A judge orders ICE to free a Wisconsin mosque leader, citing a 'substantial' free speech claim

(AP) — The government has claimed he is a foreign policy threat, but Sarsour's attorneys say he was actually targeted for speaking out against Israel.

In this photo provided by Yaseen Jajeeb, Islamic Society of Milwaukee President Salah Sarsour smiles, Thursday, June 18, 2026, shortly after his release from a county jail in Indiana, where he was detained after his arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in March. (Yaseen Najeeb via AP)

Rebecca Boone
June 18, 2026 

(AP) — A federal judge ordered immigration officials to release the president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque from detention Thursday, finding that Salah Sarsour has raised a “substantial” claim that he was being targeted for speaking out in favor of Palestinian rights.

Sarsour, a Palestinian-born legal permanent resident of the United States, was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on March 30. The government has claimed he is a foreign policy threat, but Sarsour’s attorneys say he was actually targeted for speaking out against Israel.

U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon wrote in a decision Thursday that attorneys for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not provide enough evidence to refute Sarsour’s claims of retaliation for free speech, nor did they explain why Sarsour was suddenly considered a threat now after more than three decades of legal residency in the United States.”The mere invocation of foreign relations concerns does not automatically trump First Amendment rights,” wrote Hanlon, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. Hanlon ordered that Sarsour be released from the Indiana county jail where he was being held, and allowed to return to his Milwaukee home while his immigration case moves forward

Sarsour was released a few hours after the ruling.

“I am so relieved to be with my family. For 80 days, I haven’t been able to step outside and breathe fresh air,” Sarsour said in a prepared statement. “This experience is a reminder to all of us that we must fight together for our right to be a voice for the silenced. I will never stop speaking for Palestine and humanity, wherever I am.”

Sarsour, who has Type 2 diabetes, has lost more than 30 pounds (14 kilograms) during his incarceration and his attorneys say his blood sugar levels were only being checked once a month in the jail, putting him at risk of organ failure or death. He was released from the jail Thursday afternoon, said Malak Saleh, the communications manager for the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which has been assisting with the case.

Sarsour’s legal team said in a statement that they were ecstatic, and said he never should have been detained in the first place.

The ruling is also “a sober reminder that, if the government can target Mr. Sarsour, everyone’s free speech rights are at risk,” they wrote.

A statement from the Department of Homeland Security called Sarsour “a terrorist who was convicted of throwing Molotov cocktails” and said any accusation of discrimination by ICE agents is false.

An investigation by KFF Health News and the AP found that hundreds of detainees in at least 33 states have filed federal lawsuits with similar allegations of medical neglect.

Sarsour has no criminal record in the U.S. He was convicted by the Israeli Ramallah Military Court in 1989 of throwing a Molotov cocktail and stones at Israeli army forces, and by the same court in 1995 of attempting to hold weapons and ammunition. Sarsour has denied committing those crimes.

The Israeli military courts have faced scrutiny over allegations of limited due process and high conviction rates of Palestinians. Israel rejects those claims.

The U.S. government has been aware of the charges against Sarsour for 25 years, Hanlon wrote, and considered them at least four times when evaluating his eligibility for naturalization. Still, Hanlon noted, the government didn’t arrest and detain Sarsour until 2026.

Attorneys for DHS and ICE contended that Sarsour doesn’t have the same First Amendment rights as citizens, but the judge rejected that argument. People who enter the U.S. lawfully are invested with the same rights guaranteed by the Constitution to everyone within U.S. borders, Hanlon wrote.

Sarsour’s deep ties to the community — including his spouse, six children and nine grandchildren who are all U.S. citizens — and health concerns also weighed in favor of his release, Hanlon wrote.

“We’re getting our dad back!” Salah’s son, Kareem Sarsour, said in a prepared statement. “This experience has been a nightmare to wake up to every day, with his health at risk in a cruel basement cell simply for speaking up for Palestine. But we know who my dad is, he’s a voice for the voiceless and the heart of our family and our community. I can’t wait to hug him, and I hope everyone like him will be released.”
___

Boone reported from Boise, Idaho.

Jewish groups rally in support of Milwaukee Muslim leader detained in ICE jail

(RNS) — Progressive Jewish advocacy organizations condemn what they view as a misguided attempt to fight antisemitism by targeting Palestinian permanent residents, such as Salah Sarsour.

