To Stop ICE Killings, More Christians Need To Tell the Truth

This past Friday, bearing witness felt close to frostbite. It meant weathering subzero temperatures in Minneapolis, with an even colder windchill biting my face. My body braced against the bitter cold, but my spirit was on fire. Along with hundreds of other faith leaders from around the country, I’d dropped everything to respond to a call from the city’s clergy to see firsthand how the administration’s increasingly aggressive and unlawful mass deportation efforts were impacting their community.

Clergy who arrived on Thursday attended trainings from a local interfaith group and monitored neighborhoods for signs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. On Friday, I joined an interfaith prayer service at Temple Israel while ISAIAH, a different local organizing group, led nearly a hundred faith leaders in civil disobedience against airlines that contract with ICE. We later joined tens of thousands of people in the ICE OUT of Minnesota march and a general strike supported by Minnesota unions, progressive faith leaders and community activists. I was inspired to see nearly the entire city—schools, restaurants, businesses—closed down in solidarity with the protests. One of my favorite signs, made by the Minneapolis group Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing, echoed Micah 6:8: “Do justice, Love mercy, Get ICE Out.”

I returned from Minneapolis on Saturday morning with a sense of fierce hope. It felt like a desperately needed tipping point.

Just hours later, my news feed lit up with the news that ICE agents had shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who was filming ICE and blocking a woman from pepper spray. Immediately after the news broke, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House advisers falsely characterized Pretti as intent on murdering ICE agents and committing acts of “domestic terrorism.” As the administration doubled down on this shameful lie, video after video clearly contradicted it, showing Pretti was holding a phone when agents approached and then was brutally shot even after he was pinned down and beaten. Like Renee Nicole Macklin Good who ICE killed two weeks earlier, it was a senseless killing that seemed more like an execution.

My sense of hope turned into demoralizing anguish; why was another child of God killed and how much can Minnesota and our nation bear? But my lament quickly became righteous anger and resolve: We must find a way to stop this. 

Here is what I know: These senseless killings will continue unless we mount even greater moral and political pressure to force the Trump administration to change course, starting by getting ICE out of Minnesota and ensuring legal accountability. And to do that, we need to change the narrative.

READ: The Cowardice at the Heart of the Trump Administration

The administration is disciplined in its false narrative that protesters and those filming ICE are impeding the “heroic” work of ICE agents who are only seeking to enforce the law and arrest dangerous “illegal immigrants” who pose a threat to our communities. They reinforce this narrative by scapegoating immigrants, especially the Somali community in Minneapolis, and by villainizing protesters as “domestic terrorists.” It’s a potent narrative that repels facts, including statements by the Minneapolis police chief that ICE’s aggressive tactics are making the city less—not more—safe. Or that fewer than 10 percent of those detained by ICE nationwide have a violent criminal record. The administration has blamed local politicians and law enforcement agents for the chaos in the city, but the numbers tell a different story: The city has a police force of 600 compared to the more than 3,000 under-trained federal immigration personnel in the city. Furthermore, the administration has blocked local law enforcement from the investigations around these killings. Challenging with facts will not be enough.

In the face of this narrative machine, we can learn from the biblical prophets, who so often interrupted injustice by naming the spiritual lies injustice feeds upon. In particular, I’m reminded of the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). We must be crystal clear that the terror and tragedy we are seeing play out in Minneapolis is not just immoral; it is increasingly evil. 

In that long and rich prophetic tradition, we can call out how the administration uses the pretense of law and order to justify ICE’s aggressive tactics. The truth is that thousands of masked and armed officers are hunting people of color in indiscriminate sweeps, detaining them with no due process. When the administration villainizes protesters and those monitoring ICE as “domestic terrorists,” we can respond with the truth: Both Good and Pretti, like so many others in Minnesota, were trying to protect the neighbors from the terror and brutality that ICE is inflicting upon their communities. When the administration frames the Somali community as criminals, we can remind everyone that Minneapolis prides itself for welcoming immigrants and its growing religious and ethnic diversity. And when the Department of Homeland Security uses Jesus’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” we can be clear that separating families, spraying chemical irritants into the face of bystanders, and conducting raids in people’s houses are acts antithetical to peacemaking. We must counteract the spiritual lie that might is right with spiritual truth: These ICE tactics are an egregious assault on human dignity—not to mention, our constitutional rights.

Writing to the Roman church facing its own persecution and brutality, the Apostle Paul encourages them: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). In the next chapter, Paul writes that government and authorities are called to be “God’s servant of good” to restrain evil and to advance the common good. ICE’s aggressive tactics are doing the exact opposite, leading to greater unrest and the tragic potential for even greater violence. We meet ICE’s surge of cruelty with our own surge of courage and nonviolent resistance—resistance that will require greater levels of courage and of calculated risk.

This isn’t easy.

If I’m honest, I wavered in my decision to go to Minneapolis. It was inconvenient: I had just returned from the Twin Cities a few days earlier for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speaking commitment and had already spent much of the week in intense meetings with other faith leaders. And I wondered if I’d be safe: I had already seen sobering footage of ICE responding violently to peaceful protesters. 

But overcoming evil with good, as Paul instructs, is often uncomfortable and inconvenient. Or as Frederick Douglass put it: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” I ultimately decided to go because I knew that my sacrifice paled in comparison to the risks that so many faith and community leaders are taking every day as they mount greater nonviolent resistance to ICE’s presence. I also felt that the administration chose Minneapolis for its most brutal surge of ICE to date because of its role after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 in sparking a national movement for racial justice and because of the way the city prides itself on welcoming immigrants.

We all must discern how we are being called to resist in this moment, including through mutual aid, peaceful protest, and nonviolent resistance. All of us can take a few minutes to write or call our senators to use the budget process to push for critical protections for communities in Minnesota and around the country. What’s most important is that we are willing to be more courageous and sacrificial with our actions, encouraging others to join us. Only if we act collectively will we stop what’s happening in Minnesota and prevent this brutality from being inflicted on additional communities across the country.

On a call with clergy after we gathered in Minneapolis, Rev. Susie Hayward, minister of justice organizing at Creekside UCC, reflected how they’d seen violence in their city for more than a month, including neighbors disappeared and clergy tear gassed. At the same time, they’d also seen “the incredible work of Love/God manifesting around us in the community response—the mutual aid, the protection of neighbors, the deep love and care for each other. We didn’t know if the rest of the country really understood what was happening here,” she said. “We also understood the symbolic power of having hundreds of visible clergy on the streets of Minneapolis, participating in actions at the airport, Target stores, marching on in the streets. We knew it could help punch holes in any cynical claim of religious righteousness by this regime. We wanted to take back the name of God used to sanctify forces of evil and violence, and plant a stake firmly on the side of nonviolent love, the side of the resistance.” 

Over this weekend, I think many of us have gotten a vivid window into what is happening in Minneapolis—both the courage of people like Alex Pretti and the violence of ICE. We can’t afford to let those in our sphere of influence look away. We must increasingly change the administration’s pernicious narrative into one in which people engaged in nonviolent civil resistance are the real heroes. All of us can play our role with greater sacrifice and solidarity to stop ICE’s terror and replace it with our faithful vision of upholding everyone’s dignity and realizing liberty and justice for all.