Clery listen on as Bishop Dwayne Royster prays for those impacted by ICE's actions.Hanna Santos, National United Church of Christ
Over 2,000 clergy members from around the country signed onto a letter to Congress, demanding an investigation into ICE agent Jonathan Ross’s killing of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis, calling for federal agents to be removed from that city, and urging “moral accountability” and “urgent action” to address “ongoing abuse of power at the hands of ICE,” according to a statement from the national organization Faith in Action.
“We’re here today as clergy across the country to hand deliver a letter from our siblings in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and to stand in solidarity with them to tell Speaker Johnson that the blood of Renée Good is on his hands,” Pastor Delonte Gholston, who leads Peace Fellowship Church in Washington, DC, said in a video posted by the organization on social media in front of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s office. “And that the blood of the ground is crying out, as it did in our sacred scriptures, crying out for justice. And crying out to end state-sponsored terror,” he continued, surrounded by other faith leaders.
The letter is the latest instance of faith leaders from across the country calling on President Donald Trump’s administration to cease its violent mass deportation campaign. Clergy have shown up at protests attempting to halt or delay federal agents’ operations. And sometimes, they’ve been targeted for speaking out—like the pastor who was shot in the head with a chemical agent outside of an ICE detention facility in Illinois.
The group of faith leaders that delivered the letter to Johnson on Wednesday is calling for a “Day of Truth and Freedom” on Friday to draw attention to ICE’s actions in Minnesota and other cities in the US. The clergy are planning a march and rally in downtown Minneapolis that day. In an address before the letter was delivered, Bishop Dwayne Royster, Faith in Action’s executive director, called on people “not to eat, not to buy, and not to support anything that causes tyranny in this country” on Friday and to spend the day, instead, praying and fasting.
Bishop Royster then led the clergy members in a prayer.
“Hear us oh God for our siblings across this land who are in fear and trembling even at this moment and hour, for the young folk that are not in schools because they are afraid today, for the people that can’t go to their jobs to provide for their families because they are afraid today,” he said, eyes closed. “God, for the folk that are afraid to answer their doors because they’re not sure who is knocking. God, we pray that people of faith and moral courage will go stand in the gap.”
