The Chicago faith leaders who resisted Trump’s immigration raids

Throughout last fall and the early part of winter, the city of Chicago felt like a war zone. In retrospect, those difficult weeks offered a preview of what would happen in Minneapolis just a few weeks later. Military transport helicopters flew overhead throughout the day and night. Heavily armed federal agents marched down Michigan Avenue wearing body armor and carrying assault rifles. In what the Trump administration termed Operation Midway Blitz, more than 3,000 people were reportedly detained or arrested by ICE officers and other agents of law enforcement. Many of those people still languish in detention centers, while many more have already been deported.

More affluent and majority-white neighborhoods, in general, were spared these experiences. In those areas, daily life proceeds largely unchanged. But numerous U.S. citizens have been caught up in the administration’s mass deportation dragnets, which clearly seem to involve racial and ethnic profiling: Skin color, surname, accent and language are treated as prima facie evidence that a person may be undocumented and subject to immediate removal.

Public opinion research has repeatedly shown that white Christians are Donald Trump’s most loyal and enthusiastic supporters, although the irony is obvious: At least on the surface, the president’s mass deportation policies would seem to violate core Christian teachings about care for the vulnerable and the stranger.

In Deuteronomy 10:19, the command is explicit: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus frames that obligation in personal terms. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” Those who refused to help the poor, the sick and the vulnerable, he says, have injured him: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

But the Christian right does not have a monopoly on Christianity in America. For many liberal and progressive Christians across a wide spectrum of denominations, standing up against the Trump administration’s widespread persecution of immigrants is a moral obligation, a profound duty of faith and conscience. In the darkest weeks of winter, when Chicago was most under siege by Trump’s forces, I reached out to Christian clergy members across the city who had become part of the active resistance.

These faith leaders came from diverse backgrounds, varying faith traditions and different parts of the city: I spoke with two female priests from a predominantly white liberal Episcopal church, a leading spokesman for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and a white Presbyterian minister with a multiracial congregation who made headlines after being shot in the face with pepper balls during a protest. I also spoke with the leader of the Black Christian organization Live Free Chicago-Live Free Illinois, and a young pastor — also a theology professor and Emmy award-winning musician — who has been trying to bring the Black and Latino communities together around principles of linked fate and shared struggles.

Suzanne Wille: “We are chasing ghosts.”

I first saw the Rev. E. Suzanne Wille’s name on an open letter signed by a wide range of Christian clergy members in Chicago. Its title was striking: “Jesus Is Being Tear Gassed at Broadview,” a reference to the ICE detention facility in a western Chicago suburb.

Wille is rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in the North Side neighborhood of Ravenswood, known for its historic homes, tree-lined streets, vibrant arts scene and craft breweries.

The Broadview processing and detention facility has become locally and nationally famous as the subject of lawsuits, investigations and public outcry over the treatment of detainees. Last November, a federal judge ordered Trump administration officials to improve the “inhumane” conditions at Broadview.

I next saw Wille’s name on a letter to the editor in the Chicago Tribune, arguing that moral outrage on its own was not enough to confront the great harm being caused by Trump’s mass deportation campaign in the city, and by implication, across the United States.

“This is a hard time,” Wille wrote, “but there is one concrete thing we can do: stand together, get trained to be an effective witness, show up when we can. If masses of people are trained as rapid responders, every occurrence of fearmongering and violence could be met with nonviolent, courageous witness. We can all play a part in keeping our city, our country, brave and free. And in doing so, we keep our hearts soft and courageous, too.”

Between her pastoral work and her activism on the ground, she wasn’t easy to track down. I emailed Wille and got an apologetic response a few days later. After we had scheduled an introductory phone call, she wrote again:

“Well, we just got back from a rally in our neighborhood with hundreds of people protesting ICE going into a neighborhood daycare center and abducting one of the teachers and terrifying other teachers, children, and parents.”

When we finally connected, Wille wanted to make clear that she doesn’t see religious faith as a requirement when facing a “moral crisis” like this one. But it definitely helps, she said.

