The surge in faith-based protests against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies has drawn from both spontaneous activism and the reemergence of networks of religious groups, according to a panel of journalists covering the movement.
NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose joined Religion News Service reporters Jack Jenkins and Yonat Shimron for a webinar discussion on “The Rise of the Religious Left.” The session was moderated by RNS Events Host Niala Boodhoo.
The existence of organized faith-based resistance to the Trump administration’s often-violent deportation actions burst into public consciousness during high-profile protests earlier this year in Chicago and Minneapolis. Images of clergy doused with pepper spray and tear gas, shot with pepper ball bullets and being arrested became commonplace in January and February. About 100 clergy were arrested in one day in Minneapolis alone in January.
People of faith also were among those who organized campaigns to feed and provide assistance to immigrants and refugees afraid to leave their homes as ICE officers flooded local communities.
Jack Jenkins at RNA conference in Bethesda, Maryland. March 16, 2023. (Photo by Kit Doyle)
The current iteration of the movement can be traced in part to Inauguration Day 2025 when Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., gave a sermon imploring Trump to consider the struggles of LGBTQ children and undocumented immigrants during his presidency, Jenkins said. Budde “made clear very quickly that there was going to be religious pushback to several parts of his agenda.”
Also, elements of the religious left mobilized to protest Israel’s war in Gaza following the October 2023 Hamas attack against Israel, he said. “You could even draw all the way back to Trump’s first term where there was another rise of a faith-led activism and protests.”
In 2025, the movement also was energized when, a day after taking office, Trump rescinded the longstanding policy prohibiting immigration enforcement raids at sensitive locations such as houses of worship, schools and hospitals, Shimron explained.
“It put a lot of the religious congregations on alert that the government might be coming after them,” she said. It also kicked off a round of trainings “to help clergy understand what to do, who can they allow on to their property and what’s the difference between a private space and a public space. I would say that first action shook up a lot of clergy and put them on notice that the administration was going to go after them.”
But DeRose pushed the timeline for an activist religious left decades into the past, citing the Los Angeles-area Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, or CLUE, as an example.
Jason DeRose
“They have existed for more than 30 years, and when they needed to come together, they had these pre-existing relationships, … these long standing networks of people who have worked together, clergy from all parts of the religious spectrum,” he said.
That organization and others have reached across differences in focus to unite against immigration, DeRose said.
Such groups have “longstanding relationships, longstanding networks of people who have worked together with clergy from all parts of the religious spectrum, including … some who disagree on some issues, say around abortion rights, but maybe on unionizing issues and labor issues might be willing to work together.”
A history of cooperation between organizations like CLUE aided the vigils and protests in Minneapolis, he said.
And elements of what is being termed the “religious left” also may be found in the Civil Rights and Abolition movements, Jenkins said.
But the modern movement’s rapid and organized response to the federal government’s targeting of Minneapolis and other cities suggests it has achieved “a kind of perfection” in protest strategies, he added.
Yonat Shimron
Jenkins recalled witnessing text chains and roving patrol operations established to report on the movement of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities in Minneapolis, and having volunteers on hand to document raids in local communities. Some churches hosted training on how to respond to ICE or stage vigils.
There also has been a “mutual aid approach — let’s get groceries to people who can’t get to the grocery store,” DeRose added. “You’ve got vigils like every Tuesday in front of the federal building here in L.A. It’s a Mothers of the Disappeared vigil that takes place.”
Trump’s deportation campaign and his opening the way for raids in houses of worship also have united Jewish Americans, Shimron said.
“A core piece of the Jewish experience in the U.S. — and at a time when the Jewish community is very divided over Israel — immigration is one issue that clergy, rabbis across the board can really unite around,” she said. “Almost every American Jew has a parent or a grandparent or a great grandparent who came to the U.S. as an immigrant. So, it’s an issue that really resonates with rabbis.”