ICE Raids, Racial Profiling & Fear — A Chicago Pastor Responds

Chicago Pastor David Swanson joins Skye to discuss ICE's activity in Chicago in recent weeks. ICE is using increasingly aggressive methods to target and round up immigrants without warrants, and US citizens have been caught up in the raids as well. How should Christians respond? What is the church's obligation to our neighbors who are vulnerable and afraid right now? Listen to the full conversation on The SkyePod here.

Skye: There’s been a lot happening in Chicago with federal troops, border patrol, and ICE agents. It was the middle of the night, Black Hawk helicopters flew over this apartment building, and agents rappelled down on ropes like they were going into Osama bin Laden’s compound. They knocked down doors, broke windows, and rounded up everybody.

They claim they did this because they had information that some of the residents of this apartment building were members of a Venezuelan gang. Reports have come out that after rounding everyone up, including children, they separated Black residents and brown residents, assuming the Black residents were probably U.S. citizens and the brown ones were not. But we’ve now heard from attorneys who said that a number of those who were arrested were U.S. citizens, and they were arrested without warrants, completely outside the law.

David: There’s so much that’s deeply troubling about this: the way children were treated and traumatized, their hands zip-tied in the middle of the night, separated from their families. But also the way that Black citizens were detained even after being able to show that they were citizens. The follow-up question for these citizens was, “Do you have any outstanding warrants?”

This is far beyond the mandate of immigration enforcement. And yet, this is the experience of some of the residents of our city, some of our neighbors.

Skye: This is a quote from Homeland Security: “Last month ICE and CBP officers arrested more than 1,000 illegal aliens, including the worst of the worst: pedophiles, child abusers, kidnappers, gang members, and armed robbers. We have also arrested multiple members of the gang Tren De Aragua and illegal aliens with criminal histories.”

Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say this statement is factually true. What’s really important is that they’ve admitted they’ve arrested more than a thousand people, including violent criminals, but they’re not denying that many of the people they’ve arrested are not violent criminals.

That’s the loophole here. I don’t think too many Americans would be upset if the people being arrested were pedophiles, murderers, gang members, or drug dealers. But they’re not proving that in advance or issuing warrants. They’re just rounding up everybody.

A lot of the people being swept up in these raids, no doubt some are dangerous, but the vast majority are not. They may well be undocumented, which is a civil violation, not a criminal one. But they’re being treated like hardened criminals.

David: Our state government has said we’d actually like to partner with the federal government in identifying some of these more criminal elements that really are an issue and a problem. We’d like to partner on that. But that’s not what’s being offered. What’s being offered is a dragnet approach that catches anybody and everybody, including people who may be citizens.

Skye: And yet a lot of Americans are like, “eh, who cares? It’s not happening in my neighborhood. It’s not happening in my community. My church hasn’t been impacted.”

David: I was on a call this morning with a pastor from an immigrant congregation in our city. He said that while they normally have about 300 people in worship, it’s down to 30. It’s not that the other 270 have been deported — they’re just afraid.

Whether they have legal status or not, they recognize that their status doesn’t protect them right now from being swept up. Maybe you don’t get deported, but maybe you get detained for a while. Maybe you get sent down to Louisiana. That fear is very legitimate, and to me, it feels intentional.

We’ve communicated very clearly the repercussions of what’s happening right now. There’s no denying the impact on congregations, on families, on economies — neighborhoods whose economies are being rocked by this. There’s data for all of it. And yet, it continues. It’s hard not to think that this kind of fear and intimidation isn’t part of the point.

And I think as Christians in particular, we have something to say about that. We have a faith that speaks to those who provoke fear, and to how we are to respond — even if we’re not the targets of that fear. When our Christian sisters and brothers are being targeted or made objects of derision in this way, we have an obligation — whether it’s happening in our community or not — to find ways to stand in loving solidarity with those who are experiencing this.

One real, practical thing a Christian leader could do, or really anyone, is to start fostering a friendship or relationship with someone in your community whose experience of this moment is very different from yours. I’m speaking particularly to those of us who are more insulated from what’s happening right now. If we’re not able to walk in someone’s shoes who feels afraid, if we can’t imagine what it feels like to have someone knock your door down, or to worry about driving somewhere as a citizen and needing your driver’s license, birth certificate, and passport just in case, then we’ll have a hard time coming alongside those who are afraid.

If we can start fostering those friendships and relationships beyond partisan divides, there’s an allegiance to Jesus that holds us together. And that allegiance requires something of us right now.

What does Jesus say? “Greater love has no one than this: that they lay down their life for a friend.” I think that’s the moment we’re in. Are we willing to lay down our lives for our friends in Jesus? Because if all my friends in Jesus look just like me and have the same experiences as me, that’s not a particularly sacrificial commandment. But once your friends in Jesus are the vulnerable, the marginalized, those being chased, harassed, and intimidated, you realize this might actually mean laying some things down. That’s the cost of discipleship.

It’s incredibly challenging. It’s frightening to consider. But I want to say it’s actually a really good way to live, a far more robust experience of Christian faith. Those kinds of relationships open up wells of joy and hope that aren’t available when we conform to the siloed, segregated patterns of American society.

Ours is a multiracial congregation, and one of the things I’m saying to our white members right now is that we are the least likely to be racially profiled. The Supreme Court has given federal agents license to racially profile. They didn’t say why they made that decision, but they did grant that license.

That means something to the Black and brown people in our church, to the Asian Americans in our church. It means something about their vulnerability right now. So for those in my congregation who are white, we’re probably the ones who need to be a little more public right now. We need to find ways to be peaceful presences in some of these more volatile situations.

Beyond that, there are all kinds of ways to love our neighbors. I was texting with a guy yesterday who doesn’t feel safe leaving his home right now. “Okay, do you need groceries? What do you need?” Those are acts of mercy and charity, the love of Christ right now, the cup of cold water our neighbors desperately need. There are people who feel so lonely, so isolated. There’s no shortage of creative ways for Christians to be involved right now. Where I want to push is to say: recognize the signs of the times. These are not ordinary days. If we’re just going about church as usual, I don’t know what we’re doing. It blows my mind that congregations could gather, go through the motions, and not have a word to speak in this moment.