A Presbyterian minister in Chicago is suing Donald Trump’s administration after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were captured in viral video firing pepper balls at his head during protests against the president’s anti-immigration agenda.
The Rev. David Black joined a lawsuit with Chicago reporters and protesters accusing the administration of unconstitutional threats to their First Amendment rights and religious freedoms with “a pattern of extreme brutality” designed to “silence the press and civilians.”
Last month, Black — dressed in black and wearing a clerical collar while standing with demonstrators — was hit with chemical agents while praying in front of an ICE facility in Broadview, a Chicago suburb that has emerged as a flashpoint for protests against the administration as the president deploys National Guard troops to Illinois.
“I invited them to repentance,” Black told Religion News Service. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”
Black is not alone, according to the lawsuit. Agents “dressed in full combat gear” have “indiscriminately” tossed flash grenades and tear gas and fired guns loaded with chemical irritants and rubber bullets against demonstrators in the Chicago area, the complaint says.
Protesters and reporters have faced “serious injuries” and “some are being randomly singled out for arrest” and detained inside the ICE facility where they “are detained incommunicado for hours,” according to the complaint.
“No legitimate purpose exists for this brutality or for these arrests,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote. “The officers are not physically threatened. No government property is threatened. Defendants are acting to intimidate and silence the press and civilians engaged in protected First Amendment activities.”
Black, the senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in Woodlawn, was “offering prayers and urging ICE officers stationed on the roof of the Broadview ICE facility to repent from their unnecessarily brutal enforcement of the immigration laws” before officers fired at him, according to the lawsuit.
In footage from the scene on September 19, a person wearing a helmet moves in front of Black before ICE officers on the roof above them “suddenly and without warning” shot pepper balls that struck the top of Black’s head and exploded into a puff of white powder.
Black then falls to his knees in pain. Moments later, officers on the street sprayed him with tear gas, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also accuses the Trump administration of violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which states that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.”
Officers’ practice of targeting Black and other clergy “substantially burdens their exercise of religion,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also cites an incident involving the Rev. Beth Johnson, an ordained minister in the Unitarian Church, who was “fired upon without warning or justification as she and other protesters and clergy members stood on the sidewalk singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and other traditional songs of protest,” the filing says.
The Rev. Hannah Kardon, a United Methodist pastor who leads United Church of Rogers Park in Chicago, told Religion News Service that ICE agents fired several rounds of pepper balls against her, including while she was praying with her eyes closed and hands lifted.
“We’re a faith of immigrants — Jesus was an immigrant,” she told the outlet. “But to me, this is basic created-being stuff. When you see what is happening here, your whole body and heart resists it because it’s fundamentally wrong.”
A growing number of faith leaders are speaking out against the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and the aggressive law enforcement response to demonstrations against it, including Pope Leo XIV and prominent Catholic leaders across the United States.
Lawyers for the Trump administration have accused the plaintiffs of trying to “dictate crowd-control policy in ways that would tie the hands of federal law enforcement officers … even in circumstances of imminent danger and would risk bogging this court down in micro-management of crowd-control decisions.”
“These inflexible and vague constraints are untenable on their face,” lawyers for Homeland Security wrote Wednesday.
More than 30 agents have been injured during protests, “including multiple hospitalizations,” and more than 50 people were arrested, according to government lawyers.
