FAITH LEADERS AND BAY AREA RESIDENTS walked between federal immigration centers in San Francisco on Thursday as a part of continued protests against the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.
Nonprofit civil rights organization Faith in Action East Bay, based in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, organized the afternoon march to denounce what they see as illegal and immoral racial profiling, separation of families, and violation of detention rights. They advocated for the departure of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agents from the Bay Area.
Marchers gathered outside the federal San Francisco Immigration Court before walking half a mile to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services building.
The steady beat of a drum played while the group continuously sang a hymn that switched between the names of different deities, demonstrating the presence of several faith groups.
Rabbi Allan Berkowitz helped organize the walk and spoke about what he believes is a gross violation of human rights and dignity.
“Every single faith tradition represented today carries values and messages that people matter,” said Berkowitz. “What unites us is the commitment to preserve the sanctity of every human being.”
Berkowitz likened the actions of today’s clergy against President Donald Trump’s administration as a similar action by previous faith leaders, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
“Very often it’s clergy who show the moral courage and show the moral leadership to stand up to dictators and stand up to oppression,” said Berkowitz.
After arriving outside of the USCIS building, the group set up a vigil across the street. Organizers and San Francisco police shut down half the street to accommodate the large crowd.
The Rev. Deborah Lee, co-executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, denounced the activities going on within the federal building.
“Today, this is a place of arrest, of kidnappings, family separation. This is a point of captivity, a point of no return into the web of detention centers, exile and deportation, sometimes to third-party countries,” said Lee.
Growing numbers of detainees
The Migration Policy Institute, an independent nonprofit that tracks immigration data and policies, estimated over 60,000 people were being detained by the Trump administration as of late August. In comparison, there were nearly 40,000 people detained when former President Joe Biden left office in January.
According to the Deportation Data Project, a team made up of professors and students across the University of California system, over 2,000 individuals in the San Francisco area alone have been detained by ICE since the start of the Trump administration.
The project noted, however, they do not expect new data to be released during the government shutdown, potentially drastically undercounting the number of detentions.
The Rev. Katie Choy-Wong spoke to the crowd about her grandparents’ experiences as undocumented Chinese migrants who faced prejudice and bias when arriving to the Bay Area. She offered a prayer to all people involved in the immigration enforcement system, including the officials, in a hope their minds would change.
“Help us to support our brothers and sisters being detained, deported, dehumanized, demoralized, not only support them in our prayers, but in a tangible way,” said Choy-Wong. “We pray that (government officials) look into their own conscience. We pray, oh God, that they treat people with respect, decency and nonviolence. We pray that they use their capacity to fight injustice from within.”
When asked whether he had glimmers of hope for the future, Berkowitz said the results of Tuesday’s elections in favor of Democratic policies was something that gave him hope.
“I think Tuesday was a sign, a reminder that there is reason to hope and that there are good people out there, and there are people taking a stand and saying, ‘We can do better, and we must do better as a society,’” said Berkowitz.