“If you don’t have some ethical and moral framework — it doesn’t have to be from a religion — you will be lost and swept away by this. People need some type of grounding.”

She continued, “None of this is normal, and it’s deeply frustrating to watch the media — and political leaders who should know better — refuse to speak about it in moral terms.” She added that Christianity and faith don’t just belong to “the other side,” meaning, of course, the evangelical right.

Wille told me that a parishioner in the largely Hispanic neighborhood of Logan Square had called her recently because federal agents were throwing tear gas canisters from their SUV in an attempt to mask their escape after being confronted by angry residents.

By the time she got there, Wille said, the damage had been done. Local residents were “circling the school, trying to protect the students. It is like I am doing emotional triage on some type of battlefield, right here in my own city,” she explained. “I feel like we are chasing ghosts. Just a few minutes before ICE was here, and now we have to pick up the pieces.”

Like the other clergy members I spoke with, Wille talked frankly about managing the emotional and spiritual toll of this work.

“You have to recharge,” she said. “I fill up my hope tank with walks, prayer, friends and the arts. Going to museums and taking in that good energy. The quiet times are so critical to balance out all the noise and negative energy. We can’t run on empty, or we will not be able to keep going.”

David Black: “My Bible says 365 times, ‘Do not be afraid’”

Rev. David Black leads the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in Hyde Park, a congregation that describes itself as “progressive” with “traditional theology,” and also as multigenerational, multiracial, multiethnic and multicultural.

On Sept. 19, Black joined a group of clergy and activists outside the Broadview facility. He was there, he said, to show solidarity with “the strangers” — meaning the dozens of migrants and immigrants detained inside the building — and also to pray for the ICE officers stationed there. That was a theme I encountered in several of these interviews; clergy members felt compelled to pray for the federal agents it might have been easy for them to see as enemies or oppressors.

As Black knelt on the sidewalk in prayer, ICE agents shot him multiple times with pepper ball munitions, hitting him in the head and all over his body. Video of that incident spread widely online.

In a certain sense, Black was lucky. He was struck with what are called non-lethal projectiles, although their manufacturers warn they can cause grievous physical injury — up to and including paralysis and death.

He was arrested, along with nine other people, and held overnight. The DHS officials have said that demonstrators were repeatedly warned to leave federal property, and they have described Black as an agitator.

He is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Trump administration alleging violations of the First Amendment, and for that reason did not wish to discuss the incident on the record. The complaint states that Black feels “called by his faith to return to Broadview to pray for ICE officers there, but his experience requires him to overcome fear in order to do so.”

How does Black manage this fear?

“My Bible says 365 times, ‘Do not be afraid,’” he explained. “Fear is inevitable in this moment. And as terrible as ICE and Border Patrol have been, I expect them to escalate.”

Black said his faith helps him make sense of the violence he witnessed and endured — not simply as the product of individual malice, but as something sustained by collective moral failure. “When I see an ICE agent doing something radically bad and harmful, I can recognize that that is a person who is suffering and being oppressed by a deep darkness, a collective darkness, that they can be liberated from,” he told me. “That allows me not to demonize the person.”

This compassion, he said, extends even to the president: “I feel such deep pity and compassion for Donald Trump, because he is like a child who needs somebody to take his hand and help him be OK, if he would just accept that and grieve and cry. He must be suffering so much.”

I spoke to Black several hours after he had testified before a House committee’s “shadow hearing” convened by the Democratic minority on civil rights abuses connected to the Trump administration’s immigration raids. He had returned home from the airport less than an hour earlier.

“A huge part of my life is Sabbath,” he said. “Rest and play are not indulgences. They’re how I survive.”

Black wants those people who are now feeling the “fire in their bones” at the perceived widespread injustice being inflicted on the most vulnerable Americans to take a deep breath.

Urgency alone, he warns, can burn people out. “We don’t need people who are frantic. We don’t need people who are only motivated by urgency, anxiety and fear of scarcity. There’s no scarcity of moments when evil seems ascendant, and people of conscience who yearn for justice will be needed. Each person has a different role to play.”

