CHICAGO—ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), in an ever-expanding unconstitutional crime spree, is ushering in the Christmas season by launching immigration raids inside churches across the country. Trump’s holiday gift to the nation is the administration’s new policy that it is legal to enter churches as people worship and round them up in the immigration raids happening from coast to coast.
Not waiting for the fightback on the part of immigrants and their supporters that has already begun, ICE agents began their terror campaign here in Chicago on a recent Sunday. On that day, many parishioners who would normally come out to church stayed indoors and missed Mass at St. Jerome Roman Catholic Church in the neighborhood of Rogers Park. They watched from behind their windows as vehicles carrying suspected ICE agents drove around the church and the surrounding streets.
The prowling ICE agents turned the morning into a harrowing time for members of the church at 1709 West Lunt on Chicago’s North Side, given the track record the federal officers had already racked up for beatings, tear gas, pepper gun bullets, and outright violence during their so-called “Operation Midway Blitz.”
St. Jerome congregants feared that if they ventured outdoors, they’d be grabbed, hogtied, slammed to the ground, beaten, then handcuffed and hustled off to waiting vans to be transported to god-knows-where. Possible destinations: The ICE detention center in west suburban Broadview, to an ICE prison in rural Louisiana, or to El Salvador, or a country in Africa.
It was not unreasonable fear or paranoia that had taken hold. Rev. Primo Racimo, the priest in charge of St. Margaret of Scotland Episcopal Church is the pastor of a church just two blocks from where many in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago suffered those very assaults.
“In my, primarily Black neighborhood,” he said, “the people, including our parishioners, were traumatized when Black Hawk attack helicopters landed on the roof of the apartment complex two blocks from our church, dispensing hundreds of agents who grabbed people, including children, dragged them outside, handcuffed them, and took them away in vans.”
“During the time they detained those people, they were unable to charge even one with any crimes. But the point is that it is the aim of the administration to terrorize people.”
Rev. Racimo said many of the Episcopal Churches, including his, which number over 100 in the Diocese of Chicago, are sanctuary churches “determined to do everything in their power to protect immigrant members against the illegal raids. Like St. Margaret’s, they have indicated their sanctuary status by painting their front doors bright red.”
Area residents on both the South Side and Rogers Park have talked about the effect on their lives of the ICE raids in their neighborhoods.
“Yeah. It’s scary. It’s really scary, and people don’t deserve this,” said Julie, an area resident who was looking out her front window at 8:30 a.m., the Sunday morning of the ICE activity in Rogers Park, when she saw ICE vans and agents swarming in front of her house, which is very close to the church. “They (the immigrants) really don’t deserve this,” she said.
“My feeling is in the United States, you have freedom to practice your religion—and part of that is to go there and leave there and go home,” added Angie Guinn, a volunteer in a neighborhood rapid response group whose members blow whistles and call residents when ICE agents are spotted.
“I am an immigrant from the Philippines who lived under the Marcos dictatorship,” said Father Primo. “I thought when I came to this country, I was coming to the land of the free. I did not expect this.”
“Land of the free?” many are asking. Not under Trump. A bevy of religious organizations, aided by the pro bono lawyers group Democracy Forward, is suing in U.S. District Court in Boston to try to stop ICE raids into churches before they begin this holiday season. The catch is that Democracy Forward won one case but lost another in the lower federal courts.
“Immigration arrests have spiked under Trump, who has made deportations and large-scale roundups a cornerstone of his second term,” the groups’ latest suit, in Boston, says.
“Shortly after he was inaugurated, Trump reversed a decades-long policy that prevented officials from carrying out enforcement in churches and other religious institutions. Christian and Jewish groups challenged the new policy in court, arguing that it has led to more surveillance. But in April, a federal judge sided with the administration.”
One organization, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), the AFL-CIO’s constituency group for Spanish-speaking workers, saw this specter coming a year in advance, pre-Trump takeover of the White House.
“Proposed measures to target undocumented immigrants at churches, schools, and hospitals deepen the pervasive fear and anxiety already gripping immigrant families and communities,” Carmen Rodriguez, LCLAA’s Communications Coordinator said last December 13.
“These spaces, traditionally regarded as sanctuaries and essential pillars of support, are now being weaponized, forcing individuals to live in constant dread of raids and detentions. This fear isolates families, discourages parents from seeking medical care for their children, and prevents students from feeling safe at school, threatening their well-being and education.”
What was a bad scene on West Lunt and a horror show on the South Side may be about to get a lot worse, not just in Chicago but across the country. ICE agents recently grabbed one Latino man trimming a church lawn in Charlotte, N.C., a compilation of reports on such assaults.
