The usual hustle and bustle of protests — the loud chants, megaphones and fists in the air — was absent on Thursday afternoon as faith leaders and activists sat in meditation outside San Francisco City Hall, starting a hunger strike to protest ICE.
About 100 rabbis, reverends and activists gathered on the City Hall steps to start a 24-hour fast to condemn what they called Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s militaristic and violent policies.
Some of the faith leaders were barefoot, sitting cross-legged on yoga mats put upon the cement steps; others wore stoles painted with butterflies, a symbol of migration. Still more walked in slow circles, wearing posters around their necks displaying photos of immigrants who have died in ICE custody.
At least four people have died in ICE custody so far this year, according to the Detention Watch Network, and 32 people died in the agency’s detention centers and holding cells last year, which the Guardian said was the highest total in two decades. Democrats in Congress on Thursday sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding she improve conditions.
There have been no ICE custody deaths in San Francisco but the ACLU and other civil rights groups sued ICE last year alleging its holding cells downtown were “freezing” and “inhumane.” A federal judge ruled conditions were likely unconstitutional and told ICE to improve them, but attorneys said at the end of December that the agency had not done so.
Thursday’s protest was organized by the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity and organizers said it was intended to “resist the violence inflicted on our own neighbors, friends, and families.”
In a crowd largely composed of older adults, a young girl wearing a pink jacket and riding a pink tricycle with streamers stuck out as she rode her bike amidst a somber march of faith leaders.
Omar, a construction worker from Mexico who wore a yellow vest, said he happened upon the meditation during a break from his work, across the street. “I am grateful for it all,” he said in Spanish before returning to his job.
Near 1 p.m., the sun began to shine through the clouds, and the megaphones emerged. What had begun as a silent meditation and walk turned into a rally, with faith leaders speaking to a crowd of around 100.
“It’s important to acknowledge that there are a lot of things that happen in our city that are unseen,” Reverend Bruce Reyes-Chow from the Presbyterian Church said “It’s telling the rest of the world that we are still paying attention.”
Another faith leader participating in the hunger strike is Reverend Ranwa Hammamy, an organizer with the Unitarian Universalist Association. “We want ICE out of Minnesota and ICE out of our communities. We want ICE to no longer be funded,” Hammamy said.
When asked whether elected officials had been notified of the protest, she said that they have had conversations at the state and federal level around changing immigration policy to be less “inhumane.”
“I hope that it gets attention and that more people will join us and that this fight will have to continue,” said Julie Litwin, a member of the Kehilla Community Synagogue who lives in the East Bay.