Courtney Reid: “One of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever done”

Rev. Courtney Reid works with Suzanne Wille as associate rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church. Like her mentor and colleague, she understands her work, and the obligations of faith, as extending far beyond the walls of the church.

Across Chicago, Reid has seen many forms of collective action emerge: teenagers raising money to help classmates whose parents have been detained or deported, neighbors forming informal human shields so immigrant and refugee families can complete essential daily tasks, food drives and fundraising campaigns to help cover bond money and legal fees.

She says she never imagined living through a moment that would leave her feeling both heartbroken and profoundly proud of her city. She wonders what awaits Chicago’s younger generation. “What is the world they’re going to inherit?” she asked. “What are we leaving them? How have we failed?”

Beginning in June, Reid joined clergy from several Episcopal churches on Chicago’s North Side who began gathering weekly at Federal Plaza downtown to pray. On most weeks, between five and 18 people would show up. Sometimes, people walking by would stop, listen and join in.

On another afternoon, Reid found herself linking arms with a predominantly African-American group gathered outside the federal courthouse. They sang gospel, religious, and protest songs from the civil rights movement together, their voices carrying across the plaza.

The experience, she said, created an overwhelming sense of solidarity. “It was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever done in my life.”

Julian DeShazier: “My people are weary, I’m going to tell you that right now”

Rev. Julian DeShazier recounts a very different experience from Courtney Reid’s.

“I’m not seeing that solidarity happen enough,” he said, referring to the relationship between the city’s Black churches and the largely Latino immigrant community. “Most of my time is spent getting calls from other Black pastors asking why I’m doing this work around immigration.”

His voice grew heavier. “My people are weary. I’m going to tell you that right now,” DeShazier said. “Many more of my colleagues are sitting this thing out or looking to transition to something else. Civil society is being destroyed by the Trump administration. They don’t feel safe.”

DeShazier is the director of experiential education and affiliate faculty at McCormick Theological Institute, and senior pastor at University Church Chicago in Hyde Park. He is also an Emmy Award-winning hip-hop artist who performs under the name J.Kwest.

During his daily travels and community outreach, DeShazier says people often him, “Why would I go into the Latino and Hispanic community when they’ve never come into the Black community?” Many of them, he said, point back to the infamous case of Laquan McDonald, a Black 17-year-old who was shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer in October 2014. McDonald had a knife but no gun, and was walking away from the officer, who made no effort to de-escalate the confrontation or subdue McDonald before shooting him.

There were protests and marches across the city in response to the McDonald shooting, as well as the extensive history of Chicago law enforcement’s use of excessive violence against the Black community. Rahm Emanuel, then the city’s mayor, was widely believed to have slow-walked the case and attempted to protect police, but ultimately was compelled to apologize. The officer involved was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Many people in the Black community, DeShazier said, still feel that the city’s Latino community stayed too quiet as that case unfolded. “When it was Laquan McDonald, nobody had anything to say. I didn’t see a bunch of folks out there protesting with us,” he said. “Black and brown solidarity? A lot of those voices of so-called solidarity weren’t on Telemundo or Univision.”

DeShazier’s point is that the assumptions about Black and brown unity often made by liberals, or the ways Black people and Latinos are grouped together as people of color, are not always valid. There is no natural or preordained alliance between these groups, and at crucial moments their interests and agendas may differ. This became especially clear after the 2024 presidential election, when Trump won a historically large percentage of Latino voters, and increased his vote among Black men as well.

To be clear, DeShazier thinks that solidarity is crucial. In the Black Christian prophetic tradition, he told me, witnessing is about action, not words. Sermons matter, but the most meaningful form of obligation and testimony is about showing up, with enough presence and force to constrain the oppression of power.

“Witnessing is an act of the body,” he explained, especially in a city that for much of this past winter was literally occupied.

