Clergy rally for Haitians in Maryland county amid fears of ICE surge

SALISBURY, Md. (RNS) — A week after a local pastor claimed the large Haitian community in his town was being targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the Rev. William Barber, a prominent civil rights activist, joined local faith leaders and dozens of other advocates on Wednesday (Aug. 26) to protest ongoing immigration enforcement efforts in Salisbury.

“If a church is not standing with immigrants that are being terrorized, then it ought to take the name church off and put ‘club’ on the side,” Barber, who heads the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, told a crowd of dozens gathered outside a county government building.

The defiant message, delivered under a billowing Haitian flag waved by a fellow demonstrator, was a common theme at the rally. Faith leaders said they hoped to draw attention to what locals describe as the harrowing experience of Haitians in Salisbury. In a public letter published last week, Pastor Roosevelt Toussaint, who leads the Word of Life Center, a heavily Haitian congregation in the region, described the Haitian community as “under attack” by ICE, claiming some have been arrested or detained while driving.

Religion News Service could not independently confirm those claims, but Haitians make up around 10% of the city’s roughly 33,000 residents, and many previously held Temporary Protected Status, a federal designation that allows people to live and work legally in the U.S. But President Donald Trump’s administration moved to end TPS status for more than 1 million people earlier this year — a change that has impacted some 350,000 Haitians, including many in Salisbury.

The result, faith leaders and activists say, is that some have been left weighing whether to risk remaining in the U.S. or returning to Haiti, where widespread gang violence has displaced around 1.5 million people.

Toussaint was among the speakers at the rally and told the crowd the loss of TPS status has left his community so fearful of deportation that many are refusing to leave their homes.

“When this thing started, I saw my church was empty,” Toussaint said. “My people enclosed themselves in their house — they’re so afraid to go out.”

Another attendee of the rally, pastor Jean-Daniel Berard, who leads Passionate LightHouse of God church, told RNS he has begun purchasing groceries and visiting the bank for members of his church.

“When I go to their house, they have to make sure it’s me before they even go to the door,” Berard said. “The fear is real.”

He said attendance at his new church has evaporated, going from about 60 people to four in just two weeks.

Before the rally, demonstrators gathered down the road at Rebirth, a nonprofit that provides resources for immigrant communities and operates out of a building owned by the Wicomico Presbyterian Church. Wicomico’s pastor, the Rev. Maggie Gillespie, said Haitians are members of her congregation and “valued members of our community.”

“We can’t turn our backs on them now in their time of need,” she said.

Gillespie then joined Barber and dozens of others as they marched to the county building, escorted by local police as the group briefly blocked traffic. They chanted as they walked, and many waved signs with slogans that referenced Scripture, such as “Welcome the stranger — God.” Later, after the rally concluded, Barber led clergy into the county building in hopes of delivering a letter to Wicomico County Executive Julie M. Giordano but were told by officials in the building that she wasn’t there.

The letter, which activists said was sent along to Giordano ahead of time, inquired about an agreement the county had entered into with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January. It then pointed to a new Maryland law, passed in February, that bars local law enforcement from formally assisting with federal immigration officials (often known as 287(g) agreements, which allow local police to enforce certain immigration laws). The new law was one of several passed in Democratically led states in the aftermath of “Operation Metro Surge” — a targeted mass deportation campaign launched by the Department of Homeland Security in Minnesota in which two U.S. citizens were killed by federal immigration agents.

“None of this bars cooperation on a criminal investigation, and none of it bars compliance with a judicial warrant,” the letter reads, referring to the law. “What it does is draw a line around civil immigration enforcement. We ask that county personnel stay on the right side of that line.”

The letter concludes with an appeal to the Bible.

“Scripture tells us to remember that we too were once aliens in Egypt,” the letter reads. “Across every one of our sacred texts, God asks first for justice, and for love toward the least of these. Our own Constitution asks the same. It opens by calling us to establish justice. We pray you feel the weight of this moment as we do.”

In an email to RNS, Giordano said the county “complied with the law and withdrew” from the partnership after the February law went into effect.

“It is therefore inaccurate and misleading to suggest that Wicomico County’s former 287(g) agreement is responsible for federal immigration enforcement actions occurring in our community today,” Giordano wrote.

She added that she respects “the right of faith leaders and members of our community to raise concerns” and acknowledged that “many families are experiencing fear and uncertainty.”

“But compassion and the rule of law are not mutually exclusive,” Giordano wrote. “We can support vulnerable members of our community while also recognizing the authority of the federal government to enforce federal immigration law.”

Meanwhile, local pastors say the situation facing their congregations remains dire. At the end of the protest, clergy gathered to pray over Toussaint and others, saying the local clergy were “praying under siege.”

Toussaint called the protest an “answered prayer,” and said he had a message for President Trump.

“I speak to a lot of clergy, and they tell me he’s a good president. They told me he loves Christianity, he loves people,” Toussaint said. “So I’m asking him: Please have compassion on those people.”

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