CLERGY PROTESTING U.S. IMMIGRATION POLICIES ARRESTED AT U.S.-MEXICO BORDER

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

After a tense standoff with officials at the U.S.-Mexico border on
Monday (Dec. 10), at least 30 American clergy were taken into custody
over the objections of demonstrators, who had come to protest the
treatment of Central American asylum-seekers and to decry the extension
of a border wall and the militarization of the border.

Priests, pastors, imams and rabbis knelt at the border south of San
Diego in front of a row of U.S. Border Patrol agents clad in riot gear.
Organizers said 30 faith leaders were arrested, but a U.S. Customs and
Border Protection official put the number at 32.

CBP said most were charged with failing to comply with directions
from federal officials and then released, but one was charged with
assaulting or resisting an agent — a charge the protesters already
dispute.

The “Love Knows No Borders” demonstration was organized by the
American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that assembled
religious leaders from across the faith spectrum for the event.
Participants said it was meant to express frustration about several
border-related issues at once.

“It was about the militarization of the border, about the border wall
itself and about calling for the rights of the migrant — particularly
the migrant caravan,” said Lucy Duncan, an organizer and outreach
director for the AFSC who was at the protest and was among those
arrested.

“There were people there from all across the country from all faith
traditions risking arrest and making a statement, saying this is not
what our country stands for, this is not what our sacred traditions
teach,” said the Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chair of the progressive,
faith-rooted activist group the Poor People’s Campaign. Theoharis
participated in the demonstration but was not detained.

Duncan said AFSC had the idea for the protest after learning that
authorities planned to close Friendship Park, a well-guarded stretch of
the border where friends and family members on both sides commonly
gather to talk through the fence and where religious groups often hold joint worship services.

In addition to Theoharis and Duncan, participants included United
Methodist Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño; the Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, head
of the Unitarian Universalist Association; the Rev. Traci Blackmon, a
pastor in Ferguson, Mo., and head of the United Church of Christ’s
Justice and Local Church Ministries; the Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow, former
moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA); Omar Suleiman, an imam and
adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas; and Rabbi
Brant Rosen, who serves on the rabbinical council of Jewish Voice for
Peace. It could not be determined immediately whether they were among
those arrested.

[Editor’s Note: Article written by Jack Jenkins and originally published at Religious News Service]