Faith leaders, community advocates and family members of Salah Sarsour gathered for a vigil outside the Clay County Jail on Sunday, June 14, 2026, in Brazil, Ind. The group is calling for the release of detained Milwaukee-based Palestinian activist and green card holder Salah Sarsour. Photo courtesy of Jews for Salah

Ulaa Kuziez
June 17, 2026 

RNS

(RNS) — The closest Kareem Sarsour had come to seeing his father in more than two months was standing outside an Indiana county jail where he is being held by immigration officials. 

Salah Sarsour, a Muslim Palestinian leader and green card holder, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March. Kareem Sarsour’s visit requests have been repeatedly denied. 

“It’s heartbreaking and deeply upsetting to know my father is only a few steps away, yet I can’t see him, check on him, or give him a hug,” Kareem said. “It was a very painful ride back knowing we left my father there.”

But on Sunday (June 14), Kareem Sarsour’s spirits were buoyed as he stood beside dozens of American Jews who drove in from neighboring states to rally outside the Clay County Jail to demand Sarsour’s release.

Jodi Melamed, leader with the Milwaukee chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, speaks during the event. Photo courtesy of Jews for Salah

Many American Jews feel an obligation to support Sarsour, said Jodi Melamed, an organizer with the Milwaukee chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace.

“It is very rare, especially since Oct. 7, 2023, to have so many Jews from such a wide variety of perspectives on Israel come together to defend a Palestinian for Palestinian speech,” said Melamed.

National Muslim advocacy groups see Sarsour’s arrest as part of a politically motivated campaign to stifle pro-Palestinian speech in the United States. That view is increasingly shared by other faith groups in the U.S., including some Jews.

Progressive Jewish advocacy organizations condemn what they view as a misguided attempt to fight antisemitism by targeting Palestinians like Sarsour.

“The administration is specifically conflating the fight for Jewish safety with the ways that people are standing up for Palestinian rights, and then using that as a strategy to push an anti-immigrant agenda and crack down on civil liberties broadly,” said Jamie Beran, chief executive officer of Bend the Arc, a Jewish social justice organization. 

Homeland Security officials have described Sarsour as a national security threat with ties to terrorist groups. 

In an April statement, the agency said Sarsour, who grew up in the occupied West Bank, had been convicted of throwing molotov cocktails at armed Israeli forces before being granted entry to the United States in 1993. A spokesperson also alleged that Sarsour lied in his green card application. 

Sarsour’s lawyers have argued that U.S. officials knew about his history since 1993, when his visa application was approved. They say his detention was politically motivated. 

In a status hearing on June 8, Sarsour’s attorneys asked a federal judge to release him, saying his health has deteriorated.

Sarsour was also denied a Quran and has been repeatedly interrupted by guards when he is trying to pray, his attorneys wrote in a May 29 letter to U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon. When Sarsour, who is diabetic, asked for an adequate diet, his lawyer Luna Droubi said he was told to purchase barbecue pork rinds from the commissary, which would violate Muslim dietary laws, which forbid pork products.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., who was able to visit Sarsour on the day of the protest, said he was not receiving adequate medical care for his diabetes.

“Salah is being targeted for his advocacy for Palestinians, but his mistreatment is part of the Trump administration’s larger campaign of hate against immigrants,” she said in a statement Sunday. 

Sarsour was president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, the largest mosque in that city, before his arrest. He was also a board member of American Muslims for Palestine, a national organization focused on education about Palestinians. 

Kareem Sarsour, Salah’s son, spoke during the event calling for the release of his father. Photo courtesy of Jews for Salah

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore speaks with Kareem Sarsour, son of Salah Sarsour. Moore was one of multiple elected officials to attend the event. Photo courtesy of Jews for Salah

Melamed, a longtime friend of Sarsour’s, described him as a bridge builder with strong ties to interfaith communities in Milwaukee. As a board member of the mosque’s K-12 school, Sarsour helped create a strong Holocaust education program, helping bring Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein to the school more than once.

“He’s the papa bear of our interfaith community, and that’s why it’s so hard and so shocking and really cruel,” Melamed said of Sarsour. 

American Jewish communities are divided over support for Israel. But there is wide agreement among American Jews that the Trump administration’s massive deportation agenda is unjust and in many cases unlawful.

“It should be a given that we’re here because we are Jews,” said Rabbi Bruce Elder of Congregation Hakafa in Glencoe, Illinois, who spoke at the protest. “You cannot separate the Jewish immigrant experience from other immigrants that are coming through. Our Jewish textual tradition calls for us to be here.”

Elder, who is also affiliated with the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs and T’ruah, the rabbinical human rights group, said he does not think support for the Palestinians should be tied to antisemitism.

