communities and religion in civic and public life. She is the founding co-chair of El Refugio Ministry, which serves immigrants detained in Georgia.

Suzii Paynter is executive coordinator of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, an umbrella organization of almost 1,800 congregations and individuals in 30 countries. She can discuss human trafficking, immigration reform, environmental justice, hunger, poverty and religious liberty and other ethical issues from a liberal Baptist perspective.

Read a July 7, 2014, New York Times story about a 2008 law that may be behind the rise in children crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

Minerva G. Carcano is bishop of the Phoenix Episcopal Area, Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is based in Pasadena, Calif. She is spokeswoman for the Council of Bishops on the issue of immigration.