ICE Is Terrorizing a Maryland Church. The Community Is Fighting Back.

This week's Good Trouble Report

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Hey y’all, first, sorry for the late drop for this week’s Good Trouble Report. Technology got the best of me yesterday, and by the time I figured it out, it was too late to post. But this story couldn’t wait another day.

I want to take you to Salisbury, Maryland, right there on the Eastern Shore. It’s a town of about 33,000 people, and roughly one in ten of those residents is Haitian. That community has been there, working, building, worshipping. And right now, they’re terrified.

Since Trump revoked Temporary Protective Status for Haitians, ICE has been running raids through that community. TPS was put in place after the 2010 earthquake because Haiti was in a humanitarian crisis. Violence. Instability. No safe place to return to. Over a million people nationwide hold TPS, and about 350,000 of them are Haitian. These are people who came here legally, under a protection the United States government offered them. And now that protection has been yanked away.

Pastor Roosevelt Toussaint at World Life Center church in Salisbury, says that his Sunday attendance has dropped more than 50 percent in just a few weeks. People are afraid to leave their homes. Think about that, a community so scared that they can’t even go to church. And he had this message for the President and he didn’t mince words: “We’re expecting you to have compassion for our people. They haven’t done anything wrong. All they came to this country to do is work and make a difference in our economy. There’s no security at home. If you really send us over there, you send us to die.”

That’s a pastor. Speaking plainly. That’s the truth.

Then there is Marjorie Estime, an American citizen of Haitian descent, and she had a message too: “I want to tell the President of the United States to stop the ICE program so that people can work, so that ICE can stop shooting them, persecuting them, and we can go back to normal.”

Back to normal. That’s all people want. To work. To worship. To live.

Pastor Toussaint sent a message to his congregation in Haitian Creole. He told them: “I’m praying this afternoon that God can make you invisible to the enemy.” And: “They put a lot of terror in your heart but God has come to tell you ‘Do not be afraid.’”

Do not be afraid. That’s Good Trouble language right there. John Lewis told us that. And I’ve seen what happens when people stand up. I think about Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, American citizens in Minnesota who stood up for others and lost their lives for it. Courage is real, and it costs something. But so does silence.

Y’all know how I feel. These are human beings. They came here legally, they built lives, they are our neighbors. Sending them back to a country in crisis isn’t enforcement is cruelty. And the rest of us have a responsibility to say so out loud.

Courage is contagious. We must abolish ICE.

—Harry