Religion News Service reports:

Around 200 faith leaders fanned out across the city on Thursday (Jan. 22) to observe and document the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with some clergy confronting Department of Homeland Security agents, adding a visible religious presence to widespread efforts to counter the president’s mass deportation campaign in the region.

The faith leaders, who are in Minneapolis as part of a larger convening focused on religious pushback to ICE, deployed to neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations, where DHS agents have been most active during an ongoing campaign known as Operation Metro Surge. The clergy, who hail from a range of traditions and worship communities across the country, sang on the buses as they ventured out into the street. They belted out hymns and songs popular during the Civil Rights Movement, such as “Woke Up This Morning.”

For the Rev. James Galasinski, who leads a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Canton, New York, it was only a few minutes after he arrived at his designated neighborhood before he and two of his clergy colleagues encountered ICE agents.

“I noticed an SUV with Wisconsin license plates and tinted windows,” he said, referring to what activists say are telltale signs of unmarked ICE vehicles. “There were four men inside, and some of them had masks. I was like: ‘That’s ICE.’”

Galasinski and another Unitarian Universalist minister, the Rev. Lise Adams Sherry of Anchorage, Alaska, called over the Rev. Dan Brockway, an American Baptist minister who serves a congregation in Brockport, New York. The trio staked out the vehicle in front of a strip mall for several minutes, observing quietly, until three women walked past them to enter a minivan.

“All of a sudden, the car that we had been watching pulled up behind them to block them,” Sherry said. “Then two more cars came in.”

Galasinski added: “In just seconds, 12 ICE agents came out.”

The ministers — all wearing clerical stoles — began blowing whistles, attempting to alert the nearby community. ICE agents surrounded one of the women from the minivan and instructed the pastors to get back. Brockway, standing behind the other faith leaders, began livestreaming the encounter to his church’s Facebook page.

Ultimately, the encounter was brief: The woman, who the pastors said appeared to be pregnant, had citizenship papers with her. She showed them to the officers — something activists have argued doesn’t always dissuade federal immigration agents, who have detained U.S. citizens on multiple occasions. But in less than two minutes, the agents left the scene.

The woman, the pastors said, was shaken. It was impossible to tell whether the presence of clergy had staved off a potential detention, but the pastors said the woman thanked them profusely before leaving.

The faith leaders — none of whom had previously encountered ICE — said they, too, were left unsettled.

“I’m becoming radicalized,” Galasinski said, his voice rising. “I’m seeing our nation become more and more fascist before my eyes — I saw it. I saw it. I mean, demanding papers? I never thought I would live in a country like this.”

The sentiment was less dramatic but no less melancholic in another neighborhood, where a different group of about 50 clergy patrolled a major street lined with businesses owned by Hispanic and Somali Americans — groups that have been targeted by ICE.

Among them was Rabbi Diane Tracht, who serves a Reform Jewish community in Indiana, and the Rev. Joshua Shawnee, who serves what he called an Inclusive Catholic Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Shawnee, who wore a whistle around his neck as well as a stole, said he has encountered ICE before in Oklahoma.

“You can only preach against ICE for so long before God calls you to get out of the pulpit and get to the streets,” Shawnee said. [Continue reading…]