“The cover of fighting antisemitism from an administration that has some of the most racist antisemites — using that to try to divide us against other folks, to me, is an incredible concern,” he said.

A group of attendees takes a photo together, many wearing shirts that read “Free Salah” on the front. Photo courtesy of Jews for Salah

Progressive Jewish groups have also supported and advocated for several international student leaders targeted with detention or deportation for their pro-Palestinian activism, including former Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.

In Colorado Springs, Colorado, local Jewish advocates and Christian groups have supported Hayam El Gamal and her five children, who were released after 10 months from ICE custody. ICE had been trying to deport the family since El Gamal’s ex-husband was charged with attempted murder for throwing molotov cocktails at protesters who’d gathered in support of Israeli hostages in Gaza — an attack his family said it knew nothing about.

Erin Adlerstein, who organized a Jewish-led rally last month asking for due process for Hayam El Gamal and her children, acknowledged the horror of Mohamed Soliman’s attack on the Boulder Jewish community. “But as a neighbor of the El Gamal family, it just does not serve me in any way to hold these children responsible for the actions of their father,” Adlerstein said. 

For Kareem Sarsour, the presence of Jews at the protest demanding his father’s release was meaningful.

Interfaith unity, he said, counters ICE’s goal of “breaking us as a community and picking on us one by one.”

Opinion

Is this the civil rights moment of our day?

(RNS) — The hard-won gains of the civil rights era are steadily being eroded by political pandering to white anxiety in the midst of growing diversity.

The U.S. Supreme Court photographed April 13, 2026, in Washington.

 (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Lovett H. Weems Jr.
June 18, 2026

RNS

(RNS) — On April 29, in a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map that included two majority Black districts constituted an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. This decision will likely go far in resegregating the U.S. Congress. It was yet another court ruling undercutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rendering it virtually meaningless. In fact, columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote in The New York Times that this decision might facilitate “the largest reduction in Black representation at the federal and state levels since the end of Reconstruction.”

Indeed, historian Jemar Tisby responded by saying, “We are living through the Civil Rights movement of our day.” He cautions Christians not to miss the historical moment in which we live.

The Black Church and the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act with Rev. Thomas L. Bowen

The era between Reconstruction and Jim Crow

After the Civil War (1861-1865), the Reconstruction period (1865-1877) provided protections for the rights of Black people never seen before in the country. But in 1877, those rights crumbled and would not be regained for nearly a century, in the mid-1960s when civil rights and voting rights were finally guaranteed nationwide. The dark period of Jim Crow segregation laws is sometimes referred to as American apartheid.

However, I think we need a term for the period in between Reconstruction ending and the onslaught of Jim Crow implementation by the Southern states — a period facilitated by Supreme Court decisions. During this era, the Supreme Court issued several decisions that adopted a narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment (1868) and the 15th Amendment (1870), which had been added to protect Black persons after slavery. The effect of the court’s decisions was to limit federal efforts to enforce those protections while ceding control to white Southerners to dismantle Black political participation and civil rights.

What followed Reconstruction was a white backlash that virtually wiped out the gains from the Civil War. A political compromise permitted states to limit Black rights to the point of virtually no political rights.

We need to name the backlash era because it is occurring again today. Slowly but steadily, the hard-won gains of the civil rights era are being eroded by political pandering to white anxiety in the midst of growing diversity. And that movement is aided by a Supreme Court apparently so out of touch with the racial dynamics of this nation’s history that they fail to see what looks obvious to many others. Otherwise, why would a series of Southern states move immediately after the decision to redo their congressional district lines, with the result of eliminating people of color from their congressional delegations?

State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., March 7, 1965, on what became known as Bloody Sunday. (AP Photo, File)

Religious leaders and the Voting Rights Act

Religious leaders were intimately involved in the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill of 1965. Most observers credit their efforts with some of the critical influence in securing the votes necessary for passage. As it turned out, Republican votes were essential for passage. Those working for passage came to realize that it was religious groups that had connections with Republicans that other groups, such as labor groups, did not. This became the high point for religious influence on national legislation in recent eras.

These commitments to civil rights continue today and are reflected in some immediate actions after the Supreme Court issued its opinion. In my denomination, the United Methodist Church, two agencies, the General Board of Church and Society and the General Commission on Religion and Race, issued a joint statement:

“After decades of historically protected equitable political representation,” they said, “the Court’s decision exposes Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities to renewed disenfranchisement. The potential loss of districts and voices from people of color that have been meaningfully represented, is a direct threat to a fair and equitable Democracy.”

