‘Prayerful witness’: Dallas interfaith group to resume vigils after ICE shooting
The vigils started in May.
Two North Texas men with no prior criminal records, Neri Jose Alvarado Borges and Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel, had been arrested and sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador.
Borges’ and Rengel’s arrests inspired a group of Dallas clergy to gather outside the city’s immigration facility to pray for them, said Mara Richards Bim, one of the group’s leaders.
After that, the vigils continued. Every Monday morning, members of the Clergy League for Emergency Action and Response come together outside the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement Field Office to pray: for ICE agents, for detained people, for anyone who needs it.
On Wednesday morning, the spot where CLEAR regularly meets was a crime scene. A 29-year-old man, identified as Joshua Jahn, opened fire on the Dallas facility from a nearby rooftop, killing one detainee and critically injuring two others who were inside an ICE transport van, authorities said. The gunman fatally shot himself, police said.
The prayer vigils will continue, but it’ll be up to each participant’s discretion on whether to attend, Bim said. One of the group’s main concerns is how Wednesday’s events will impact their access to the corner where they hold the vigils.
Bim serves as the Justice and Advocacy fellow at Dallas’ Royal Lane Baptist Church, where she works to “unify the congregation” with the goal of performing tangible social justice work in the community, she said.
The prayer vigils themselves came from other work Bim was doing on that front: Royal Lane Baptist Church partners with Vecinos Unidos DFW to train volunteers on becoming immigration court observers.
The observers document what happens behind closed doors in Dallas’ immigration court — monitoring interactions between agents and detainees, taking notes on proceedings and providing support.
When the vigil group met this Monday, nothing was out of the ordinary, Bim said.
Between 15 and 30 people came to stand with the group, hold signs and pray. No one with a routine immigration appointment came to ask for prayer, but the group prayed multiple times over a two-hour period, Bim said.
No law enforcement officers were injured in Wednesday’s shooting, but state and federal officials called it a targeted attack motivated by hatred of ICE. Political rhetoric and political violence in the United States are heating up, Bim said, and Wednesday’s events aren’t the first time members of CLEAR have been prompted to think of their own safety.
“We’re standing on a corner on I-35, so not everyone who drives by is in support of our standing there,” Bim said.
While responses to the vigils are generally positive, the group has discussed “on more than one occasion” concerns about open access to firearms in Texas and its implications for the group, Bim said.
“I feel that this witness is an important one. I feel that the fact that this is a prayerful witness is important… in the current climate… I think we all recognize that it may not be as safe as it once was,” Bim said.
In a statement Wednesday, CLEAR decried the violence in Dallas.
“Our hearts and prayers are with the victims of today’s shooting whose lives were taken and with the families who are mourning,” the statement reads in part. “They were people made in the image of God, deserving of dignity, safety, and care. It’s a further horror of this event that persons being targeted for deportation were those harmed and killed by this shooter.”
“We call our city and our nation to remember that true restoration is never built through violence but through compassion, equity and the pursuit of justice for every neighbor.”
