Greater than 200 clergy members from an array of Christian traditions have issued a stinging rebuke of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. Writing in an open letter, the religion leaders declared that actions by U.S. Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE brokers are “immoral,” “are tearing households aside,” and have resulted of their congregants being disappeared in “unmarked vans.”
“As Christians, we can’t look away,” write the clergy members, who in keeping with Faith Information Service come from the Presbyterian, Catholic, Black Protestant, United Church of Christ, Methodist, Lutheran, Mennonite, Episcopalian, Anglican, Unitarian Universalist, Disciples of Christ and Baptist traditions. “We should act to cease this evil and witness to the goodness and dignity of all God’s youngsters,” the letter states. “For us, the stakes couldn’t be increased. As Matt 25:46 clarifies, those that refuse hospitality to the stranger, refuse to see Jesus within the faces of the persecuted, stand condemned.”
The open letter, “Jesus is Being Tear Gassed at Broadview,” references the Trump administration’s violent assaults on a number of religion leaders, a few of whom have sought to bear witness outdoors a Chicago-area ICE facility solely to be shot with pepper balls by federal immigration brokers. Peaceable actions like prayer “have meant little to ICE brokers,” clergy write.
“They lob tear fuel, use pepper spray and bully sticks, physique slam and drag protestors,” the letter says. “One among our colleagues was hit within the face a number of occasions with pepper balls and rubber bullets. That is the brutality we at the moment are accustomed to. We come providing bread and prayer, hope for justice and therapeutic—we depart washing pepper spray out of one another’s eyes.” Rev. Hannah Kardon, a religion chief who was hit a number of occasions throughout her peaceable demonstration outdoors the Broadview facility, has beforehand stated that “each time we now have been attacked with pepper bullets or tear fuel or pepper spray that I’ve been current, it has felt prefer it got here from anger that we had been there, and never from any decided security want or protocol.”
“We settle for that following Christ’s instance might imply we’re mocked and assaulted, opposed and even arrested,” says the letter from clergy. “Jesus has steerage for this as effectively, saying, ‘Blessed are you when individuals insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all types of evil in opposition to you.’ If he had been dwelling as we speak, we imagine he would possibly add ‘pepper spray, physique slam and arrest you’ to his beatitude.”
“Jesus additional stipulates how we should deal with strangers,” they proceed. “He famously advised his disciples, ‘I used to be a stranger and also you invited me in.’ When requested what he meant by this, he stated, ‘No matter you probably did to one of many least of those brothers and sisters of mine, you probably did unto me.’”
“DHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon the letter, however non secular pushback to ICE continues to develop,” Faith Information Service stated. “The Rt. Rev. Paula E. Clark, the bishop who oversees the Episcopal Diocese Of Chicago, additionally signed the letter on Tuesday. And whereas Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, has not signed on, he launched a brand new assertion Tuesday afternoon declaring solidarity with migrants.”
“Households are being torn aside,” he stated within the assertion. “Youngsters are left in concern, and communities are shaken by immigration raids and detentions. These actions wound the soul of our metropolis. Let me be clear. The Church stands with migrants.”
That’s the decree coming from the very high. Earlier this month, Pope Leo XIV advised visiting El Pasoans throughout a Vatican assembly that “the church can’t be silent” within the face of mass deportations, which is overwhelmingly concentrating on Christians.
“In accordance with demographic knowledge as of the tip of 2024, the report discovered, greater than 10 million Christians dwelling within the U.S. could be susceptible to deportation below Trump administration insurance policies applied in 2025,” Jesuit journal America reported in April. “Christians account for roughly 80% of all of these susceptible to deportation. The Christians most susceptible to deportation are Catholics, 61% of the whole. On the identical time, about 7 million Christians who’re U.S. residents stay in the identical family as somebody susceptible to deportation.”
The clergy members write of their letter that when their congregants and their households “are kidnapped, pressured into hiding, torn away from their households—these issues are taking place to Jesus in actual time.” They write that as Christians, they’ve an obligation to acknowledge Jesus within the faces of the marginalized.
In San Diego, for instance, volunteers compelled by their teachings have been participating in “a program to verify refugees and asylum seekers are usually not alone at immigration hearings,” Nationwide Catholic Reporter stated in August. San Diego Bishop Michael Pham, a former refugee who was Pope Leo XIV’s first bishop appointment of his papacy, has been spearheading the hassle. Pham revealed this previous summer time that when he and religion leaders accompanied immigrants who had been following the foundations by going to their appointments, deportation brokers really fled after recognizing them within the hallways. In consequence, nobody was kidnapped.
Clergy members famous of their letter that there’s nonetheless time to be on the appropriate facet of historical past – together with for these which are serving to the administration perform its mass household separation marketing campaign on the bottom.
“The Trump administration and the ICE brokers, too, can have a change of coronary heart,” they conclude. “They’ll put aside their indifference and cruelty. They’ll put away their assault rifles and bully sticks. They can provide up their pepper spray and rubber bullets. They’ll select not to do that, cross to the opposite facet of the fence and be a part of us for communion.”
“It’s not too late to repent.”
