Kerrfunk

On January 7, 2026, during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US citizen Renee Nicole Good died from gunshot wounds to the head at close range while trying to flee from masked gunmen trying to open her car door. 

The following paragraphs were shared on Facebook by the Rev. Cindy Briggs-Biondi.

In the last 48 hours, ICE has conducted raids across West Virginia. Today, ICE shot and killed a woman, Renee Nicole Good, a US citizen, for legally observing and protesting ICE’s inhumane treatment of immigrants. For a long time, even well before the current administration, but especially over the last year, ICE agents have terrorized families, children, whole communities with aggression and terror. How much more of this can our world take?

From a biblical and theological perspective, ICE does not represent some neutral arm of the law - some sort of mediator of goodness or righteousness. Instead, ICE systematically inflicts excessive violence upon other human beings. This systematic use of violence places ICE and its agents of terror in direct opposition to the God of the Bible.

The Bible does not mince words about how God judges nations. God asks who was harmed, who was crushed, and who was treated as disposable. By those standards, ICE stands condemned. Scripture is clear: “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). This is not a suggestion. It is a command rooted in Israel’s founding story of liberation from state violence, forced labor, and terror wielded in the name of empire. Any institution that normalizes the caging, terrorizing, and brutalization of immigrants, and those who stand in solidarity with them, reenacts the sins of Pharaoh. And Scripture is unambiguous about Pharaoh’s fate. It ain’t good.

ICE operates through fear. ICE raids homes and workplaces, separates parents from children, criminalizes mere presence or existence, and now apparently also responds to witness and protest with gunfire - with indiscriminate and unrepentant killing. This is not law enforcement in any moral sense recognizable to Scripture. This is pure addiction to power, dominance, and force.

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the prophets warn us exactly about this kind of power. Isaiah declares, “Woe to those who make unjust laws who deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed” (Isaiah 10:1–2). This is a passage of judgment - judgment for abject moral failure.

Jesus doesn’t mince words either. In Matthew 25, he identifies not with the armed authority, not with the jailer, not with the enforcer, but with the detained, the displaced, the stranger. “I was a stranger and you did not welcome me… I was in prison and you did not visit me.” And to those who caused the harm, or even those who looked away while harm was inflicted, he says quite plainly: “Depart from me.”

There is no theological or biblical framework that allows Christians to reconcile ICE’s actions with faithfulness to Christ. Any institution that relies on terror, family separation, racialized enforcement, and lethal force against nonviolent observers is not keeping order, or practicing goodness or righteousness. Instead, it is as if they are crucifying Christ again in the bodies of vulnerable people. To communicate anything otherwise is nothing more than unholy propaganda.

When ICE shoots a woman for lawfully observing arrests, it reveals a truth it tries to hide: systems that depend on violence always fear witnesses. It fears those who will name the reality of injustice and speak it aloud. Today’s events remind us that ICE is not just a flawed law enforcement agency. It is morally bankrupt system that bears the very clear marks of empire that are condemned in Scripture again and again: fear of the outsider, obsession with control, and willingness to sacrifice human lives to preserve power.

For fellow Christians, please hear this clearly: to bless, excuse, or remain silent about such violence is to choose Caesar over Christ. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.“ Neutrality is not an option. Silence does not undo the existence of injustice.The prophets reserve their harshest words not only for violent rulers, but for religious leaders who refused to speak.

God hears the cries of the stranger. God sees the children torn from their parents. God sees the guns raised against those who won’t look away. And Scripture assures us of this: God is on the side of the vulnerable, the marginalized, those experiencing terror. The question before the church is not whether ICE has crossed a moral or ethical line. That line was clearly crossed a long time ago. The question is whether or not we will have the courage to be witnesses and to give our testimony of truth.  //

# posted by Kerrfunk @ 7:51 AM 0 comments