And the fear among Chicago-area people is so pervasive that the weekend of the surveillance in Rogers Park, a soccer league full of Spanish-speaking kids in the suburb of Evanston, just north of D.C., cancelled all its Sunday games in public parks. Organizers didn’t want to traumatize the kids who would see ICE agents kidnapping their parents.
And ICE agents, plus an FBI agent, snuck into churches in and around Worcester, Mass., taking names, asking about individual congregants’ addresses and routines, and watching out for them at services. The story, on the local news program This Week In Worcester, went viral on the Internet.
“Two Hispanic pastors who lead Southern Baptist churches in New England say Southern Baptist Convention President Clint Pressley and its executive board received briefings on the plan and discussed it with [Trump] Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller and White House Border Czar Tom Homan,” that story reported. Left unsaid: Miller is even more notorious than Trump for hating Hispanics. Homan is not far behind. A Southern Baptist spokesman denied the meeting occurred.
“A third Hispanic pastor who leads a Pentecostal denomination in New England,” told This Week, “that ICE agents and a person who identified themselves as an FBI agent paid visits to his church asking questions about individual congregants, including how often they attend services.”
The agents also documented church security plans, which congregations establish to train members and on-site guards in how to handle disruptive people, active shooters, and medical emergencies—but not snooping, spying, and invading ICE agents.
And an Atlanta pastor with an 80-member Pentecostal congregation full of Spanish speakers, told the Religious News Service on November 18 that a round-robin report of potential ICE raids there via a WhatsApp audio message from an unidentified pastor picked up steam fast.
That message “claimed massive immigration raids would occur there on Thursday and Friday,” November 20-21. “Soon, church members were sending him messages asking what they should do about the potential raids.
“By that evening at their teaching and prayer service, he had to address the rumor with his congregation. ‘Stay calm,’ he told them in Spanish, but ‘take care of yourselves. Don’t go out if you don’t need to go out.’”
All this led church groups, from Boston to San Francisco, to enlist Democracy Forward attorneys to sue in the U.S. District Court in Boston to stop such ICE raids inside churches before they even start. The groups include five synods of Evangelical Lutherans from coast to coast, three West Coast branches of Quakers, the American Baptist Churches USA, the Alliance of Baptists, and the Metropolitan Community Churches.
Democracy Forward won an earlier ban on ICE agent infiltration in Quaker churches in metropolitan Philadelphia. Its 48-page brief, including reports from Worcester, Charlotte, N.C., Atlanta, D.C., and Chicago, is mostly evidence gathered from on-site media stories.
“Multiple reports indicated the Trump-Vance administration is preparing immigration enforcement operations inside churches with Spanish-speaking congregations and other houses of worship during the upcoming holiday season,” Democracy Forward explained.
“Pastors in New England, Georgia, and North Carolina described visits from agents requesting names and addresses of congregants. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys also reportedly held internal briefings referencing a nationwide holiday plan targeting religious communities.”
“If these reports are true, it is outrageous the administration would so blatantly seek to undermine the freedom to worship freely as we enter an important time for many faiths. This brings an even greater urgency to our case and our work on behalf of people and communities,” said Democracy Forward founder and CEO Skye Perryman.
“The reports…are alarming and incompatible with our Constitution. We are taking swift action to ensure the protections already recognized by the court are upheld and that faith communities can gather and worship, free from government coercion.”
These actions are not the first time authoritarian or fascist governments have put pressure on churches. In Germany in the 1930s, Nazi officials entered Catholic Churches demanding that clergy turn over to them the names of people who had converted to the Catholic faith, going back many years in their records. Some cooperated with the Nazis. Those who resisted were often targeted by the fascists. The aim of the Nazis was to identify Jewish individuals whom they would pull out of the Catholic communities and ship to concentration camps, where most were eventually murdered.
The ICE incursion into churches in the U.S. is making worse the family separation policies that were started in the first Trump administration. “Family separation—a devastating reality for many—is already tearing apart communities, leaving emotional scars on children and parents alike,” LCLAA’s Rodriguez added in the year-old warning.
“Mixed-status families, where American-born children live in fear of losing their undocumented parents, face unparalleled stress and insecurity. These separations cause long-term psychological trauma, disrupt children’s development, and create financial instability.
“These divisive policies breed animosity and hinder the integration and unity that make our nation stronger. This cycle of fear and separation only exacerbates societal divides. We urge policymakers to reject these inhumane measures and work towards a comprehensive immigration reform that prioritizes the protection of human rights, keeps families united, and honors the significant contributions of immigrant workers to the cultural and economic strength of our nation.”
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today.
CONTRIBUTOR
