In response to ongoing federal threats from President Donald Trump, Chicago faith leaders organized a surge of solidarity to protect the most vulnerable. Alongside a deep pride for their city, some of the organized actions share a critical motif: joy.
Community leaders in Chicago were already alert to the threat that Trump posed to immigrant communities in Chicago when the president began hinting at sending the National Guard into the city to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and cut the crime rate of what he falsely claimed to be the most dangerous city in the world. For some of the faith leaders, it was important that they protest not just the dangerous influx of troops, but also the false narrative surrounding their city.
“We’re called to be constantly rejoicing,” Rev. Juan Pablo Herrera told Sojourners. “It’s a spiritual strength that we can have in times of negativity coming against us, that we can choose to live with joy as a way of defying the forces of principality.”
A variety of tactics
Herrera is a pastor at Urban Village Church in Wicker Park. He said he’s seen a significant influx of pastors and people rallying around immigration in their neighborhoods, cutting through anxiety with a newly minted solidarity.
The diverse support system means Wicker Park and the surrounding Hispanic and Latino neighborhoods can host “Know Your Rights” trainings for undocumented immigrants and their allies, set up accompaniment for tasks like grocery shopping and doctor’s visits, and organize neighborhood watches to warn others of the presence of ICE agents. One of Herrera’s favorite events is El Mercadito, a small event in Logan Square that seasonally hosts Mexican and Latina artisans selling handmade goods.
“People have said, we’re going to scale it back because of fear. Here we said, ‘We’re not only going to not scale it back, we’re going to make it bigger and invite anyone that wants to come to celebrate and to resist in a joyful manner,” Herrera said.
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Urban Village Church is part of a network of congregations collaborating through a new interfaith group initiated by the Illinois Coalition of Immigration and Refugee Rights. This table has been coordinated by Ethan Aronson, who is the faith community organizer at Arise Chicago, a workers’ rights nonprofit.
“We have representation from the full range of Christian denominations,” Aronson said. “Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopal, Unitarian Universalists, Catholics, and Jews and Muslims. Faith communities who represent all those targeted communities have been coming together in a shared voice to say no to ICE, no to militarization, no troops, and yes to faith, yes to love, yes to peace, yes to caring for our neighbors.”
Immigrants have made their homes in Chicago since its inception. The city has housed people from Mexico since the early twentieth century; the immigrant communities represented within its neighborhoods span from Scottish to Korean. According to 2024 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 600,000 immigrants call Chicago home—over 20% of the city’s population.
Practicing joy while pelted with chemical weapons
Aronson said he experienced joy in an unusual place recently: the federal ICE facility in Broadview, Ill., a suburb outside Chicago. The site holds detainees before transferring them to a designated detention center. In the last few weeks, protests in front of the facility have increased.
After ICE agents shot and killed Silverio Villegas-González, claiming he dragged an ICE agent with his car, which witnesses contested, some protesters attempted to block an ICE vehicle from leaving the facility. Federal agents have also fired tear gas, pepper spray, and pellets at protesters and journalists. ICE arrested one journalist, before releasing him, and fired chemical weapons at a TV reporter. The latter is being investigated by Broadview Police as assault.
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But demonstrators are taking the idea of community action beyond chants and protest signs. Protesters regularly set up food tables and spend time crafting, praying, and singing with each other in between active protests. A particularly powerful chant, which stood out to Aronson, directed at ICE agents, goes, “Love your neighbor, love your God, save your soul, and quit your job.”
“The second an ICE official walked in or walked out, everyone would get up from their knitting and singing and go over, and we were chanting at them,” Aronson said.
As it happens, the chant is a protesting crowd-pleaser. Rev. David Black, a senior minister at First Presbyterian, mentioned the same chant as he recalled singing with his close friend and other protestors in front of the Broadview facility.
“Joy is one of the fruits of the spirit, and so when we are showing joy, even to people who aren’t consciously looking for the fruits of the spirit in a protest, people instinctively understand that … they’re seeing something that is deeply rooted in good and reconciled humanity,” Rev. Black said.
