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By Bobby Ross Jr. | Religion Unplugged
Hey, Minneapolis.
You again, huh?
“I don’t know why it feels like it’s always happening in Minneapolis, but I guess we are here for a reason,” Patrick Doherty, a Twin Cities preacher, told me in a text message this week.
By “it,” the church leader meant the city finding itself embroiled — once again — in a major national firestorm.
I first connected with Doherty when I reported on the aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 murder by a police officer.
Now, of course, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in Minnesota — which has led to confrontations with protesters and two high-profile shooting deaths of U.S. citizens — has dominated national headlines for days and even weeks.
Like a lot of my Godbeat colleagues, I’ve spent time recently delving into faith angles related to the immigration enforcement surge.
Related:Â Minnesota churches pray for peace after fatal ICE shootings
The debate over U.S. immigration policy — and tactics — has raged for years, and President Donald Trump’s comeback second term has ratcheted up the decibel.
Back in 2012, I followed a Chicago-area minister to a federal deportation center and watched a Spanish-speaking woman weep as she said goodbye to her son, an undocumented immigrant. In that story, I reported that the Obama administration had deported a record number of immigrants the previous year.
This column appears in the online magazine Religion Unplugged.
Photo by Fibonacci Blue via Wikimedia Commons
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