Opinion
I’ve dedicated a major part of my life and career to the cause of foreign aid, so it was heartbreaking to see it scorned and set back by the Trump administration. And yet, this heartbreak pales in comparison to the needless suffering loss of life and careers caused by the administration’s reckless and cruel dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and evisceration of foreign aid.
In response to the crisis of mass deportation, faith leaders and clergy are taking a moral stand. Whether it’s clergy protesting in Minnesota or faith-based mutual aid networks dedicated to assisting immigrant communities, people of faith are fighting against injustice. What comes next? What demands can Christian leaders make to shape our collective response beyond immediate protest and protection?
A framework for real justice going forward has three parts: Abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and related agencies; welcoming immigrants through immigration law that includes rather than excludes; and participating in truth and reconciliation work, which may take various forms—including national or local truth commissions.
Millions of American Christians attend church on Ash Wednesday, and the gesture of marking our foreheads with ashes is formally known as the imposition of ashes. An imposition is a burden or demand. Those ashes are meant not only to be a reminder of our own mortality but also of what faith demands of us in Lent. Among those things is repentance.
On Jan. 22, federal authorities arrested at least two organizers linked to a nonviolent protest inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minn., that interrupted services at a congregation where one of the pastors doubles as the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement St. Paul field office.
Celebrating the arrests, Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed through a post on X: “WE WILL PROTECT OUR HOUSES OF WORSHIP 🙏🏻”.
Rev. Nekima Levy Armstrong, a Minneapolis activist and ordained minister, was one of the organizers arrested. Referring to ICE, she told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Feb. 4 that “They have been physically brutalizing people, dragging people from their homes, kicking down people’s doors, coming into people’s homes with big guns, arresting people unjustly, even U.S. citizens, and people who are here legally.” She added, “To have someone serving as a pastor who is also overseeing these agents is unconscionable, unacceptable, and antithetical to the Christian faith.”
In Minneapolis, the places where Renee Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal immigration agents have become sacred ground. People have returned to those sites with candles, signs, prayers, and grief. As far as community members are concerned, these memorials serve to remember those killed and what they stood for.
If things ever do go belly up, and we nuke ourselves into oblivion, I’m sure the Golden Rule will survive.
Part of my certainty is thanks to the retro-futuristic, darkly absurd, post-apocalyptic TV series Fallout. As a huge fan of the role-playing video games that the series is based on, I was skeptical that the show could live up to the legacy of the games; it surpassed my expectations. Fallout is brimming with stellar performances, superb writing, and deft political commentary that is relevant without being preachy. All eight episodes of Season Two are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, which, given the series’ anti-corporate and anti-capitalist overtones, is rather strange.
The only time I heard my father speak Spanish was in prayer. Before dinner, he thanked God for the food we received and for our presence to each other in the language of his home country. He still does.
We lived in Minnesota from 1993 to 1999, and on wintry nights, when the wind chill might dip so low that Fahrenheit equaled Celsius, our meal was blessed with words that seemed out of place and yet essential to who we were—as prayer should.
At the time, the infrastructure of immigrant communities in Minnesota was only beginning to develop. The number of families from Southeast Asia and Somalia was just starting to increase; it was still far from the critical mass that would make possible civic and cultural organizations, restaurants, and stores, let alone political power. In my school, I recall no other families from Latin America. The local Mexican restaurant was Taco John’s.
Chaos fills the streets as families are separated by force, and mothers cry out as their children are taken from them. To exert control and maintain power, a ruler orders agents to detain people off the street. Those the ruler labels as “subversive” are treated as a threat to his reign. The violence is indiscriminate and unrelenting. It does not matter who gets hurt, as long as the ruler stays on the throne.
If your mind went directly to President Donald Trump or the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shooting and killing two Minnesota residents—mom and poet Renee Nicole Macklin Good, and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti—you are not alone. But in this case, I am talking about Herod and his order to kill the children in Bethlehem and its surrounding region (Matthew 2:16). While the parallels are not identical, the shared logic of unrestrained state power is unmistakable.
What does it mean to bear witness? This past Friday, bearing witness felt close to frostbite. It meant weathering subzero temperatures in Minneapolis, with an even colder windchill biting my face. My body braced against the bitter cold, but my spirit was on fire. Along with hundreds of other faith leaders from around the country, I’d dropped everything to respond to a call from the city’s clergy to see firsthand how the administration’s increasingly aggressive and unlawful mass deportation efforts were impacting their community.
Clergy who arrived on Thursday attended trainings from a local interfaith group and monitored neighborhoods for signs of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. On Friday, I joined an interfaith prayer service at Temple Israel while ISAIAH, a different local organizing group, led nearly a hundred faith leaders in civil disobedience against airlines that contract with ICE. We later joined tens of thousands of people in the ICE OUT of Minnesota march and a general strike supported by Minnesota unions, progressive faith leaders and community activists. I was inspired to see nearly the entire city—schools, restaurants, businesses—closed down in solidarity with the protests. One of my favorite signs, made by the Minneapolis group Multifaith Antiracism, Change & Healing, echoed Micah 6:8: “Do justice, Love mercy, Get ICE Out.”
