More than 100 rabbis and cantors led a mass protest outside the Washington, D.C., headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Feb. 11 to demand the humane treatment of immigrants and to call for respect for human rights and dignity.
The action was the largest gathering ever of Jewish clergy protesting ICE brutality. It featured participation from a coalition of more than 60 Jewish organizations, according to organizers T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights and Bend the Arc Jewish Action.
“We are watching ICE commit heinous acts of violence in our communities,” said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who emceed the “Jews Against ICE” demonstration.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs
“Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, children, people exercising their First Amendment rights, anyone being caught up in their mandate of cruelty and dehumanization. As Jews, we witness these horrors and are emboldened by our Jewish values to confront them, resist them and commit to building a better world.”
Protesters carried signs with slogans such as “resisting tyranny since Pharaoh” and “looking more like Nazi Germany every day,” USA Today reported.
“God takes the side of the gerim — the immigrants and sojourners. And God demands that we do the same.”
“Let us be clear: ICE is an affront to the Torah. ICE is an affront to God,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah, told demonstrators. “God takes the side of the gerim — the immigrants and sojourners. And God demands that we do the same.”
The Jewish Alliance organized a similar demonstration in Minneapolis, and the Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action led a corresponding event in Boston. Both were intended to highlight corporate involvement in the administration’s immigration apparatus.
Jamie Beran
“As Jews against ICE, we know that ICE is held up by pillars of support. Pillars such as corporations who profit from and enable the detention and deportation machine,” said Jamie Beran, CEO of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action.
As an example, organizers cited Signature Aviation, “a corporation that provides fuel and logistical support for ICE detainee transport flights throughout the United States.”
Other companies participate more directly in the dehumanization of immigrants by ICE and other federal agencies, Beran said.
“When racism and xenophobia are made into policy, and when corporations raise their hand to participate, they choose to become the infrastructure for ICE,” she said. “These corporations are actively profiting from the kidnapping, caging, deporting and killing of our neighbors.”
“From Nazi Germany to the Jim Crow era, corporations have made the cruelty of authoritarianism possible.”
That reality is born out in history, she added. “Trump and ICE can’t do their work alone. From Nazi Germany to the Jim Crow era, corporations have made the cruelty of authoritarianism possible.”
The demonstrations are historic in that they show Jewish people from across the political spectrum are agreed their faith demands humane treatment of the stranger.
“Grounded in core Jewish values, this protest makes clear that there is broad Jewish communal consensus rejecting policies that dehumanize our neighbors,” T’ruh explained.
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