CHICAGO (OSV News) — Amid ongoing federal immigration enforcement operations and protests in Chicago, Catholic faithful and clergy there are trying to both uphold the human dignity of affected immigrants and protect their rights to worship and receive the sacraments.
In a statement sent to OSV News Oct. 14, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago said keeping the country safe and being mindful of human dignity “are not mutually exclusive.”
“In fact, one cannot exist without the other,” he said.
The cardinal decried what he called “unnecessarily aggressive tactics” of federal agents whom he said have overreached in their task of apprehending people, “and which seem to be intended to terrorize and cause chaos, rather than fulfilling the noble calling of law enforcement.” He said law enforcement should not be put in this position.
“Not only do they risk violating the dignity of others but such activity is beneath their own dignity,” Cardinal Cupich said.
Recent instances highlight issues
Local media reported that residents in Rogers Park, a Northside neighborhood surrounding St. Jerome Church, took action to protect Catholic parishioners’ ability to enter and leave the church for Sunday Mass Oct. 12, forming a human chain, after learning of the presence of alleged federal immigration agents outside St. Jerome during the 8 a.m. Mass in Spanish.
Video footage from a Spanish-language news outlet Telemundo Chicago showed a priest warning Mass-goers to be very careful leaving the church. Various news outlets showed the church’s outdoor signage had its Mass times covered.
A day earlier, federal agents did not allow priests, who led a Eucharistic procession in Chicago’s near-western suburbs to an immigration processing facility in Broadview, to give holy Communion to Catholics detained there. When they arrived and told Illinois state troopers their plan, the troopers checked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who said they could not give it to detainees.
Priests told various local media they had told ICE days in advance about the Eucharistic procession and distribution of holy Communion planned for Oct. 11.
The priests instead gave the Eucharist, which Catholics hold to be Jesus Christ in his body, blood, soul and divinity, to the 1,000 faithful who joined the procession. Afterward, all left the area.
Across the U.S., Christians account for approximately 80% of all of those at risk of Trump’s mass deportation effort, with the single largest group of affected Christians being Catholics, according to a joint Catholic-Evangelical report published by World Relief. The report found one in six Catholics (18%) are either vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is.
According to Pew Research Center data released in June, more than four out of 10 Catholics in the U.S. are immigrants (29%) or the children of immigrants (14%); eight out of 10 Hispanic Catholics are either born outside the U.S. (58%) or are the children of immigrants (22%).
Confrontations between protestors and ICE
The Broadview processing center has been a flashpoint for chaotic protests of the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” against immigrants in the Chicago area who lack legal authorization to live in the U.S. Tense confrontations between protestors and ICE agents have taken place at the ICE holding facility in Broadview, just 12.5 miles west of downtown Chicago, since mid-September.
On Oct. 9, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis placed a temporary restraining order on federal agents’ use of tear gas, pepper spray and deterrents against the protesters.
A Chicago-area Dominican priest, who attended the hearing, expressed relief for the two-week reprieve, calling it “an absolutely courageous move by a federal judge.”
Dominican Father Brendan Curran, promoter of peace and justice for his order in the U.S. and Canada, told OSV News he is speaking as a witness in the case’s next court hearing.
“I have witnessed people abusing the law as federal agents, hitting people — tear gas is dropped right around me, out at Broadview, out at Pershing and Kedzie. It dropped right in front of my car,” Father Curran said.
Multiple Chicago-area, Illinois state media groups and a national media union, as well as a Presbyterian pastor and other individuals, lodged a freedom of speech complaint Oct. 6 against the Trump administration after the plaintiffs reported multiple incidents of getting hit by various riot deterrents used by armed ICE officers during the protests.
Among the videos to be submitted to the court is one showing Presbyterian Pastor David Black being struck on the side of the head in a shower of pepper balls fired from federal agents standing atop the Broadview facility’s roof Sept. 19.
