NOTE: This piece was originally published at our Substack newsletter A Public Witness.
For Mara Richards Bim, engaging in justice advocacy is literally part of her ministry job description. The new Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, Bim told me on this week’s episode of Dangerous Dogma that her role is to “help the congregation bridge that gap between what we talk about in church and the advocacy and the justice that we think needs to be witnessed and done in the world.” One starting place for her is to get people from the congregation engaged in an effort she had already been participating in since May to challenge the Trump administration’s immigration actions by holding a weekly prayer vigil outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Dallas.
Bim explained that the weekly vigils started after two immigrants from Venezuela in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with no criminal record were grabbed by ICE and sent to a prison in El Salvador. She said that action “brought it home” since it was happening “here in our own community.” An interfaith group of clergy and other faith leaders got together, Bim added, and decided, “We have to do something.”
“We held a press conference in May and basically said we are going to be a witness in this space,” she added. “We do hold signs, but we are really there to pray every Monday. We’re in Texas. We were doing it from 10 to 12 a.m. It’s really hot here now, so we’re doing it from 8 to 10 a.m.”
Mara Richards Bim (center left) and others outside an ICE office in Dallas, Texas. (photos courtesy of Mara Richards Bim)
Three months later, they’re still showing up every Monday morning for a prayer vigil. Their regular presence means people have come to know who they are — not just ICE officials but also those heading to immigration court.
“We pray and we just bear witness, and we often encounter people. It’s an administrative office, so these are people who are following the rules as our government has laid out for them and they are just showing up for whatever the next sort of appointment is. Sometimes they come over to us and ask us to pray with them,” Bim said. “People know where to find us there. … We didn’t know where it would go, but it’s already been fruitful for our community, just our weekly presence.”
“I think we’re starting to see people of faith recognize there is this moment right now, there’s an opportunity to step out and be heard in a way and protect those around us in a way that we haven’t had to in decades. And I think that we’re going to see more people of faith stepping into these roles.”
During the podcast conversation, Bim also praised the efforts of various denominations now suing the Department of Homeland Security to block immigration raids at houses of worship. And she discussed the ways DHS is even using Bible verses in videos promoting their militarized raids.
“A lot of this that’s being done, even the co-opting and the use of Scripture is meant to intimidate, is meant to cause fear, is meant to cause compliance in advance,” Bim said. “It’s a mess.”
You can hear more from Mara Richards Bim on this week’s episode of Dangerous Dogma. You can listen to the audio version here (or subscribe in your favorite podcast platform), and you can watch the video version here.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
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