(RNS) — Minnesota is the latest flash point in the national immigration battle, where the human cost of unchecked federal force has become impossible to ignore. Since the second Trump administration’s mass deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, the agency has operated as a dangerous force within our society, using violence with alarming frequency and no accountability. Just days ago, we witnessed the tragic death of Renee Nicole Good, a community volunteer and mother of three, who was shot and killed by a federal agent while peacefully observing ICE activity. She is one of at least four people killed by ICE agents since the raids began, with at least seven others being injured. This is only one part of a broader human toll, as 2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in more than two decades. A grim truth of what happens when enforcement surges outpace oversight, care and accountability.
I spoke with Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is running to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate, this week for my podcast. She shared her perspective, saying: “It is horrific what is being done in the name of the federal government. It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever seen, and I think it’s what we expect from authoritarian regimes, you know, outside of the United States of America, and yet it is happening right here in our own backyards.”
I have been listening closely to and talking with multifaith and civic leaders on the ground in Minnesota. The word I hear most often is that they feel under “siege.”
Christian pastors and priests, Jewish rabbis, Muslim imams and leaders from many other faith traditions are showing up in public with their collars, stoles, kippahs or yarmulkes, turbans and other symbols of faith at the places where immigrants are being arrested and detained. They are making their presence known and standing alongside volunteers who are risking their own safety to bear witness at sites of ICE activity, including where Renee Good was killed while doing the same.
What we are seeing in Minnesota is secular and multifaith organizers working shoulder to shoulder, forming a single movement committed to protecting human dignity for all. This is happening across the country. Faith-based and other organizers are gathering at detention and deportation centers in cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland and throughout the Carolinas. Catholic bishops, Protestant pastors, rabbis, imams and other faith leaders are offering pastoral care to those being taken, while also making public, prophetic statements against the cruelty of mass deportation.
ICE deployments have surged in Minneapolis targeting migrants, while community whistleblower networks have formed to help warn and protect them. Many Minnesotans are responding to defend vulnerable families and their immigrant neighbors under attack. Like Peggy Flanagan said, “We have moved beyond the place of sternly worded letters, right?” And much of what we are seeing done is direct action, with many more working behind the scenes, accompanying immigrants to school, work and churches and providing groceries to people and families who are too afraid to leave their homes for fear they will never return.
Renee Good was unarmed in her car, observing ICE activity to warn immigrant neighbors, when she was shot by ICE. The news and videos of her shooting have been seen and watched by countless Americans, revealing yet another example of a broader pattern of excessive force against civilians under the current Trump administration.
Right after the killing of Renee Good, President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem publicly lied about the dead mother of three, before any investigations had occurred. They blamed Ms. Good for her own death and exonerated the ICE agent who shot her three times at close range. And now the federal government has denied Minnesota officials any role in the investigation, which has already caused several Department of Justice prosecutors to resign after they heard there would be no civil rights probe into her killing.
Minnesota has a proud history of immigrant welcome, from Hmong refugees to more recent arrivals. Peggy Flanagan even said so: “In Minnesota, we love and care for each other deeply.” Their history and values stand in stark contrast to the brutality of the Trump administration’s policies and practices in these ICE raids. The violence of ICE agents against immigrants and the rapid response of multifaith communities have both become national patterns.
There are still those who wonder whether there will be a final breaking point for Trump, and if a tragedy like the one in Minneapolis might finally matter. But there are no last straws. Trump’s lies, violence and cruel desire for unchecked power are relentless and pervasive. The response of faith communities and all people of conscience must be equally as relentless and pervasive.
Lt. Gov. Flanagan shared with me that returning each week to her Catholic parish reminds her that she is not alone and that this burden does not rest only upon her shoulders. That is something we all need to remember.
We are not alone. God is still God. What rests on our shoulders now is our faithfulness to the sovereignty of God and the teaching of Jesus. From my Christian tradition, what we are seeing in Minnesota looks like a Matthew 25 movement, answering Jesus’ call to serve and protect the most vulnerable. That is the work before us, and we will do that, no matter what this administration does.
(The Rev. Jim Wallis is Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair and director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice and is the author, most recently, of New York Times bestseller “The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.” He writes at the Substack God’s Politics with Jim Wallis, from which this column is reprinted with permission. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
