Christian and Jewish faith leaders gathered in the rain outside the federal courthouse in Hartford on Wednesday to pray and call on employees of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to put an end to violent tactics and follow their conscience.
The occasion took place on a confluence of religious holidays.
Christians were celebrating Ash Wednesday, a day of repentance that marks the beginning of the recognition of the forty days that Jesus spent fasting in the desert. Muslims were celebrating the first day of Ramadan, a month of fasting from sunrise to sunset that recalls the month in which Mohammad received the Quran. And Jewish worshippers were celebrating the first day of the month of Adar, in which the holiday of Purim is recognized.
“Our paths to God may be different, but we meet as one,” said Rabbi Debra Cantor, leader of Congregation B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom in Bloomfield. “In the prophetic cry for justice and compassion, we meet as one when we recognize the divine image in the faces of our neighbors, our teachers, our friends and coworkers, our elders and our children, and in the faces even of those who work for ICE.”
PHOTOS: CT interreligious leaders rally outside fed immigration courthouse
Cantor compared the biblical story of Esther, which is celebrated during Purim, to the current political situation in the U.S. At the time of Esther, she said, the all-powerful king was convinced by one of his advisors to kill all the Jews in the empire. It fell to Esther, who was married to the king and who was secretly a Jew, to convince the king to spare the Jewish people — at great risk to her own life.
“ Queen Esther makes a clever plan and saves the day, and everything gets reversed,” Cantor said. “ But — and I have to emphasize this — none of this happens by magic … None of the reversals in the Purim story happened without folks taking risks and fighting for their lives against a cruel regime, against prejudice and fearmongering.”
At the time, Cantor says, Esther’s Uncle Mordecai suggests that perhaps she was made queen precisely so that she could save the Jewish people.
Rev. Scott Marks, director of New Haven Rising, referred to the ashes of Ash Wednesday as “a public sign of a private truth,” reflecting human mortality and the need for mercy.
“ We see the body armor and the mirrored glasses, but our faith compels us to look past the gear to the person underneath. We know that no one can inflict trauma on a neighbor without wounding their own soul,” Marks said.
He urged them to view the people who were being detained as their brothers and sisters.
“ True repentance isn’t just saying ‘I’m sorry.’ It is a change of direction. It is choosing to stop participating in a system that puts our people in bondage, and instead choosing the path of liberation,” Marks said.
Afterward, multiple people read aloud from a letter addressed to ICE agents and employees, calling on them to “lay down your arms.” The letter underscored the “terror” that ICE had brought into communities, the way agents had detained “mothers and fathers” and sent them to detention centers, the “cruelty” toward U.S. citizens who protested against ICE and the killings of two people in Minneapolis.
Rev. Allie Perry of Shalom United Church of Christ in New Haven, one of the organizers of the gathering, told the Connecticut Mirror that 235 religious and clergy members from 86 communities across Connecticut had signed the letter. The people who signed included a variety of religious leaders of Christian protestant denominations, Catholic religious, Episcopalians, Jewish leaders, Muslim leaders and leaders of Buddhist Zen centers.
Asked about the clergy’s ideal vision of ICE, Perry referenced a meeting of clergy leaders with Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro earlier this month. At the meeting, DeLauro presented the reforms that Democrats in Congress were calling for — requiring ICE agents to wear body cameras and prohibiting them from wearing masks, requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property and requiring federal immigration enforcement to coordinate with state and local law enforcement.
But clergy members pushed back, saying they believed ICE had become too corrupted, and that it needed to be abolished as an institution. Perry said she agreed.
“There are other ways to manage the borders. This is not about managing the borders. This is a group that is saying the borders are everywhere,” said Perry.
Rev. Steve Jungkeit of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, another organizer of the gathering, told CT Mirror he believed the signatories of the letter were “all over the board” in their beliefs about whether ICE should be abolished or how immigration enforcement should be conducted. He said the main purpose of the letter was to call on ICE to put a stop to tactics like wearing masks, separating families and “disappearing” people into prisons and detention centers.
Perry and Jungkeit both said that the call to repentance didn’t spell out any specific actions — although ICE agents quitting their jobs could be one possibility.
“It’s asking people to return to and embrace their own humanity,” Perry said.
“When I think about repentance, I think about having a moment of conscience that says, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can no longer participate in this type of dehumanization.’” Jungkeit said.
Jungkeit referenced an Israel-based organization his church works with, called Breaking the Silence. The organization was formed by Israeli soldiers who work to gather and publish testimonies that expose the truth of what has happened in Gaza’s occupied territories. They call for the end of the occupation and urge society to take responsibility for what has happened there. Jungkeit said the call to ICE in their letter was for something similar to occur with regard to immigration enforcement in the U.S.
Jungkeit added that repentance was not only for ICE agents — it is a need for society as a whole.
“These are orders, these are directives that are being issued by our government, by people purportedly acting in our name,” he said. “I think some of us have been entirely comfortable having ICE agents out there so long as it didn’t touch us.”
Perry and Jungkeit said they had not spoken to any ICE agents, but that they hope to be able to transmit the letter to ICE in the future.
Emilia Otte is a reporter for the Connecticut Mirror. Copyright 2026 @ CT Mirror (ctmirror.org).