Minneapolis clergy rally for justice after ICE shooting

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on January 8, 2025.

It was a time set aside for mourning, remembrance and moral clarity as hundreds of pastors gathered in Minneapolis Jan. 8 for a clergy press conference one day after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman protesting their actions.

“It is a day where Minnesotans have come together yet again to mourn, to grieve, to lament, to express righteous anger and rage, but to demand justice and to demand peace,” said minister JaNae Bates Imari, co-executive director of a nonprofit called ISAIAH.

Renee Good

“Renee was 37 years old, a mother, a U.S. citizen, a Minnesotan, a legal observer, a woman who believed that her neighbors deserved dignity, safety.” Imari said of Renee Nicole Good who was shot and killed by an ICE agent the previous day. “She was not armed. She was not a threat. She was standing for freedom. And the federal government answered her courage with a bullet.”

Then she stated, “Let the record be clear that that was not an accident. It was murder.”

Imari added, “In the Holy Scriptures, in the Bible, it says, ‘Woe to those who decree unjust laws.’ Today that woe belongs to DHS, to ICE and to those in Congress who refuse to hold them accountable.”

Then she named three demands the gathered clergy are making of the federal government.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.