But that joy does not paper over the pain of witnessing and experiencing ICE raids, arrests, and sometimes death. Black said the experience of grief is as much a part of resistance as joy. He said embracing deep fears and griefs is an avenue of spiritual liberation accessible to detainees and ICE officers alike. He feels called to demonstrate the grief and joy by putting his own body on the line.
“When Jesus saw evil in the world, he didn’t just preach about it in the synagogues,” Black said. “He put his body in the way, and because of that, because he allowed his body to be destroyed by that evil, the power of that evil was broken. And while I don’t think it’s a Christian’s responsibility to be martyred or to do what Jesus did in that particular way, I do think it’s a really important witness of the gospel that Christians have an opportunity to model, at least symbolically, by doing what Jesus did in that moment—putting our bodies in the way of evil.”
During one of the regular protests at the Broadview facility on Sept. 19, ICE officers deployed pepper balls, an exploding chemical agent, against him at close range.
“I slipped up to the wall where ICE agents were standing on the roof,” Black said. “Praying for them and essentially offering an altar call, telling them that they could still repent and come believe in the good news and be accepted by these people who they’ve been harming. And as I was praying for them, they started shooting at me, and they pelted me with exploding balls of chemical munitions, hitting me, aiming for and hitting me on the head, in the face.”
The officers’ use of force against Black prompted other protestors to rush in and shield his body. More armored ICE officers then surged out of the facility gate and used more chemical agents, rubber bullets, and force against the protestors. Black said their use was indiscriminate and lacked restraint. Photojournalists for the Chicago Sun-Times captured images of the ICE agents deploying tear gas and pepper balls in his face.
The force has not deterred him from his principled approach, which he said is derived from his deep faith and supported by the overwhelming solidarity he has experienced in the protest efforts.
“We are preaching the liberation of the captives and the release of the oppressed,” Black said. “We’re bringing this message of hope and love. Just like Jesus, trying to model his witness and ministry, and the way he didn’t flinch when that preaching was met with violence.”
Drawing from worldwide solidarity movements
Joanna Arellano-Gonzalez, co-founder of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, found solidarity in helping stage a People’s Mass for Justice and Peace on Sept. 13 outside of the naval base near Chicago. The People’s Mass is an activist extension of a Catholic Mass, focused on actualizing church values in the community. The action has roots in Poland’s solidarity movement, as well as Latin American movements under St. Oscar Romero, according to CSPL’s executive director.
CSPL organized the People’s Mass on Sept. 13 to spread the word of their faith and decry the violation of human rights which ICE has perpetrated in Chicago and beyond. Arellano-Gonzalez said the Trump administration’s threats constituted spiritual and psychological warfare, keeping people in a state of high stress and anticipation. For her, that is why joy is so necessary in resistance efforts.
“Ultimately, this administration can’t take away our joy,” she said. “They can’t rob us of that. And our hope. So the more that we can deepen in joyful, nonviolent resistance, the more clarity it offers for us to keep doing this work ahead. Because it’s going to be a marathon.”
Black also believes this political moment comes with an opportunity for Christian churches all over the nation.
“One of the fundamental values of this movement is its pluralism. We don’t all have the same politics. We don’t all have the same identities. There’s no ideological purity in this movement,” Black said. “It’s just about people with the goal of ending deportations and ending ICE who are standing side by side and striving towards that goal together.”
Chicago faith leaders are settling in for a long, continuous effort to buffer their communities from encroaching federal forces. When it comes to the future, though, Herrera said he has confidence in the solidarity he sees forming.
“Whereas people might think that people are just hiding out in their homes, people are starting to come out of their homes here in Chicago,” he said.
In fact, in Herrera’s view, the solidarity has never been stronger.
“People are starting to come together in a way that we can thank the president for,” he said. “There’s a renewed sense of hope here in Chicago and in our community.”
“As I was praying for them, they started shooting at me, and they pelted me with exploding balls of chemical munitions, hitting me, aiming for and hitting me on the head, in the face.” — Rev. David Black
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