U.S. society will be “consumed” by the “fires of injustice” if Americans remain silent about federal plans to hold huge numbers of immigrants in warehouses across the country, Rabbi Kimberly Herzog Cohen said during a clergy press conference in Dallas last Friday.
The Clergy League for Emergency Action and Response in Dallas-Fort Worth, or CLEARDFW, and Faith Commons held the livestreamed briefing Jan. 23 to decry the Trump administration’s increasingly violent immigration enforcement tactics and to generate opposition to its plans to store 9,500 human beings in a 1 million-square-foot warehouse located south of Dallas in Hutchins, Texas.
Kimberly Herzog Cohen
The event happened just hours before federal agents in Minneapolis shot a peaceful protester to death in front of witnesses Saturday morning.
“We stand as inheritors of faith traditions that teach the commandment not to oppress the stranger, the most frequently repeated imperative,” Herzog Cohen said. “In the Hebrew Scripture, in Leviticus, we read the following: ‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.’”
And what could be more wrong than “terrorizing immigrant communities” and “packing human beings into warehouses in Hutchins, Texas, like Amazon Prime items?”
The groups’ call to action stems from a December report by The Washington Post that the administration is planning to turn seven large warehouses across the nation into holding pens for a total of about 80,000 people.
The newspaper later identified Social Circle, Ga., as one of the communities with a warehouse in which the Department of Homeland Security wants to store 9,000 human beings. The 5,000-resident town has vowed to fight the plan.
The report helped demonstrators understand why they were seeing the stockpiling of office equipment and furniture at the ICE field office in Dallas, Mara Richards Bim reported for Baptist News Global Jan. 9.
BNG was the first media outlet to identify the location of a planned warehouse in Texas.
“A well-placed anonymous source within the building confirmed to us the current field office will be used for Department of Homeland Security executives while a warehouse facility in Hutchins will be converted to warehouse 9,500 humans,” wrote Bim, a Clemons Fellow with BNG and justice and advocacy fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas.
Todd Lyons
“These warehouses across the country will fulfill the vision of ICE Acting Director Todd M. Lyons, who said in April the administration’s goal was to move immigrants as efficiently as Amazon moves packages: ‘Like Prime, but with human beings,’” Bim reported.
“Let that sink in,” she added.
“To understand just how massive and grossly inhumane this will be, consider this: The sites like the one coming to Hutchins will hold more people than the largest single-site jail in America, Cook County Jail in Illinois.”
But a major difference is that neither the city nor the warehouse has the capacity to humanely handle the basic needs of 10,000 people, said Carl Sherman, a Church of Christ minister, former city manager of Hutchins and a former member of the Texas House of Representatives.
“I can tell you that Hutchins does not have the infrastructure, does not have the water supply or the sewage infrastructure, to sustain and accommodate the more than doubling of its current population by 150%.”
Justice demands that people of faith stand up for immigrants as well as the rights of municipal governments to determine whether federal authorities incarcerate mass numbers of law-abiding immigrants within their jurisdictions, Sherman said. “Local leaders must be empowered to plan and approve projects in their communities. Local control is not a convenience. I believe it’s a God-given right.”
“Local control is not a convenience. I believe it’s a God-given right.”
“Justice demands that we speak up, justice demands that we honor God’s word, justice demands that we respect local control. God has endowed us with the Holy Spirit to have a conscience to stand up when we know inhumanity is being practiced,” he said.
Carl Sherman
Sherman urged all Americans to avoid complacency in the face of the administration’s plans for Hutchins and other sites across the nation: “If we sit back and do nothing, if we think it can’t happen where you live, if you just can’t imagine that it would ever happen in your hometown, your small town could be the next city, the next community that faces this.”
The details of ICE’s Hutchins project are horrific, said George Mason, president of Faith Commons and senior pastor emeritus at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
The plan is to remove the roof of the giant warehouse in order to lower cages into the facility similar to those seen at Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, he explained.
“There is no preparation adequate for the sanitation and health concerns yet for that place. They’re going to then put the roof back on and use this as a holding facility. This is inhumane. That is not in accordance with American values and certainly not with spiritual values.”
George Mason
Mason joined other leaders in pleading with Americans to join the movement opposed to the Trump administration’s brutal immigration enforcement tactics, including by joining local vigils at ICE facilities like the one in Dallas from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. every Monday.
“That’s another thing you can do to be present,” he said. “Please remember that you have never had more opportunity to use your voice than in this moment because of technology. You have a camera. Film something, post something, say something. You can use your social media outlets to let your voice be heard.”
Mason also urged people of faith to advocate for the clergy in their congregations. “They are often hesitant to speak because of diverse political opinions in the pews. We believe this is a moral imperative that transcends partisan politics, but they need to hear the support of people who will say to them from the pew, ‘Speak we want to hear what you have to say.’”
Rabbi Nancy Kasten, chief relationship officer with Faith Commons, cited the courage of Bim and fellow CLEARDFW member T.J. Fitzgerald of First Unitarian Church of Dallas, in joining ICE protests in Minneapolis.
“With all the terror and horrible things and fear that’s being perpetrated in our communities and our country, and even in our homes and our streets, when we come together with people who share our commitment to protecting each other and to loving each other, that’s what gives us the strength to do what needs to be done,” she said.
Related articles:
Trump preparing to warehouse immigrants like cargo | Opinion by Mara Richards Bim
Update on proposed human warehouse in Texas | Opinion by Mara Richards Bim