January 28, 2026 5:49 PM ET

Leftist religious leaders are planning to export Minnesota’s anti-ICE activism to congregations nationwide.

More than 600 clergy from various faiths gathered in Minneapolis on Thursday and Friday for what amounted to a resistance training conference, according to Religion News Service. Clad in “Abolish ICE” T-shirts, rainbow stoles and watermelon yarmulkes, attendees traded tactics for obstructing federal immigration enforcement between songs and prayers. (RELATED: Mayor Says He’s Coordinating With Other City’s Leaders To Thwart ICE)

“We have no doubt that there will be plenty of opportunity for ICE to show up in our community soon,” Unitarian Universalist Rev. Elizabeth Haralam Shuba of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, told RNS as she joined roughly 200 clergy marching through Minneapolis streets. “Part of why I answered the call was that there was a significant element of training to take back into our own communities.”

Rev. David Wheeler, senior minister of New Covenant Christian Church, told the United Church of Christ he’s returning to Oklahoma with a “determination to build connections and systems” to “protect our neighbors” from the “lawless, violent oppression of ICE.”

The conference coincided with a broader “no work, no school, no shopping” blackout Friday organized in part by interfaith leaders. Thousands participated, more than 700 businesses shuttered, and cultural institutions including the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Science Museum of Minnesota went dark, according to The Guardian and Morning Brew. The Minneapolis City Council endorsed the strike.

That same day, 100 clergy were arrested at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after breaching the bounds of their permitted protest to disrupt airline operations, the Associated Press reported. They were cited for trespassing and failure to comply with a peace officer, then released.

Livestream footage showed the group protesting inside the airport before most retreated to the sidewalk to continue singing and chanting. The 100 who stayed knelt and stood in a line outside the main terminal, waiting nearly an hour in below-freezing temperatures for their turn to be handcuffed.

“I will always see those clergy on their knees in that frigid cold, preparing to be arrested on behalf of their neighbors,” Rev. Marci Scott-Weis, senior pastor of the Magnolia United Church of Christ in Seattle, told the UCC.

Beyond protests, some churches have mobilized mutual aid networks — delivering food boxes and homework packets to families sheltering indoors to avoid ICE, according to Word in Black. Others offer chaplain training programs to deploy volunteers for interpretation, child care and legal planning, a practice that dates to the George Floyd riots.

Some clergy have taken a more incendiary approach from the pulpit.

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe released a statement Sunday calling these “frightening times” and likening anti-ICE protesters to John the Baptist — while comparing the Trump administration to “the deadly power” responsible for the executions of both John and Jesus Christ.

“In the United States, we no longer live in a time when we can expect to practice our faith without risk,” Rowe said, claiming the right to worship freely “has been curtailed by the fear that too many immigrant Christians face when they leave their homes.”

“Our call to follow God’s law surpasses any earthly power or principality that might seek to silence our witness,” he added.

Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of Washington, posted a video statement that has drawn over a million views claiming immigrants are “targeted with a policy of fear.” In it, she promoted a false narrative that ICE used a child as “bait” — when in reality the child’s father abandoned him while fleeing agents.

“This is a moment for all of us across the nation,” Budde said. Minnesota is “showing us all the way.”