Last Thursday I was arrested. Along with 21 other Oregon clergy and faith leaders I received two citations at the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Portland, Oregon: 1. “Failure to comply with lawful directions of a federal police officer.” and 2. “Creating a disturbance on federal property.” This was one of a series of actions coordinated through Interfaith Movement for Immigration Justice (IMIrJ), since 123 men, seeking asylum within our borders, were detained and sent to the Federal Prison in Sheridan Oregon, 12 miles from where we live.  We did create a disturbance.

We have worshiped monthly around altars we set outside the prison fence in Sheridan. We’ve delivered letters there, calling on Regional ICE Director Elizabeth Godfrey to release these men and give them the process due all those fleeing violence and the threat of violence in their own countries. Our act of non-violent non-cooperation was the 3rd in as many weeks and the largest. 4 clergy were arrested the first week, 6 the second and Thursday, among over 200 people, 22 of us were led away from where we were blocking the entrance to ICE, cuffed, detained, cited and released.

As I have thought about it, this is about altars. And where we place them. Lutheran Pastor Brennan Guillory of our McMinnville Cooperative Ministries (4th from left), and 10 of the 22 clergy, arm in arm, led the procession in the street from Caruthers Park to ICE.   The other 11 of us brought up the rear (I’m 3rd from right). Reaching the headquarters we built an altar and placed it in the middle of the street in front of ICE.

We worshipped. We prayed. We recited liturgies of liberation and release…the kind of thing we do at altars. We heard stories of those detained in Sheridan, The Dalles and across our country. A man from Cameroon, released from Sheridan the night before, stood by the sacred table sharing gratitude for our standing up for him and all those unlawfully detained. His witness is so similar to the stories we are hearing all the time. Some in Sheridan have been detained over 4 months now, separated from family with no information of their whereabouts. About half have now been given the trial dates promised them and released. Others have been detained even longer at the facility in The Dalles where ICE has a contract with Morrow County in violation of Oregon Law. In Sheridan, many of the men are Sikhs. They are served meals with meat when, by religious practice, they are vegetarians. Their faith story discourages them from ever cutting their hair, yet in, cruel irony, they’ve been given the prison barber shop as a place of worship where they must clean up the hair off the floor to establish their altar.

System wide, as many as 500 children may still be separated from their parents. A Mexican man, who arrived at one of the centers recently, tells of being separated from his wife and young children, then forced to stay in a walk-in cooler overnight as punishment for seeking asylum. Last week an immigration attorney was meeting with one of the Sheridan men. This husband and father showed the attorney news photos he was given of clergy being arrested at ICE the week before. He keeps them held tightly in his hand 24/7. The sacred story tells of a certain illegal immigrant of questionable upbringing, standing at the altar in a synagogue long ago, proclaiming, from the scroll of Isaiah, good news of imminent release to the broken hearts in captivity. By our actions, one man is able to hold that same Good News in his hand.

Since last Thursday a lot of people have thanked me for my actions. I was recognized in more than one church service last Sunday. I stood in the sanctuary of my own church and shared my story. All very cool, but it’s not about me. It’s about other allegiances. About what we choose to gather our lives around, what we have to offer on the table of ultimate meaning and what our lives are for. In fact, I took little risk. After all, I’m an old white guy in a country still pretty much ruled by old white guys. I risk much more of my vocation and reputation officiating weddings for LBGTQ brothers and sisters. Sitting in the street around a table of cloth, candle and flowers we worshipped for more than an hour, then, meeting little resistance, we moved our small holy of holies to block the entrance to the ICE office and sat in our circle around it.

It wasn’t too long, then, before the Federal Homeland Security officers mobilized and started escorting us away. They asked us very politely if we understood why we were being cited, that we had the choice to disperse right then, walk free and go home. Those were sacred questions in a way.   Then they carefully guided us back behind the bars of the armored gate to where we were detained and processed for several hours.

There is a lot more to tell, but a couple things really touched me during that time. They didn’t use conventional “hand-cuffs,” but instead heavy zip-ties with two loops to fix both hands behind our backs. In everything, the officers were gentle and respectful. As they cinched the ties around our wrists, they asked us if we were okay. I certainly felt the momentary helplessness of not having the use of my hands, but we were in these cuffs for maybe 20 minutes before they cut them off again. All the time I was thinking of the Mexicans and Central Americans I have witnessed cuffed with chains around their waists. Shackled wrist and ankle, shuffled in and out of immigration court, heads bent in shame, they are often processed and prosecuted in mass trials of 30-50 at a time for the misdemeanor offense of crossing without permission and trying to provide a future for their children.

