United Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon of United Church of Rogers Park, Ill., was violently arrested along with eight others at a peaceful protest at the Broadview ICE facility this morning.
Kardon was part of a clergy group that was to lead a worship service outside the Chicago facility. In advance of the service, Kardon and others stood peacefully in the street shouting “Who do you serve? Who do you protect?” while Illinois State Police charged in.
In a video of the moment captured by local press, Kardon can be heard saying, “What you’re doing is wrong. God stop them.”
Kardon has never been arrested before. She said she was beaten with a baton while she prayed and was then dragged from the group and handcuffed. She urged those who watch the video with these words: “I hope if anyone sees this video and is disturbed by it, what they think about is that if they are willing to do that to a clergy in broad daylight, imagine what they are doing to detainees in the dark. We have to end ICE’s kidnapping and detentions. We must remove them from our communities or this violence will continue.”
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I was in Chicago this week covering the U.S. government’s assault on the city. Something not receiving enough attention is how Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker — in an effort to keep the National Guard out of the state — has given wide latitude to the Illinois State Police and local law enforcement to quell protests.
I spoke with a United Methodist parishioner, Brian Straw, who expressed his shock at what was happening in his city. Kardon had baptized his daughter years ago and the images of her arrest were deeply unsettling for him.
Here’s what he told me:
I’ve watched friends who are with the local press arrested for exercising their right to document what is happening. I’ve watched friends who are protesters arrested for exercising their rights to assemble and speak freely. I’ve watched clergy arrested for exercising their freedom of religion. I’ve been teargassed now, for the first time, and shot with baton rounds.
It’s truly difficult watching all these things I’ve seen in dystopian movies but never imagined I’d be watching my own country [do] to me and to those I love. And it’s important to remember what is happening to us and others protesting — we’re out there protesting because much worse things are happening to our brothers and sisters.
We live in a country where children are being zip-tied and shoved into the backs of vans, where mothers going to pick up their kids from school are being forcibly pulled out of their cars. We live in a county now where people are being disappeared from the streets and people are afraid to go to church and to school and to work. That isn’t a vision of America anyone should support. We live in a world where so many people refuse to see the humanity of the people around them, and that’s truly terrifying.
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I saw firsthand the might of the Illinois State Police as they donned riot gear last week and pushed protesters back. What I didn’t know then but have a better understanding of now is how the tension between the various police forces is playing out in Chicago.
While the governor has kept the federalized National Guard out of the city, to do so has required his own State Police to inflict harm on peaceful protesters.
Time and again as I stood at the Broadview facility this week, protesters called out to the State Police to stop the harm they are doing by protecting the lawlessness ICE is inflicting. The State Police are now complicit in what is happening in Chicago.
This tension faced by local and state law enforcement — the tension between protecting those who reside within its local and state borders even if it means protecting them from the federal government — is one that is coming to a head in Chicago.
Just as I was about to submit this article for publication, I heard from another United Methodist Pastor, Jonathan Grace of Urban Village Church in Chicago. He arrived at the Broadview facility just as the Illinois State Police were arresting more protesters.
It seems that, at least for now, State Police will continue to protect the lawless ICE agents rather than their own citizens.
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and is the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas. She is a spiritual director and a recent Master of Divinity degree graduate from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.
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