The First Presbyterian Church of Chicago pastor said in an Instagram post that went viral Oct. 8 that he told ICE agents moments before being struck that “there was still time to repent, believe the Good News, and turn from their wicked ways.”
Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a lengthy post on X that the same video showed “agitators were blocking an ICE vehicle from leaving the federal facility — impeding operations.” She said these actions put people at risk.
“If you are obstructing law enforcement you can expect to be met with force,” she said.
Homeland Security has claimed that, as of Oct. 9, ICE agents have experienced a 1,000% increase in assaults against them, as well as doxxing (publishing private information online) and threats to their families online. DHS also reported Oct. 3 more than 1,000 arrests of immigrants it said lacked authorization to live and work in the U.S. in Illinois.
However, Amanda Tovar said her video supplemented footage of this incident by showing what took place from a different angle, showing two out of three masked agents, both wearing camouflage, firing down in Pastor Black’s direction from their rooftop position.
Tovar, a special education teacher from nearby Forest Park, told OSV News her footage “clearly shows” the pastor was unarmed, “not being threatening” and the agents were not under attack.
Tovar said she herself was injured when she was struck by a “flash-bang” grenade (designed to disorient with its bright flash and sparks) on the chest “near the heart” later that day. She said she was hit with multiple pepper balls in the “really chaotic scene.”
“So I really got injured in that and I still have bruising … even from weeks ago. That’s how bad it was,” said Tovar.
At Pershing Road and Kedzie Avenue, an intersection inside an area that has become a hotspot for ICE arrests in Chicago, a federal agent fired multiple shots Oct. 4 that injured a woman, Marimar Martinez who was treated for gunshot wounds and released. DHS claimed that Martinez deliberately rammed a Customs and Border Patrol vehicle; her attorney told the judge he had body-camera footage from an agent showing a CBP officer got out of the government vehicle and yelled, “Do something (expletive),” before shooting Martinez multiple times.
Father Curran told OSV News he got caught in the protest following the shooting on his way to his rectory after celebrating Mass elsewhere. The priest said he wanted to help cool things down, but the ICE agents “did not look like they wanted me around.” Given that, and the tear gas in the air, the priest said he did not get out of his car.
Prayer groups also affected
Father Curran is part of a prayer group that has gone to the Broadview facility every Friday morning for more than 18 years. He said the prayer vigils had been peaceful and without incident all those years — but recently he had to stop taking student groups there, because it had become dangerous. Father Curran said the behavior he saw in September from federal agents was “just dreadful.”
Father Curran described “intimidation, pushing people, hurling these things off the building.”
“There’s snipers on both corners of the building,” he said.
Father Curran said he hoped Judge Ellis’ order would mean “there is someone supervising this kind of abusive action that has been out of control for a month.”
Margie Rudnik, a Lay Associate of the Sisters of Mercy who coordinates a weekly rosary for detained migrants, told OSV News that their prayer group that arrives at about 7:15 a.m. near the Broadview facility every Friday morning to pray, is not as affected by the chaos that has ensued at the protests. Rupdnik said for safety, they have purposely moved to a far corner about a block away.
“Before … we could kind of see between the fencing, the detainees being loaded into the vans,” she told OSV News. “And then as the vans drove away, we would hold up our rosaries. And we have a picture and a flag of Our Lady of Guadalupe ,and we would hold those up in the hopes that the people on the buses would understand that we were praying for them. But now we’ve not been able to do any of that.”
Rudnik said she has not “seen a van” in weeks and she said she believes the detainees are likely moved very early in the morning.
She and Father Curran said the foremost prayer is for meaningful immigration reform.
But Father Curran also said his presence at the prayer site is also as a representative for Catholics whose community is “absolutely terrorized” — to the point that religious education has been suspended, people do not go to church, nor leave home, even for food.
“This is real,” he said.
Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Chicago. OSV News national news editor Peter Jesserer Smith contributed to this report.
