Edwards-Acton told Jenkins that many local faith leaders have joined the protests against ICE. “At a demonstration Monday, clergy were among the protesters calling for the release of David Huerta, a union leader and member of who was arrested by ICE agents while trying to document an immigration raid, according to Edwards-Acton. (Huerta, who was charged with one count of conspiracy to impede an officer, has since been released.)”

"Just like Peter stood and preached boldly in the face of empire, we too are called to boldly speak truth in our own time," Edwards-Acton said, as Busse stood nearby. "So we proclaim today, in the spirit of Jesus, that immigrant lives are sacred. We insist that family unity is holy. We declare that due process and human dignity and respect are nonnegotiables, and we will not allow this administration to normalize cruelty or silence our resistance."

“We were really there to call out ICE, demanding to know where our families are, where our loved ones are, and where our community members and church members are,” Edwards-Acton said. The group also communicated with Los Angeles Police Department officers, hoping to remind them “that we are a sanctuary city in a sanctuary state.”

In a June 8 letter to the diocese, Sacred Resistance leaders wrote: “On Friday, June 6, 14 beloved members of our church family were unjustly detained as part of the raids that wreaked havoc and terror throughout Los Angeles communities, targeting working-class, immigrant families at work, school, and home. These actions, and the level of militarization involved, are unconscionable and we condemn them entirely.

All 14 of the men who were detained were members of the Episcopalian Diocese of Los Angeles. They were taken on the Day of Pentecost, which is celebrated by Christians, 49 days after Easter, as a “holy disruption [of] God breaking into the evil world with the spirit of justice, the spirit of liberation and love,” said Jaime Edwards-Acton, rector at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. Today, the United States faces a moment that “cries out for that same spirit,” he said.

“Now is the time when our call to Sacred Resistance becomes clear and necessary,” the group, which advocates for immigrants’ rights, said in the diocesan email. “We stand on the side of the loving and liberating Jesus who calls us to be justice-seekers and peacemakers in the face of state violence and oppression.”

Affecting members of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the raids appeared to target not criminals but those earning a living and supporting their families. Along with similar raids in San Diego and elsewhere, they suggest our country is in for a dangerous escalation of the Trump regime’s cruel, nonsensical war on immigrant workers.

Bishop John Taylor of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles said he looks forward to joining with colleagues in mounting further legal challenges “if the government follows through on its stated intention to violate the sanctity of churches and other places of worship when they shelter those fleeing unjust power.