Rev. David Black, who has since joined a lawsuit against the administration “alleging violations of the First and Fourth Amendments,” says he protests to let immigrants know “that they are not alone”
Rev. David Black, a minister in the Presbyterian Church, told Religion News Service that his arms had been raised in peaceful prayer outside an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois, last month when federal agents positioned on the roof of the building suddenly opened fire on him – and then laughed about it.
“… when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows,” Religion News Service reports. “One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire. ‘We could hear them laughing,’ Black said.”
Reverend David Black, other faith leaders, journalists, and protestors have joined a class action lawsuit alleging ICE violated their First Amendment rights during protests outside a detention center.The brutality of this regime is on full display.
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) 2025-10-08T18:33:06.120827Z
Following the deployment of chemical weapons against the faith leader, the administration then rubbed salt into the wound by going personal and attacking Rev. Black’s credentials. Tricia McLaughlin, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, used totally unnecessary quotation marks when referring to Rev. Black as a pastor, observers noted. “Black is, in fact, a pastor and was ordained in the largest Presbyterian denomination in the country,” noted Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, vice president of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance.
Despite the administration issuing an executive order in February claiming it would “not tolerate anti-Christian weaponization of government,” Rev. Black has not been the only faith leader to have been physically attacked by federal agents during the past several weeks. The Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist pastor, “said she has been shot multiple times with pepper bullets, including while she was praying with her eyes closed and hands lifted, wearing a clerical collar and stole,” Religion News Service continued.
And as Rev. Kardon also notes, claims from the administration that she and others peacefully demonstrating outside the Broadview ICE facility were agitators just don’t square with reality. “Every time we have been attacked with pepper bullets or tear gas or pepper spray that I have been present, it has felt like it came from anger that we were there, and not from any determined safety need or protocol,” said Rev. Kardon. “They are unhinged.”
@americasvoice Deportation raids don’t just target the undocumented – even U.S. citizens are getting swept up in the dragnet. #KnowYourRights #ICEraids #ImmigrantRights #FamiliesBelongTogether #Immigration
America’s Voice has highlighted more than two dozen cases of American citizens who have been swept up in the administration’s mass detention and deportation crusade. This isn’t an isolated mistake – it’s part of a pattern of weaponizing federal agencies and overriding due process rights at risk not just to our undocumented immigrant neighbors, but all of us.
Rodrick Johnson, a U.S. citizen, was among a number of Americans detained during a military-style raid on a residential building in Chicago this month. Johnson, 67, was zip-tied by federal agents after they smashed down his front door. He was then “left tied up outside the building for nearly three hours before agents finally let him go,” Popular Information reported. “I asked [agents] why they were holding me if I was an American citizen, and they said I had to wait until they looked me up,” Mr. Johnson later said. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer. They never brought me one.”
So much for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s misguided belief that the wrongful targeting of U.S. citizens by federal agents would prove nothing more than a mild inconvenience. He should relay that thought to Maria Greeley, a Latina U.S. citizen who was zip-tied by federal agents and then told that she didn’t look like her last name. “They said this isn’t real, they kept telling me I’m lying, I’m a liar,” she told the Chicago Tribune. “I told them to look in the rest of my wallet, I have my credit cards, my insurance.”
Many legal observers have since dubbed this unjust targeting of American citizens a “Kavanaugh stop.” In his newsletter Doomsday Scenario, Garrett Graff notes that “plenty of bystander videos showed that ICE was attacking first and asking questions later — maybe much later.”
It needs to be repeated that the administration’s mass deportation obsession is actually making us less safe. “FBI agents reassigned to round up immigrants have had to walk away from investigations into violent predators who target and exploit children online,” MSNBC previously reported. Even FEMA staffers have been pulled from their posts, and reportedly told to either help with ICE’s massive hiring spree or face removal from federal service.
"During the encounter, Greeley said they told her she 'doesn’t look like' a Greeley." www.yahoo.com/news/article…
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture.bsky.social) 2025-10-14T01:43:43.881Z
Since the pernicious attack instigated by federal agents, Rev. Black has joined a federal lawsuit against DHS “alleging violations of the First and Fourth Amendments,” Religion News Service continued. “Although most of the plaintiffs are journalists, Black is named as one of multiple clergy and faith-based demonstrators who, lawyers argue, have fallen victim to violence that violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
During a subsequent appearance on MSNBC, Rev. Black said that community members showing up to defend their neighbors are showing up because it’s the right thing to do.
“This group has no leaders, it has no sponsors,” Rev. Black said. “It’s a group of people who are in love with their neighbors and in love with their communities and showing up to be in solidarity with people who cannot speak right now, who are hiding in their homes, or who have already been abducted and disappeared.” He noted that many individuals “cannot be accounted for” since their abduction by ICE. “Where are the detainees?” reads one recent headline from Democracy Now! “Hundreds of ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ prisoners disappear from ICE database.”
“So the people who are gathering are doing it out of the profound sense of love, and we’re gathering to sing, pray, and chant – and sometimes speak words of condemnation,” Rev. Black continued. “But fundamentally this is an act of solidarity and a deep desire for those who are inside the facility to know that they are not alone. They can hear our voices and know that we are with them and we are for them and we will seek justice for them and for them to return to our communities where they belong.”
“Mass deportation is making America poorer, weaker, and less safe,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “At the same time, it’s trampling on the rights and dignities of all of us, U.S. citizens and immigrants alike.”
“What we continue to witness in Chicago and Portland, for example, should in no way be normalized or explained away as business as usual,” she continued. “We have children fearful about going to school, churches with empty pews due to the threat of arrest, U.S. citizens being ensnared in the dragnet, and legal residents being profiled and fined for not carrying their paperwork proving their status. This against the backdrop of ICE operating as a rogue agency and the President threatening to jail the Governor of Illinois and Mayor of Chicago while trying to deploy the military to provoke, instead of protect.”
