(RNS) — Last October, the Rev. Jorge Bautista was standing at the one-road entrance to a California military base, protesting the Trump administration’s deportation efforts, when he saw a masked federal agent approach, weapon raised. Moments later, the agent fired a pepper round from just a few feet away that struck Bautista in the face, engulfing the pastor’s head and neck in a plume of acrid yellow powder. Bloody and breathless, Bautista said he feared he could asphyxiate and die.
Today, the Oakland pastor says his injuries have healed, but the incident has left him with psychological trauma. On Jan. 27, he took legal action, filing a federal tort claim against the federal government, seeking $5 million in damages.
“Reverend Bautista was, by all accounts, not ‘disorderly,’ not ‘violent,’” EmilyRose Johns, his attorney, said in an interview with Religion News Service. “He was standing peacefully, unmoved, holding a sign.”
“There has to be accountability,” said Bautista in explaining why he is taking legal action.
Asked about the filing, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t address Bautista’s specific claims but said protesters were obstructing law enforcement.
“The First Amendment protects speech and peaceful assembly – not rioting,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
A pastor at College Heights Church in San Mateo, Bautista said he joined dozens of religious leaders and activists at the Oct. 23 demonstration to protest the arrival of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Coast Guard Island, a base near Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. When federal agents began driving through the crowd, Bautista said he moved closer. “I found myself in front of one of the vehicles, not intending to block it, but to help calm the situation,” he said, insisting the intent of the vigil was “never to obstruct the road.”
It’s at least the second time in the past year that a pastor has taken legal action against federal immigration enforcement agents. In October, a Presbyterian pastor in Chicago, the Rev. David Black, joined a sweeping federal lawsuit challenging the administration’s response to protests after DHS agents were filmed shooting Black in the head with pepper rounds. In response, a U.S. district court judge temporarily blocked federal agents in northern Illinois from using certain crowd-control measures against protesters. The judge extended the order as other protesters — including other faith leaders — alleged that CPB officials had already violated the ban.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Bautista grew up on the west side of San Jose. As a young man, he came to faith through a graffiti outreach program in 1998 and spent the next decade ministering to gang members in the Bay Area and Chicago. After completing seminary in 2015, he served as pastor at the Congregational Church of San Mateo, where he led a Spanish-language service for congregants until 2023. Bautista now pastors at College Heights Church, a small United Church of Christ congregation in San Mateo.
“Throughout my faith journey, one thing that’s been consistent is that spirit of being in the streets,” Bautista said. “There’s something about being out there that drives me.”
Before filing the $5 million claim, Bautista submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the identity of the federal agent who shot him with a pepper round. While awaiting a response, Bautista and Johns took the first step toward a federal lawsuit by filing the tort claim. By law, if the claim is not settled or denied within six months, the claimant can file suit in U.S. District Court, which is what Johns said she intends to do. She also intends to sue the federal agent individually, as she alleges the agent used excessive force and violated Bautista’s constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.
In the letter addressed to the District Court Litigation Division, Johns also claimed that the incident appears to violate CBP’s own use-of-force policy, which allows the use of less-than-lethal force but only when “empty-hand techniques” are insufficient to “control disorderly or violent subjects.”
“I think that it is important for the public to know the man who felt that it was justified and appropriate to shoot a peaceful clergyman in the face with a less-lethal munition,” Johns said. She noted that Bautista was dressed in a uniform “clearly identifying him” as clergy.
In a written statement to RNS, a DHS spokesperson described the protest as unruly, one where “a large group of individuals swarmed, attacked, and refused to move out of the way of official vehicles entering the base in an effort to obstruct law enforcement, a federal crime. Law enforcement provided ample notice to these individuals to clear the street and used appropriate measures to clear the area for the safety of law enforcement.”
Back in October, House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a similar defense when asked by RNS about officers’ clashes with clergy, including Bautista. “Religious freedom does not extend and give you the right to get in the face of an ICE officer and assault them, if indeed that was what happened there,” said Johnson, a Southern Baptist. He went on to describe federal agents’ approach as “measured.”
“Obviously, Mike Johnson has no idea what it is to be a Black or brown person in this country who has had to resist people trying to murder them,” Bautista said.
Watching the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis these last few weeks, Bautista said he has been heartened to see how clergy and other community members are organizing to resist ICE. At the same time, Bautista acknowledged, the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by DHS agents have made him reflect, painfully, on his own experience. He sees himself in Pretti, the nurse who was assisting a woman knocked to the ground by federal agents before he was killed.
“Alex did what any other human would have done,” Bautista said. “Basically, that could have been me.”
The Bay Area has yet to experience the kind of federal surge seen in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Still, peaceful protests continue, many led by clergy: In December, 42 faith leaders were arrested after chaining themselves to the ICE headquarters in downtown San Francisco.
Bautista, for his part, has not participated in a protest since October. “I’ll admit, I think getting shot in the face like that was so traumatic that I wanted to hide for a while,” he said. In time, though, he envisions there will be a moment “to put my body on the line again.”
What would he do should he win a $5 million judgment? “It just seems unreal to me to have that much money,” he said. For now, he sees the lawsuit as a form of contribution. “Because things are happening so fast, we’ve got to continue to tell stories of everything that happened, from any kind of assault,” he said. “This is one way of doing that.”
