Members of the Massachusetts clergy of the Unitarian Universalist Church visited Minnesota last week to answer a call by faith leaders in that state to respond to the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement there.
The group of more than a dozen clergy members penned a letter after their visit to Minnesota, where they said they “witnessed and heard first-hand accounts of the violence being perpetuated in that city, and across the country, echoing the stories we’re hearing here in our own communities.”
“Our experience in Minneapolis, as well as the history, values and principles of our faith, taught us that resisting authoritarianism requires trained, sustained resistance — grounded in truth-telling and faithful witness,” said the letter. “As religious leaders who have witnessed first-hand the devastation in Minneapolis, we call upon our elected leaders, businesses of Massachusetts, and the citizens of our Commonwealth to take action.”
The letter called for elected officials to stop more federal funding from being appropriated to ICE in the upcoming congressional budget. They also called upon citizens and elected officials to “demand that ICE be investigated for human rights violations, constitutional violations, and that a full investigation be made into ICE’s conduct across the country.”
Additionally, they called for businesses in Massachusetts “to cease relations with ICE, and to refuse to allow ICE entry to their business or to use them as staging grounds.”
“Businesses make moral choices all the time, and it is time for the businesses of Massachusetts to choose the safety and rights of the communities they serve and the people of this Commonwealth, rather than supporting state violence,” said the letter. “As religious leaders, we’ve seen the deaths of citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good spark widespread mourning and grief. But ICE has caused the deaths of numerous people they detain, by withholding medicine and denying basic care. It is a moral failing of our country that ICE has hidden these deaths and they remain unexplained and unaccounted for.”
The letter goes on to demand legal accountability for the federal officers involved in the killings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretty in Minneapolis this month, as well as for any deaths that have occurred in immigration detention facilities.
“We call on all citizens and all our elected officials to demand that such deaths no longer be carried out in our name as citizens,” the letter said.
It continued, “Valuing human dignity, valuing life, and valuing all the people of our Commonwealth and their constitutional rights are not partisan values — they are moral values. We are people who have gone and faithfully witnessed the devastation in the state of Minnesota, where residents, citizens and non-citizens alike, are afraid to leave their houses to go to school, to work, to shop, and to worship.”
The letter was signed by 16 Unitarian Universalist clergy, including some local names like Rev. Lara Hoke of the First Church Unitarian in Littleton, and Yaakov “Trek” Reef, intern minister of the First Parish Church of Stow and Acton.
The letter came as ICE and the Department of Homeland Security faced heightened scrutiny, particularly as outrage mounted following the killing of Pretty over the weekend. The fallout included the apparent demotion of Border Patrol Commander at large Greg Bovino, who had been the face of the federal surge in Minnesota and other regions where federal agents have been deployed in the last year.
Bovino was replaced there by border czar Tom Homan who after arriving in Minnesota suggested the federal presence could be pulled back if local and state officials offered “cooperation.”
“The drawdown is going to happen based on these agreements,” Homan said. “But the drawdown can happen even more if the hateful rhetoric and the impediment and interference will stop.”
Despite initial indications an investigation would not be taking place, the Department of Justice announced Friday it would be opening a civil rights investigation into Pretti’s death.
The visit by the clergy also comes as concerns mount over a potential surge in Massachusetts after two dozen brand new vehicles were delivered to the ICE facility in Burlington, and agents were reported in neighboring Maine. This past week, Gov. Maura Healey filed legislation to ban ICE agents from courthouses, schools, child care programs, hospitals and churches in the state, and to prohibit other states from deploying their National Guard to Massachusetts without Healey’s permission.
At the same time, Healey signed an executive order prohibiting the state from entering into new agreements with ICE without a specific public safety need, prohibiting ICE from making civil arrests in non-public areas of state facilities, and banning immigration agents from using state property for staging before operations.
“In Massachusetts and across the country, we continue to see unlawful and unconstitutional actions by ICE that are meant to intimidate and instill fear in our communities, including against United States citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights,” said Healey in a statement Thursday. “This puts people at risk and in harm’s way, and I find it necessary in the interest of public safety to take this action today.”
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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