The Minneapolis Faith Community Is Showing How to Fight ICE

Sherman-Conroy said that Movement Chaplains only go where they are invited, wearing orange shirts to identify their presence. “When we go into these spaces, we don’t center ourselves, right? We center our community. So for us, the idea is that community is a spiritual practice,” she said.

There has been some tension in Minneapolis faith communities in recent days. On Sunday, protesters disrupted a worship service at a St. Paul church, where one of the pastors serves as the head of the local ICE field office. The Justice Department is now investigating the event. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a local civil rights activist and ordained reverend, argued in an interview with The Washington Post that the protest aligned with Christian principles, saying that “if you compare anyone’s actions and behaviors against that scripture, that will tell you who is on the right side of history and who is on the wrong side of history.”

Diverse communities across Minneapolis have been affected by the actions of federal law enforcement. Sherman-Conroy noted that Native Americans have been targeted by ICE officers, who arrest them on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. The Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, which holds an ICE facility, was named after the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, who advocated for the rights of Dakota Indians in the nineteenth century. The Episcopal Church of Minnesota is among the organizations that want Whipple’s name removed from the building.