[Episcopal News Service] Fourteen members of the Diocese of Los Angeles were detained, the diocese said, in immigration enforcement raids late last week that sparked a weekend of intense protests and an escalating government crackdown after the Trump administration ordered the California National Guard to respond.
The immigration raids “wreaked havoc and terror throughout Los Angeles communities, targeting working-class, immigrant families at work, school and home,” the diocese said June 8 in an email newsletter supporting the 14 Episcopalians who were detained. “These actions, and the level of militarization involved, are unconscionable and we condemn them entirely.”
An interfaith vigil initially planned for the evening of June 8 was canceled due to the still-volatile scene in downtown Los Angeles.
Federal immigration agents detained at least 44 people in the initial raids on June 6, according to CNN, and about 300 National Guard members so far have been called in to help police contain the subsequent unrest, including around a federal building in downtown Los Angeles. Dozens of protesters have been arrested in clashes with police.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell blamed some of the protesters for creating a dangerous situation with their violent tactics, including throwing Molotov cocktails and setting cars on fire, though he also differentiated those acting violently with other protesters who have objected peacefully to the immigration raids.
“When I look at the people who are out there doing the violence, that’s not the people that we see during the day who are legitimately out there exercising their First Amendment rights to be able to express their feelings about the immigration enforcement issue,” McDonnell said.
Little is known about the diocesan members who were detained in the immigration raids. The diocese said they had been transferred to various detention centers in Southern California. The diocese, through its Sacred Resistance action group, also called for donations to help fund the detainees’ legal representation.
“Now is the time when our call to Sacred Resistance becomes clear and necessary,” the group, which advocates for immigrants’ rights, said in the diocesan email. “We stand on the side of the loving and liberating Jesus who calls us to be justice-seekers and peacemakers in the face of state violence and oppression.”
Los Angeles Bishop John Harvey Taylor condemned the raids in a Facebook post late June 6 that noted that the government appeared to have targeted immigrants working to support their families, not criminals. The raids “suggest our country is in for a dangerous escalation of the Trump regime’s cruel, nonsensical war on immigrant workers.”
In a follow-up post June 8, Taylor described the Trump administration’s actions as an “unjust use of state power against the people of God, especially immigrant workers seized from their places of honest work in our city and region.”
“Fourteen members of one of our Episcopal churches couldn’t be in church this morning on the Day of Pentecost. Their government ripped them from the arms of their families at home and the body of Christ at church,” Taylor said. “Our siblings in Christ are not criminals. They accepted offers of honest employment from United States enterprises, in defiance of a busted immigration system that politicians just won’t fix.”
– David Paulsen is a senior reporter and editor for Episcopal News Service based in Wisconsin. He can be reached at dpaulsen@episcopalchurch.org.