Many faith leaders were dismayed when the government announced last January that federal immigration agencies can make arrests in churches, schools, and hospitals, ending the protection of people in sensitive spaces.
Hundreds of clergy from around the country gathered in Minneapolis to learn from Minnesota faith leaders how to protest against ICE enforcement. Then they took to the streets and helped block the city’s airport.
The faith leaders, who hail from across the country and represent a range of religious traditions, deployed to neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations, where DHS agents have been most active.
Viral video of the protest shows activists standing up during the middle of a service at Cities Church and calling for the ousting of David Easterwood, a pastor at the Southern Baptist church who is also acting director of the St. Paul ICE field office.
During the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon in 2026 — and the first since the operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — the Secretary of War framed that U.S. military action as a godly mission.
Brian Kaylor, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-affiliated minister and leader of the Christian media organization Word&Way, called having an ICE official serve as a pastor ‘a serious moral failure.’
‘Jesus — who they claim to worship — went into the so-called houses of God, he flipped over tables. … So that’s what we did today,’ said minister and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong.
Amid an internal investigation into Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the Department of Labor held its second monthly worship service featuring the rightwing anti-abortion activist niece of MLK.
The question of offering pastoral care to immigrant detainees has become a theological and legal flashpoint since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation effort last year.
The faith-based networks, which developed organizing infrastructure and relationships during the Floyd era, are joined by newcomers as resistance efforts have intensified since Good’s shooting.