Providing mercy in the face of repression

“How did prayer and protests — the physical manifestation of mercy — all become grounds for conflict with the state?” asked Dr. Sergio González. “When did mercy become a crime?”

Those were key questions during the 2025 Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State, held in conjunction with the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., on Oct. 21-23. The annual lecture series was established in 2004 with a gift to BJC from Drs. Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden of Macon, Georgia. This year’s series included three separate events in the Twin Cities, all focused around the theme of “Criminalizing Mercy: Sanctuary and Government Repression of Migrant Justice.”

Dr. González served as the keynote speaker for the series, engaging with community members as well as sharing stories that offered windows to think about the past in order to illuminate our present moment. A historian of U.S. immigration, labor and religion, Dr. González teaches at Marquette University and is a co-founder and former organizer for the Dane Sanctuary Coalition. He is the author of several books, and he is the co-creator of a podcast titled “Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State.” 

Setting the stage for our current climate, Dr. González began his keynote address by sharing the story of the Rev. David Black, who was praying outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility near Chicago this year when masked agents shot at him with pepper balls. Now he’s part of a lawsuit that alleges that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security targeted him and other clergy in violation of their religious rights.  

“In this moment, a call for Christian compassion, for Christian mercy, meets repression. A pastor offering spiritual care becomes a flashpoint in the fight over whether faith can protest immigration and detention policies that a growing number of Americans deem to be unfair, unjust and cruel,” Dr. González said.

He noted that the confrontation is not an isolated incident — it echoes earlier chapters in the history of the United States when acts of conscience collided with the machinery of the state. 

He traced the origins of the Sanctuary Movement to the 1980s, when thousands of Salvadorans and Guatemalans were denied asylum in the United States, sending them back into the hands of the death squads they were fleeing. 

During that time, a group of churches in Arizona began offering supplies for the arriving refugees. But, charity alone was not enough — church leaders saw the law as an active instrument of harm on these individuals’ lives, so they began to organize a network of churches that would provide refuge to Central Americans fleeing persecution. 

“Asylum seekers became the moral center of the movement,” Dr. González said, explaining how they would speak in churches — with their faces covered by sunglasses or scarves to protect their identities — and shared their testimony of the violence they survived. 

“These were sacred acts of truth-telling, practices drawn from Latin American liberation theology, meant to awaken empathy and conscience in the U.S. public.”

But, at the same time, a coordinated campaign worked against the movement, questioning the motives of those providing compassion. 

The movement basically went on trial in 1985, as the government compared the ministers providing sanctuary to drug traffickers, and the judge forbade any mention of faith or conscience within the courtroom.

“Mercy, in other words, was inadmissible as evidence,” said Dr. González.

The trial became a national spectacle, and eight defendants were convicted of transporting and harboring people illegally. 

“Compassion could be a crime, at least in the eyes of the federal government,” reflected Dr. González. 

But, it backfired, galvanizing even more congregations to join the work. 

“By the late 1980s, the Sanctuary Movement had spread to hundreds of churches and synagogues across the country. Cities like Seattle and Los Angeles declared themselves cities of refuge, while governors in New Mexico and Wisconsin proclaimed their states as sanctuary states,” Dr. González continued.

The new Sanctuary Movement emerged in 2007, reviving the 1980s iteration but shifting its focus to protecting undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. from deportation. Now, we find ourselves in the midst of an immigration crackdown, animated both by political theater and moral language, according to Dr. González. 

“President Trump has promised what he calls the largest deportation force in American history, pledging to mobilize tens of thousands of new agents and National Guard troops to remove millions of undocumented residents. His administration has renewed its assault on sanctuary cities and churches alike, threatening prosecution and the loss of federal funding for communities that refuse to cooperate with ICE,” Dr. González said. “The ‘sensitive locations’ policy that once functionally shielded houses of worship from raids was rescinded on his first day back in office, and faith leaders across the country now report plain clothes agents surveilling churches and shelters once considered sacred ground.”

But, there is one key difference: In today’s context, the language of faith is not confined to those providing mercy — it’s also being wielded by those looking to restrict it, as the Department of Homeland Security and ICE have also used religious language in their social media posts. 

“It’s an all non-too-subtle way of adding a religious veneer of moral legitimacy to their enforcement actions,” Dr. Gonzalez said. “This layering of sacred idiom over coercive state power makes dissent appear as not merely political opposition but, in fact, spiritual misalignment, raising the stakes when faith communities act in solidarity with migrants.” 

“Trump’s campaign to build the largest deportation force in history, his attacks on sanctuary cities and churches, and the chorus of conservative pastors blessing these policies as divinely ordained all represent a calculated inversion of the moral order. They have traded mercy for vengeance, hospitality for hostility, compassion for control,” said Dr. González . 

While we cannot predict the form that faith-based solidarity will take in the future, Dr. González noted that mercy always finds a way to endure. 

“It survives in prayer circles and protest lines, in basement shelters and border chapels, in the quiet conviction that God’s law cannot be enforced by tear gas,” he said. 

“The question that remains for us, as it did for the Sanctuary workers of another generation, is not whether mercy will be criminalized, but whether we will have the courage to practice it anyway,” he concluded.

Speaking to an engaged audience of college students, community partners, professors, members of the Minnesota group of Christians Against Christian Nationalism and more, Dr. González took questions for more than 45 minutes after his presentation, covering a range of topics. You can watch his presentation and the Q&A in a video on BJC’s YouTube channel.

In addition to the keynote address, the three-day event included intentional conversations with community members and experts to discuss the best way to move forward in the midst of today’s challenges. 

Noting that few issues cut more sharply into today’s immigration debates than the contested issue of “sanctuary,” a call to be courageous was the theme of a conversation on the first night. Gathered at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Dr. González led a discussion about how faith communities can engage in sanctuary in this moment. Members of congregations who have provided sanctuary discussed just what it takes to do so, taking risks in place of others who are more vulnerable to risk. Lawyers serving immigrants in the area also discussed the obstacles and opportunities for assistance with our neighbors in need.

On the final day, a lunch event co-sponsored by the Immigration Law Society at the University of St. Thomas School of Law focused on the optimal role of state and local governments in immigration policy. Held at the law school, Professor Virgil Wiebe gave a presentation on immigration law at the state and local level. Speaking to law students and community members alike, he reviewed the current legal context, and he discussed the Catholic call to justice as a way to love our neighbors facing immigration enforcement. 

All three events invited those listening to organize with others around them, collaborating with groups who are focused on providing mercy when the government does not. 

“If we have the courage, what can we do?” asked one audience member during the Q&A session.

“My first response is to listen to the people who have been doing the organizing on the ground for some time,” answered Dr. González, sharing that the first calls for sanctuary did not come from white, middle-class churches; they came from people who were affected by the policies creating a need for sanctuary. Places currently providing sanctuary often do so privately and without publicizing it — therefore, he pointed out, there isn’t a “prophetic platform” to speak out about it as a way of education and to draw others to the work.

What sacred resistance looks like continues to change as our times change, and Dr. González said we must talk to the communities who have been providing protection for themselves when others have ignored them. 

“Sanctuary and solidarity practiced as a radical form of hospitality requires people to listen.”

For more on this annual lecture series, visit BJConline.org/ShurdenLectures.

This article originally appeared in the winter 2025 edition of Report from the Capital. You can view it as a PDF or read a digital flip-through edition.