A line of religious leaders knelt on the concrete in front of the Minneapolis–St. Paul International Airport, their breath visible as they prayed the Our Father in sub-zero temperatures. They had gathered Friday to protest the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement, which had already resulted in one death in their city. A second person, ICU nurse Alex Pretti, would be killed by ICE the next day. About one hundred of these faith leaders, Religion News Service reported, were arrested by airport police.
The action was part of the Day of Truth and Freedom that included participants from several faith-based groups, including Faith in Minnesota, a racial and economic-justice lobbying group, and the Twin Cities–based Multifaith Antiracism, Change and Healing (MARCH). The latter group had gathered six hundred faith leaders from around the country for two days of activist trainings, protests, and spiritual services.
Even as religious voters, especially evangelical Christians who make up much of Trump’s base, continue to support the administration, the resistance against ICE’s Gestapo-like tactics is increasingly led by religious folks drawing on the moral teachings of their faith. They represent the emergence of a sizeable, faith-based network that could break up the MAGA-Christianity convergence by shifting the perception that the GOP is the only “moral” party for religious voters.
“This is one of the largest surges of faith-based organizing I’ve ever seen,” said Jack Jenkins, who has been reporting on religious responses to mass deportations in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis for Religion News Service. Religious leaders repeatedly tell him that this is not what they were trained to do, but they feel called to speak out because of their faith. They’re also learning from one another about how to create a unified resistance.
Anice Chenault, a Catholic lay minister from Louisville, Kentucky, came prepared to be arrested in Minneapolis, but organizers restricted the airport action to local leaders for whom they could provide legal support. She participated in a protest at the headquarters of the Target Corporation, where St. Paul–Minneapolis archbishop Bernard Hebda spoke. Chenault also ended up giving medical care to a woman injured when ICE broke her car window.
“It literally is a city under siege,” said Chenault, a movement chaplain at St. William Catholic Community in Louisville. “Faith leaders are trying to be pastoral and be present to the realities of the stress and trauma that the people in their congregations are living with. There is really a sense of needing to tend the souls and hearts of all the people who are experiencing this.”
Chenault says she was one of a half dozen Catholics, including a campus minister, a professor, a lay Franciscan and a priest from a lay-inclusive Catholic community, in the MARCH group. She suspects that because the organization is overtly queer-friendly, their call for faith leaders may not have reached Catholic clergy. Other groups on the ground that day said Catholic laypeople were involved, but not clergy.
Pope Leo XIV has been clear in his support for migrants, and after Vatican pressure, the U.S. bishops released a statement against the mass deportations at their meeting in November. In the wake of the two killings in Minnesota, some are speaking out more forcefully. Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, urged Catholics to restore a “culture of life” in the midst of death. “How will you say ‘no’ to violence?” he asked during an online prayer service hosted by Faith in Action.
How will you say ‘no’ this week when an appropriations bill is going to be considered in Congress? Will you contact your congressional representatives, the senators and representatives from your district? Will you ask them, for the love of God and the love of human beings, which can’t be separated, to vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization?
Minnesota bishop Patrick Neary of St. Cloud has joined a handful of fellow bishops to offer dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass to avoid risk of arrest. In a video statement in Spanish, Neary promised that the diocese will make sure that no outside group can identify those who tune into videos of Spanish-language Mass.
The head of the U.S. bishops’ conference, who met with Trump two weeks ago in the Oval Office, released the conference’s first statement about Minnesota after Pretti’s killing. “I prayerfully urge calm, restraint, and respect for human life in Minneapolis, and all those places where peace is threatened,” said Archbishop Paul Coakley. “Public authorities especially have a responsibility to safeguard the well-being of people in service to the common good.”
Bishop Anthony Taylor of Little Rock, Arkansas, addressed the broader issues of polarization and partisanship in his statement this week, citing not only treatment of migrants but the cutting of international aid. Although he was careful not to equate the current reality in the United States with Germany in the 1930s, he noted similar patterns. “We have reason to worry about the direction our society has taken in recent years,” said Taylor, who lost relatives in the Holocaust. “And we have reason to work to shore up our democracy before it is too late.”
Two advocacy organizations announced last week that they are joining forces to help the bishops respond more quickly to immigration raids in their communities. HOPE Border Institute in El Paso and the Center for Migration Studies in New York launched the Catholic Immigrant Prophetic Action Project, or Catholic IMMpact, to provide organizational and communication resources to dioceses facing ICE raids. “It has got to be an all-hands-on-deck effort,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of HOPE Border Institute.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious affirmed that “violence is not the Gospel response,” in a January 25 statement. “Across the globe and within our own communities—from Ukraine to Minneapolis—we see the tragic consequences of aggression. Violence does not resolve conflict or restore peace; it deepens wounds and multiplies suffering,” the group of sisters wrote.
And, of course, Catholic laypeople are among those collecting and delivering groceries to neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes, patrolling schools with whistles to warn of approaching ICE agents, and joining prayer vigils and protests. One pastor, Fr. Dale Korogi of Ascension Parish in Minneapolis, joined a press conference after Renee Good was shot. But the archdiocese has more than 180 parishes.
The Rev. Ingrid Rasmussen of Holy Trinity Lutheran in Minneapolis acknowledged the challenge of preaching to “purple congregations.” She avoids partisanship by speaking about human rights. “No human being’s dignity should be stripped away because of lack of documents,” she said. “Our dignity does not come from documents; it comes from our Creator.”
While the response from religious leaders overall is encouraging, the small numbers of Catholic clergy from the St. Paul–Minneapolis archdiocese is disappointing. If ever there were a time for the Church to be courageous and outspoken, it would be now. A religious movement is underway to correct the sad course our country has taken. Catholics should be part of it.
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