The pastor of a Naperville church was among the hundreds of clergy members who gathered in Minneapolis this week to protest the actions of federal immigration agents in Minnesota.
The Rev. Kari Nicewander, pastor of First Congregational Church of Naperville, answered a call from a coalition of Minneapolis faith leaders asking for clergy to join them in a mass action in Minneapolis. Participants would be attending protests, patrolling neighborhoods and distributing food to immigrant families.
“What they said is, ‘When Selma happened, they put out a call for clergy,’ and they’re asking for clergy to come to Minneapolis,” Nicewander said.
Since December, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have descended on Minnesota as part of Operation Metro Surge, an immigration crackdown initially focused on Minneapolis and St. Paul but since widened to include all of the state. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has called it “the largest immigration operation ever carried out.”
Many residents have been outraged by the actions of the federal agents, with tensions flaring following the shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
On Friday, thousands of people took to the street despite subzero temperatures to protest ICE’s presence in Minnesota. Businesses closed their doors in response to a call for an economic blackout day by union and faith leaders.
Before Nicewander left Wednesday for Minneapolis, she told church congregants what she was doing.
Diane Diamond, a member of First Congregational Church of Naperville, said, “I was at the church council meeting and she said … ‘I left my sermon on my desk so that if I’m not back by Sunday, (the president of the church membership) can read it … I’m going to abide by the law, but they don’t seem to be paying attention to the law up there.”
Despite the safety concerns, Diamond said church members were pleased to see their pastor respond and want to stand up for immigrants.
First Congregational Church, where Nicewander has been pastor for six months, has a long history of activism going back to the abolition movement. Before she took over as pastor, Nicewander was deeply involved in affordable housing work and legislative advocacy in Connecticut, she said.
“But this particular situation feels, to be honest, a lot more surreal and powerful in terms of the number of people who are showing up,” she said. “But it’s so horrifying what is actually happening here that it’s more horrifying than most of the issues I’ve been grappling with throughout my career.”
Nicewander’s time in Minneapolis started with training in which they covered everything from patrolling neighborhoods looking for ICE agents to building coalitions with other groups. It was followed by an hour-long foot patrol in one of Minneapolis’ immigration corridors, braving the 7 degrees below zero temperature.
“What they did is they took a bus so 200 clergy (could do) the patrols. They took four different buses and then just dropped us off in different areas to patrol on foot,” Nicewander said.
She was buddied up with another faith leader, keeping an eye out for ICE agents and checking in on businesses.
“I went into a business owned by a Somali family, and we started talking to the young man who’s working there. His parents started the business. It’s a furniture store. But now they keep their doors locked and just let people in when they recognize them or see them first,” Nicewander said.
The young man told them he’s had a number of friends picked up by ICE agents.
“We asked if they’d had anybody come to their store yet. He said, ‘No, not yet, but it’s just a matter of time,’” Nicewander said. “A lot of people are really scared, and just having to sort of hide behind locked doors.”
While Nicewander did not come across any ICE agents, another group witnessed 12 of them quickly exit three vehicles and start “harassing” a pregnant woman. When the clergy showed up, they got back in their vehicles and left, she said.
“It’s just terrifying. And they’re so, so fast, just so fast,” Nicewander said. “But I was in the community with a lot of other clergy so it felt there was power in being with all of these clergy doing this work.”
On Friday, Nicewander spent three hours at a food distribution center for immigrant families organized by a local church.
“(T)he pastor (there) just started thinking about what he could do and just said, ‘OK, we can get food for 200 families so they don’t have to leave their home (and risk meeting ICE agents),” she said. “And the 200 families turned into 2,000 families. And then it kept growing and growing. The community response of just making it happen is incredible.”
The church is now delivering food to about 1,500 families a day, she said. On the day she was there, dozens of volunteers helped package fresh produce and hot meals, diapers and baby formula and then load everything onto trucks.
Some of the clergy volunteers also went to the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to protest. About 100 ended up being arrested, she said.
“I did have a lot of fear about doing that, and I ended up deciding not to go to the airport and get arrested,” Nicewander said. “There’s definitely a lot of fear around what sorts of choices we make to protect each other and while also protecting ourselves.”
Following the food distribution, Nicewander joined thousands of people at a rally at the Target Center arena in Minneapolis, where activists and faith leaders addressed the crowd. One message that stood out to her was from a rabbi who told attendees there were far more people in the state working for justice than were there working for ICE.
Nicewander said the experience taught her a lot about the power of organizing, and she’s ready to use those lessons to help build stronger coalitions with other faith leaders in the Chicago area.
“It’s time to be brave,” Nicewander said. “We can build community, we can protect our neighbors, but we need to take action now. And I would say part of that is plugging into the organizations that are already doing the work and finding out how we can use our resources to help those organizations to do the work that matters.”
cstein@chicagotribune.com