They went on to say that “the Voting Rights Act is a testament to the courage of those who marched, prayed, and organized for a more just democracy.”

The GOP was for the minority districts they now are disbanding

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on Aug. 6, 1965. In 1982, Congress passed an amendment prohibiting the drawing of electoral boundaries or the use of other electoral devices that result in a denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color. In 1986, the Supreme Court in Thornburg v. Gingles concluded that “unlawful dilution of the voting strength of racial minorities may be caused by the dispersal of blacks into districts in which they constitute an ineffective minority of voters or from the concentration of blacks into districts where they constitute an excessive majority.” This led the Reagan Department of Justice to mandate the drawing of minority-majority districts in a state whenever voter dilution was in question.

Instead of seeing this as a threat, Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich saw that if people of color could be “packed” into a few districts, then the other districts in the South were more likely to elect Republicans since Southern whites were increasingly voting Republican. The result was an increase in both people of color representatives and Republican representatives. This was one factor in Republicans winning the House majority in 1994 for the first time in almost 40 years.

So in 1992, 12 new Black members of Congress from the South were elected, bringing the Black House membership to 38 from 26. For most of the 12, they were the first Black representatives from their states since Reconstruction. Now the GOP is rushing to undo a system that served it well in the 1990s. The results could be risky, but the intent is clear.

There continues to be a concentration of Blacks in the South, where over 50% of the Black population lives. This is precisely where state legislatures are already meeting to restructure congressional districts to eliminate Black representation. They claim that the action is strictly political with no reference to race, but that is not credible. In 1967, after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Robert Clark Jr. became the first Black lawmaker elected to the Mississippi Legislature since Reconstruction. He served until 2004. His son, and successor in the Legislature, said that claiming actions are political and not racial in Mississippi makes no sense when most Black voters are Democrats and most white voters are Republicans. “The two are often indistinguishable,” he said.

A Christian challenge

Christians are called to approach public issues from a different perspective than many advocacy groups. We seek not special treatment or advantage but rather the common good. Methodists seek to follow John Wesley’s example. He offered spiritual and religious reasons for Methodist behavior, but when he approached public officials, he cited the public interest at stake in any actions sought. He strived for what was best for all the people.

Ethicist Walter Muelder once said that “the message of Christianity should throw a searchlight on the actual facts of the existing situation and reveal the concrete consequences of political behavior.” This is a time when public officials need to see this big picture and how their actions will impact the lives of so many others. Christians are called today to point the searchlight.

(Lovett H. Weems Jr. is the Distinguished Professor of Church Leadership emeritus at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and the author, most recently, of “An Aura of Hope: United Methodism’s Next Chapter in the United States.” A version of this article first appeared on his Substack newsletter, United Methodist Focus. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)

Opinion

161 years after Juneteenth, there is unfinished work of freedom

(RNS) — The forces that threaten freedom continually take new forms.

People cheer during a Juneteenth parade, June 19, 2025, in Galveston, Texas.

 (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

Kelly Brown Douglas, Stephanie Spellers and Winnie Varghese
June 18, 2026

RNS


(RNS) — Not every proclamation is true. Some we must struggle and keep the faith to make true.

On June 19, 1865, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and issued General Order No. 3, announcing that “all slaves are free.” He was conveying news of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln had issued two years earlier on Jan. 1, 1863.

Granger’s declaration of freedom was aspirational. While the enslaved were legally emancipated, they remained bound by entrenched systems of white supremacy and enduring prejudices that denied their humanity and reduced them to property. In the years that followed, African Americans continued to live in the “afterlife” of slavery, as new and more insidious shackles emerged.

Vagrancy laws, convict-leasing schemes, debt bondage and the expanding architecture of Jim Crow segregation all served to reproduce many of the conditions of the old slave order under new legal and social guises.

Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor General Order No. 3 was yet true. Both ushered in a new reality of “unfreedom.” Both expressed the enduring tension within the American freedom experiment itself: the gap between our proclaimed ideals and our lived realities.

This paradox lies at the heart of the American story. It is the story of a nation whose Declaration of Independence announced that “all men are created equal,” even as it restricted the promise of freedom to propertied white men, enslaved more than a fifth of its population, and pursued the genocide of Native peoples.

The story of freedom is unfinished in a nation that pledges “liberty and justice for all,” while it systematically advances policies, practices and ideologies that diminish human dignity.

