Why I Protested: A Catholic Response to ICE in Minneapolis
Yet again, news is breaking that ICE has killed innocent people.
Yet again, news is breaking that ICE has killed innocent people. And ICE detention is the deadliest it has been in decades. I can’t imagine the grief that families are experiencing because of the deaths of their loved ones.
But over the past year, I did watch my community in Minneapolis experience fear, grief, and incredible acts of courage. In this episode of Mezzo, I share my own experiences living through the recent ICE operations in the Twin Cities, how they affected my friends, my faith, and my understanding of what it means to love our neighbors.
This isn't simply a discussion about politics. It's a reflection on Christian hope, peaceful resistance, constitutional rights, and the responsibility we have to care for one another during moments of crisis. I talk about community solidarity, fear, forgiveness, and why I believe hope is something we practice—even when it feels impossible.
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Chris—
This was your finest piece.
I listened carefully, and so much of it has stayed with me: the image of you Minnesotans pushing a stranger’s car out of the snow; your insistence that protest is an expression of love for a community, not hatred of ICE; your honest wrestling with fear, guilt, rest, forgiveness, and “hope as a moral effort”; and your challenge to Catholics to put the body of Christ to work through our own bodies.
Your account of imagining yourself in Alex Pretti’s place was especially powerful. I've felt this come to me as a prayer, too. I understood the fear beneath it in a deeply personal way. I am also a brown gay lawyer, and I recognized the exhausting awareness that our citizenship, education, and professional standing may not protect us from being judged first by the color of our skin or from violence.
What made the episode extraordinary was that you never allowed righteous anger to become dehumanization. You held together constitutional principle, personal vulnerability, Catholic faith, nonviolent resistance, and the painful demand of forgiveness. “Hope feels like grief” may be the line I carry with me longest.
I also noted the absence of the bishops and catholic clergy.
Thank you for making this.