The village of Altar in the state of Sonora, 60 miles south of the Mexico/Arizona border, is a place of pilgrimage where human beings fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico gather seeking something beyond themselves who want only the best for their families. Herded by Coyotes and dumped from this Altar onto the mean trails of the desert, women and girls are threatened with rape if they disobey. Everyone risks the torture of the savage 114 degree Sonora sun if they don’t keep up, traveling terrain treacherous in the daylight let alone under cover of night. I thought of them arriving, ICE helicopters hovering, driven from their homelands by actions of US corporations facilitated by NAFTA. Our government policies have stolen 3 million peasant peoples’ lands and birthright in the name of liberty and justice for all and sent them fleeing to our homeland for safety. Then that same government arrests them at the border where there is no safety but only separation from their own, making them criminals for their heroic effort to be free, making them to be hated and profiled in a country proud to be a beacon of hope and refuge for the huddled masses. They cut off my hand cuffs. After a mere 20 minutes my captivity was done.

The Altars of this world are places of sacrifice where refugees are forced to choose between themselves and their children. The road between Altar and Sasabe is lined with grave upon grave, shrines to those who’ve lost their lives to coyotes and cartels. And out in the desert, SW of Tucson, there are many a small sanctum where brother and sister travelers stop briefly to pay homage. A few years ago, I had the privilege of walking the immigrant trails in Arizona, leaving jugs of water and cans of beans with the “No More Deaths” project. We were taken to one such place out there on the trail, erected to help humanity remember Josseline Janiletha Hernandez Quinteros who perished on that holy spot. A teenage girl, lost in the desert when she sprained her ankle and couldn’t keep up. She told her brother to go on without her. By the time they found her body, she had become food for the wild things.

It is, once again, time for us in America to choose the altars at which we worship, sacrifice and give our offering and allegiance. The questions of who we love, what we are willing to risk our lives for and who is welcome at the table are once again sounding across the borders of our lives. As I have said, there was little risk for me in being arrested. But whenever I get the chance, I want to be part of something more definitive than I could ever be alone, especially in my white privilege. I worship at the altar of a small refugee man from a desert town who was arrested and executed for creating a disturbance. No shrine of anything or anyone less is worth my time.

One of the important moments for me last Thursday was a conversation with one of our arresting officers. As they marched us back into a staging area within the ICE facility and lined us up with our backs to one long wall, one officer among the many stood out. He was in full Homeland Security uniform but, unlike the others, his head was completely covered with a black hooded mask, hiding everything but his eyes.   This made him a scary and intimidating figure at first, but as he made contact with his eyes, I decided he had a story worth a listen. So I finally got up the courage, when he came close, to ask him about it. As it turns out, he was on duty during the almost month-long occupation of those ICE grounds by protesters. He said they were called every de-humanizing name we could imagine. His family was threatened. They even came to his house. So his choice has been to hide his identity and try to keep his family safe. Over and over again, he and others thanked us for our respectful non-violence.   I asked him if he had kids. He said, “Yes…two and four years old.” In that moment, I was reminded that we are all made of the same stuff and come from the same place. In that moment I couldn’t be prouder nor more terrified to be human.

Whatever else we accomplished there, we created sanctuary in the street. And the altar around which we moved was big enough to embrace reverence and resistance, respect and protest, lawfulness and arrest, decency and defiance. As our removal was completed, an arresting officer took the altar down, removed the flowers and blew out the candle. Somehow I think he knows this action was purely symbolic. The altar still stands and the candle still burns. And another generation of darkness will not be able to put it out.

Please keep it burning. Consider placing a phone call to regional ICE director Elizabeth Godfrey. Here is the info and scripts to help you:

Call Acting ICE Director Elizabeth Godfrey and tell her to “Let Our People Go.”

And get connected with the Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice (IMIrJ) and participate in the Pilgrimage from Sheridan to The Dalles starting Sunday, September 30.