Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders gathered Monday to protest President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, which they said target the weakest and most vulnerable while doing little to protect the nation from terrorists.
Speaker after speaker told stories of students too afraid to enroll in college, of immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission cowering in their basements and of one such woman too afraid to ask for an order of protection against an allegedly abusive partner — perhaps aware that federal immigration agents earlier this month detained an transgender woman at a Texas courthouse after she had sought similar help.
The Rev. Chuck Dahm, of St. Pius V Roman Catholic Church in Pilsen, said that Trump’s proposed immigration ban and deportation policies have terrified families and that fear was rampant.
“This week, I had a woman come to me, fleeing the violence of her partner with her four children,” Dahm said. “And I put her up for the night in a special apartment that we have at our parish. She was afraid to go to court and seek an order of protection because of all the threats coming from the Trump administration.”
Religious leaders have been holding interfaith vigils since Trump’s election last fall, and they, and others, gathered Monday at the Downtown Islamic Center in anticipation of a revised Trump executive order on immigration. Trump has said his executive order, which could be finalized this week, is needed to protect the country from terrorists.
A draft of Trump’s revised ban reportedly singles out the same seven majority-Muslim countries as from his original executive order — Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. However, the Associated Press reported that green-card holders and dual citizens of the U.S. and any of those countries are exempt. The AP also reported that the working draft no longer singles out Syrian refugees for automatic rejection when officials process new visa applications.
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Dr. Zaher Sahloul of the Syrian American Medical Society said Trump’s policies tear at the fabric of the United States. He said the immigration policies create divisions, fear and hatred.
“Yes, these are dangerous policies,” Sahloul said. “We are expecting the next Muslim ban to cause more harm to our country. The image of our country has suffered.”
The Rev. Eric Biddy, of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Oak Park, said God calls upon religious leaders to protect the most vulnerable. He said that Jesus was a refugee, having fled the tyrannical king Herod.
“We are all children of God — Muslim, Jews and Christians, Americans, Syrians and Latin Americans. And nothing can stop us from standing together and loving each other,” Biddy said.
The Rev. Corey Brost, co-founder of the Children of Abraham Coalition, said the U.S. made mistakes in the 1930s when it turned away Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and in the 1940s with the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans.
Trump is on the “verge of making another profound national mistake, for which we will be apologizing in the future,” Brost said. “People of faith will not be part of this national mistake. We will not victimize the weak. We will not stigmatize our brothers and sisters who are Muslim. We will not tear apart families.”
The Rev. Brendan Curran, on staff at Dominican University in River Forest, said some students have stopped attending classes, while others have chosen not to enroll this semester because of the “national policies in this country.”
“We recognize that millions of our immigrant families are in very real danger today,” Curran said. “Mass deportations, Muslim registrations and internment may have seemed impossible before, but we are facing this true nightmare today.”