A faithful call to abolish ICE

(RNS) — In less than a week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has mercilessly taken two more lives.

Neither man appeared to have been the “intended target” of the operations that took their lives, according to news reports. But I would argue they were. Both were brown men. Both were immigrants. And the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies have intended to target immigrants of color all along.

Last week, after the killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, the Department of Homeland Security said the victim was targeted because he “resembled” the person they were seeking. And for an operation that uses shameless racial profiling, of course he did, because he was brown. These tragic killings confirm that in the United States, all immigrants of color, regardless of legal status, are in imminent danger.

Araujo, 52, was from Mexico, but had been calling the U.S. home for 35 years, and his family told The New York Times he was likely months away from receiving a work permit. He worked as a homebuilder, supported his family, and on July 7, he was driving members of his construction crew to work when he was racially profiled and killed by ICE. His eldest son, Ronaldo Salgado, spoke through tears about the father taken from him and his siblings, and the husband his mother will not see again.

ICE officials claim Araujo “weaponized” his van and tried to ram an ICE vehicle, the same justification they tried to use for Renée Good’s killing. Of course, this time there is less evidence, as no civilians were present on the street and none of the officers had the body cameras they were supposed to wear, according to U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia. 

Days later, on Monday (July 13), ICE agents shot and killed 25-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine. Guerrero was a Colombian immigrant with work authorization and a Social Security number who regularly complied with immigration authorities as he sought asylum. He was working two jobs to support his family, including a 3-year-old daughter who is now left without her father. 

Guerrero’s dad described a son with “a lot of dreams to achieve,” and asked the question all these grieving families are left with: “He loved his family so much. I don’t know why they did this to him.”

In similar efforts to justify ICE agents’ reckless actions, DHS said Guerrero tried to flee during a traffic stop, and “fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”

Although police officers are trained to preserve life whenever possible, this shouldn’t be shocking since training for ICE officers was reportedly diminished last year (ICE argues the training programming was instead “accelerated”). This is now a multibillion-dollar army that seems to have few legal bounds, is basically untrained and is armed to kill. They are nothing but bounty hunters who relish the unaccountable force they are able to use.

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s deportation crackdown, at least 23 people have been fired at and six people have been killed by federal agents. Nearly all of these fatal incidents involved agents firing at people in vehicles.

Meanwhile, ICE detained roughly 10,000 people over five days at the end of June — an average of about 2,000 arrests every day. After the recent fatal car shootings, DHS ordered ICE to halt most vehicle stops. But one day later, Trump rescinded the order and took to Truth Social to say, “The Radical Left Democrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch.”

The Trump administration continues to argue that its mass deportation campaign targets violent criminals, but only about 3% of the individuals detained had violent felony convictions. The stories of ICE subjecting our innocent neighbors to violence and injury are beyond counting now, as the number of immigrants kidnapped off the streets and taken to detention centers without lawful process, by masked and armed agents with no uniforms or badges, also grows. Hundreds of thousands of families are left to wonder if their loved ones are alive, dead, or deported.

How is it that ICE can do this to Ruben Ray Martinez in South Padre Island, Texas, and Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez near Chicago, to Good and Pretti in Minneapolis as they tried to protect their neighbors, and now to Araujo in Houston and Guerrero and Biddeford, without repercussions or pause? Even after the killings, Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, continues to enthusiastically push mass deportation with huge numerical goals.

Every one of these victims was our neighbor. Many of the future targets of these mass deportation efforts are also our neighbors. Many serve our communities or were part of our congregations. They were people who had friends, families and dreams in this country.

The Bible and Jesus call us to love and protect our neighbors, especially “the stranger” among us. Today, more than ever, that calling should also become a public policy demand from the faith community.

As people of faith, we must call for the abolition of this ICE army, which has grown beyond legal accountability or moral control. ICE is now rotten to the core and cannot be reformed or saved.

Every nation has the responsibility to maintain and enforce immigration laws and procedures. But it should be abundantly clear that those laws cannot be entrusted to an army that is corrupt and violent beyond redemption. The massive human failure of Trump’s immigration policy should be a wake-up call to millions of Americans that our nation needs a new set of immigration laws that are safe, fair, humane, compassionate and just. 

As people of faith, we will engage in deep and neighborly solidarity with our immigrant neighbors, many of whom are members of our faith communities. We will accompany our neighbors through this time of great trial and much suffering, offering the support and protection that they need. We will publicly protest ICE and warn our neighbors about attacks against them. We will offer our non-violent resistance to an unlawful and violent army.

Now, ICE could seek to intimidate by appearing at polling places or targeting communities exercising their constitutional rights. We will stand with those being threatened and defend the integrity of our democracy. We will not be silent in the face of fear. And we will pray and act for the abolition of ICE, a national disgrace that violates the God-given dignity of every person and our religious conscience.

(The Rev. Jim Wallis is Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair and director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice and is the author, most recently, of “The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.” A version of this commentary appeared on the Substack God’s Politics with Jim Wallis. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)