2025 was hard. For more reasons than we can count, the collective, personal, social, and systemic weight of tragedy, death, frustration, and hopelessness has left many weary in the dawning light of this new year—at least, I feel weary. Already in 2026, we have witnessed a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent needlessly kill Renee Nicole Macklin Good. In Venezuela, the U.S. engages in an imperial war and openly admits its intentions to occupy the country. I cannot bear another year of genocide, ICE raids, complacent and inactive leaders, artificial intelligence deepfakes, social media toxicity, and trying to convince people that fascism is wrong.
Last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt threw a performative tantrum when asked about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis. During a lengthy and frankly exhausting tirade in which she berated The Hill reporter Niall Stanage as “a leftwing hack,” Leavitt unloaded with some rhetoric about the crimes of undocumented immigrants.
“I bet you never even read about Laken Riley or Jocelyn Nungaray or all of the innocent Americans who were killed at the hand of illegal aliens in this country,” she said. “And the brave men and women of ICE are doing everything in their power to remove those heinous individuals and make our communities safer.”
In the days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, her final words clung to me.
“I’m not mad at you,” she said. Her eyes were earnest.
On Dec. 17, 2025, evangelical minister and Republican political activist Franklin Graham led a Christmas worship service at the Pentagon, where he preached about God being a “God of war.” I find it to be one of the most bizarre Christmas sermons ever given, but it was telling.
The book of Amos tells us of a priest named Amaziah, who is depicted as something of a rival prophet to Amos himself. The book itself is full of Amos’ harsh words against Israel’s exploitation of the poor and greedy indulgence of the rich, as well as prophetic calls to repentance before God’s judgment falls on the whole nation.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Matthew 5:9). As followers of Jesus, this beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount offers a moral compass for how we treat our neighbors, including those in other nations. Jesus isn’t calling us to be passive; he’s calling us to actively make peace. I’m reminded of the Hebrew and Greek words for peace, shalom and eirene, which evoke a sense of repair or a “setting right” of what is broken. Jesus modeled this active pursuit of peace in his own life. Born into a community occupied by violent, imperial powers, Jesus rejected the logic of might-makes-right and instead ushered in something more powerful: God’s promised reign of justice, righteousness, and love. Today, that kind of restoration often requires combating the fear, hatred, hubris, and greed that so often undergird conflict.
Jesus’ call to be peacemakers feels especially urgent given that this year began with a literal bang: On Jan. 3, the Trump administration launched a military assault on Venezuela to abduct and arrest President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. At least 80 Venezuelans were killed by an attack that did not have congressional approval, violated international law, and set a dangerous precedent for a presidency characterized by extending and imposing U.S. power and influence on other countries through military force. Most significantly for us as Christians, the administration’s actions in Venezuela signal a further U.S. retreat from a commitment to protect human dignity, freedom, human rights, and peace.
During his life, Otto Maduro, the late Venezuelan sociologist and liberation theologian, lamented how the majority of Latin Americans were being treated to “fatten the bank accounts” of a small minority. This deeply troubled Maduro. As he wrote in his 1982 Religion and Social Conflicts, “I cannot submissively cross my arms in the face of certain allegedly ‘Christian’ attitudes and traditions that appear to me to be an antievangelical instrumentalization of the church in the service of social injustice.”
As we say goodbye (maybe even good riddance) to 2025, I’m reminded just how much prayer has served as an essential balm, refuge, and strong tower in the midst of such a trying and tumultuous year. Whatever 2026 has in store, I’m confident that we will need to flex our prayer muscles. Prayer centers us in God’s presence. Prayer prepares and equips us for courageous action. Prayer empowers us when we feel weak and encourages us when we feel demoralized.
I’m deeply grateful that we have a staff team that believes in the necessity of prayer, evidenced through the many short ones that they have shared below. My prayer as we sojourn together into 2026 is that our fervent prayers guide and embolden us to advance God’s reign of justice, peace, and steadfast love with greater urgency and courage.
For many of us who were raised Christian, our earliest memories of Christmas may have featured the town of Bethlehem. Whether through songs or the stories in scripture, this quaint town that welcomed the Christ child took on a central role in our faith.
On Thursday, Dec. 11, a man dismantled a nativity scene depicting Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting the Holy Family at a Charlotte church. The now-viral video depicts the man knocking over the mannequins in ICE uniforms who appear to be detaining a kneeling Mary and Joseph.
I remember the first time I asked Mary to pray for me. It was at the height of the George Floyd protests in June 2020.