As we have seen in Chicago and Minneapolis, among many other places, there is little anyone can do to stop ICE officers and other federal agents from knocking down doors, pulling people from their homes or cars, intimidating activists and spreading an atmosphere of fear. The solidarity DeShazier hopes for, he said, has yet to materialize.

“I’m doing this work as a Black man from the South Side of Chicago,” he said, “but I still feel a deep responsibility to reach across communities and neighborhoods. Unfortunately, when I talk to my peers in the Black church, too many of them aren’t communicating that principle — or putting it into action. Many of my peers, with good reason, feel called to take care of their own people first.”

Ciera Bates-Chamberlain: “It will take years of real work to put this country back together”

During the early morning hours on the last day of September, a spectacular raid unfolded in the predominantly African-American South Shore neighborhood. Border Patrol agents from an elite unit rappelled from a hovering Black Hawk helicopter onto the roof of a 130-unit apartment complex. Other federal agents arrived in armored vehicles, quickly seizing control of the block.

Agents from ICE, the FBI and Border Patrol stormed through the building, breaking down doors and walls and forcing residents into the street. Concussion grenades exploded. Some residents hid under beds; others jumped from windows. Dozens were detained, their wrists bound with plastic zip-ties.

Children and infants, some of them nearly naked, wandered into the streets.

Well before noon, the building was quiet again. Belongings from ransacked apartments were piled in the hallways. Desperate and angry people sought information on relatives who had been taken away. According to officials, 37 undocumented immigrants were detained, most of them originally from Venezuela.

Among those arriving on South Shore Drive in the aftermath of the federal raid was the Rev. Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, a faith leader who has spent years responding to police violence, housing crises and other forms of injustice and inequality.

Bates-Chamberlain is founder and executive director of Live Free Chicago-Live Free Illinois, a social justice organization built on the Black church tradition. I asked her a familiar question: Faced with this situation, what would Jesus do?

Her response was emphatic. “There’s a difference between a Christian and a churchgoer. There’s no way Jesus sits on the sidelines while violence against vulnerable and marginalized people is occurring. If you’re a Christian, your obligation is to do what Christ would do. Based on what we know of his actions and teachings, he would be in the streets — flipping tables and holding accountable the people who make unjust policies and laws.”

Bates-Chamberlain said that, in a certain sense, there is nothing new about Trump’s mass deportation policies and the paramilitary assault on American cities. “That is an old story for Black folks,” she said. “If you are in a low-income Black and brown community, you are definitely targeted and impacted differently than other communities… It is terrifying every day, whether you are a citizen or non-citizen, just because this government believes it has the right to target people based on the color of their skin. But again, it’s the same old story. Black people have been living it.”

In such communities, she added, “People are trying to make it work and survive,” and the federal government is not helping. “Instead of trying to be an aid to people it is treating them in an evil way. It is very disheartening.”

“This is not just about immigration. They’re taking the glasses out of the cabinet and smashing them. We can’t just put the broken glass back together. It will take years of real work to put this country back together.”

Larry Dowling: “These families are holding hope over fear”

One month after David Black was shot with pepper balls and arrested by ICE officers at the Broadview detention facility, Father Larry Dowling — moderator of the Chicago-based Priests for Justice for Immigrants and pastor at St. Agatha Catholic Church in the predominantly African-American North Lawndale neighborhood — went to Broadview for a different reason.

He wanted to offer Holy Communion, the central sacrament of Roman Catholic faith, not only to the detainees inside the facility, but also to the federal agents stationed there. Along with a thousand or so other Catholics, Dowling had walked more than a mile from a nearby parish church to the Broadview facility.

ICE officers did not allow Dowling and the priests who arrived with him to approach the building. They administered the Eucharist instead to the members of the procession and to police officers who were nearby.

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Dowling and I spoke during the holiday season, and he reflected that many seats at dinner tables across the Chicago area and the entire country had been left empty by the Trump administration’s mass deportations.

I asked him what kind of healing might be possible, spiritual or otherwise, under these conditions. How could the communities now under attack be made whole again?

He told me about a recent meal that he and a friend had shared with a family from Colombia. “They told us that even back home, they didn’t see police grabbing people off the street the way ICE and Border Patrol are doing here now. But they also told us that seeing people protest — seeing people stand up for them — gives them hope.”

“These Hispanic families — and others caught up in Trump’s immigration attacks — are holding hope over fear,” Dowling added. “That is a powerful lesson and example for all of us.”

Epilogue: “You have to confront the sorrows of the world and carry them with you”

Suzanne Wille and I finally met in person in a strangely perfect place and time: The Art Institute of Chicago, the city’s most famous museum, during Christmas week. The regular rhythms of Wille’s church — worship services, weddings, funerals and community outreach — were amplified by the pressures of the season, and made even more difficult by then-Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had made a surprise return to Chicago during the previous week, leading a dramatic “show of force” operation that sent agents into Hispanic neighborhoods across the city.

Wille was excited to share the museum’s Elizabeth Catlett exhibition with me. By her own account, Catlett was “a Black revolutionary artist.” She was born in Washington, D.C., in 1915 but left the U.S. permanently to live in Mexico after World War II. “Her work will nurture you,” Wille said. “I’m sure of it.”

Primarily a sculptor and printmaker, Catlett worked in the social realist tradition and her work often celebrates the dignity of Black and brown working people, especially women.

“She captures the struggle and humanity of these women,” Wille told me, clearly moved as we walked through the gallery. “She was working in a far more difficult time for so many of us. The moral clarity of her art — and her bravery — are so powerful.”

We walked and talked our way through the Catlett exhibition and then kept going. For three hours we discussed faith, spirituality, health, death and the cost of trying to lead a moral life and defend democracy in a nation that feels corrupted and broken — a nation where, as events in Minneapolis, Chicago and elsewhere have made clear, that kind of life can be perilous.

Wille paused in front of one of her favorite paintings in the Art Institute, a world away from Catlett’s work, yet perhaps not so different. “Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Virgin)” is a 15th-century oil painting from the Dutch Renaissance, attributed to the workshop of Dieric Bouts. (In other words, the artist’s identity is not known.) It depicts a grieving Madonna, and would likely have been displayed facing an image of Christ wearing a crown of thorns.

“Her heart was pierced because of what she would see,” Wille said, in what struck me as a moment of restrained insight. “It makes me think about all the women who suffer in the world for others.”

She continued, “You don’t try to jolly away or eschew the sorrows by watching TV or eating too much or finding other distractions. You have to confront the sorrows of the world and carry them with you.”

Eventually, Wille needed to leave. She had her Christmas Day sermon to write. What advice could she offer, I wondered, to people who sense that something is deeply wrong in America, given everything we have seen and experienced over the past year?

It came down to a straightforward question, she said: What kind of human being do you want to be? “Some people start down this path and realize how hard it is,” she said. “Many will quit. Others keep going because they’re committed to building a better country and a better world. Maybe they didn’t understand the cost at first. Now they do, and they’re still committed to the journey.”

She compared the work to a game of hot potato. “We’re in this together,” Wille said. “In collective struggles — the Civil Rights Movement, today’s pro-democracy movement, the fight for immigrants’ rights — the potato is going to get really hot. You may have to juggle it or pass it to someone else, and that’s OK. It’s also OK to dance, to find joy, to celebrate, to love life and to step away when you need to.”

A few hours earlier, while waiting for Wille outside the museum, I encountered an elderly Black man, apparently unhoused, standing on Michigan Avenue. “I know I am ugly on the outside, but I am still a good guy,” the man said to passersby. “If you have any money to help me, it would mean a lot. Please. It is Christmas.”

Hundreds of people passed by, carrying shopping bags or stopping to take selfies with the Art Institute’s iconic lion statues. Few acknowledged him. Later, I asked Wille if she had noticed the man who kept telling strangers he was ugly.

“Yes,” she said. “He is not ugly. This society is, when it’s greedy and cruel and doesn’t take care of people. Not him.”

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