We know these gaps and indignities too well, as women of color in this nation, and especially as ordained women of color in the Episcopal Church. Our tradition has often mirrored and blessed American systems of white supremacy, elitism and patriarchy. But our tradition also proclaims a commitment to Jesus and to God’s beloved community, where all human beings are sacred.

We are compelled by this faith to name the gap between what our nation promises and what our nation does, to recognize the same gaps and untruths in our own churches and to join in shared struggle to make freedom real.

Here is what we know: Freedom is not an achievement to be declared and celebrated once and for all. The work of freedom is perpetually unfinished because the forces that threaten it continually take new forms, as we see today in restrictions on voting rights, challenges to citizenship and the denial of due process to immigrants.

We know the work of freedom dies when we believe that we are powerless, that we are alone, that certain lives matter less than others, that my gain is your loss, that despair and defeat are inevitable, that not everyone deserves to be free.

But we also know this: No matter what political, social or even religious institutions may proclaim, we are all human beings created in the image of a God who is free. True freedom — God-given freedom — liberates us from illusions of superiority and entitlements of privilege. It calls us beyond the domination and exclusion of any people. Our freedoms are bound up in one another.

Faith does not permit us to be passive observers of history, remaining silent and on the sidelines while others proclaim and enact untruths in the name of God. Indeed, faith compels us to participate in God’s liberating work in the world. Faith calls us to lead the struggle for freedom. Faith propels us to refuse to be divided against one another.

Faith urges us to attend to our well-being, to nourish our capacity to risk together, and to shield our joy so we can stay in the struggle. Faith demands that we proclaim freedom in word and in deed.

As our nation marks 161 years since the proclamation of emancipation to enslaved peoples — and as the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches — we can never forget that freedom remains unfinished business. We have soul work to do and truths to proclaim and make real.

The truth is, we must be honest about our history as a nation and church — we cannot heal what we have not named.

The truth is, all institutions — political, social and religious — must work for the freedom of all people.

The truth is, every form of oppression is a desecration of the image of God.

The truth is, we are endowed by our Creator with freedom, love and power that the world cannot take away.

The truth is, until all God’s children can live with dignity, justice and genuine freedom, the 1865 Juneteenth proclamation is not yet true.

This Juneteenth, we recommit with you to the work of making it true.

(The Rev. Kelly Brown-Douglas, the former dean and interim president of the Episcopal Divinity School, is a visiting professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School. The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers is an author and Episcopal priest. She was canon to former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and will become priest-in-charge of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco this summer. The Very Rev. Winnie Varghese is dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. The opinions expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

For preservers of lynching history in the US, Juneteenth is a religious reckoning

(RNS) — The Equal Justice Initiative’s Bryan Stevenson says confronting America’s lynching history is a matter of faith that demands truth-telling and repentance — especially on America’s most recently recognized national holiday.

The Rev. Marcus A.L. Freeman III, center, leads a Communion service at the historic Wesley United Methodist Church, Sunday, June 7, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (Video screen grab)

Chloe Landen
June 18, 2026 

RNS

AUSTIN, Texas (RNS) — In 2016, 89-year-old Opal Lee walked from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., in hopes of establishing Juneteenth as a national holiday. Partly due to her efforts, it became one in 2021.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when the nation’s last enslaved people in Texas learned of their freedom. The news arrived over two years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

But for “the grandmother of Juneteenth,” the holiday carries a grief more personal than for most living today. When she was 12 years old, her family moved into a predominantly white neighborhood in Fort Worth. Shortly after, on June 19, 1939, a mob of over 500 white residents burned the family’s home down.

“It’s just another iteration of a lynching, in a way,” said the Rev. Marcus A.L. Freeman III, senior pastor of the historic Wesley United Methodist Church in Austin. “To just take everything you work for and just burn it down.”

Wesley United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. (RNS photo/Chloe Landen)

Founded in 1865 by newly freed people, Wesley is one of Austin’s oldest Black institutions. It’s also home to the city’s only lynching marker, which serves to document the history of lynching in America for current and future generations.

Installed in December 2017, the marker is one of over 80 such plaques erected across the nation by the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project, which began placing the markers to help communities face the violent truths of their past. EJI also constructed the country’s first lynching memorial, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Bryan Stevenson, EJI’s executive director, told RNS that Juneteenth is a time to celebrate emancipation but also to acknowledge continued harm. Despite the positive development in recognizing Juneteenth nationally, “Black people in this country were subjected to another century of torture violence.”

Montgomery, Ala., churches part of city’s 200-year history of slavery, civil rights

For Stevenson, the work is a matter of faith. Drawing on his own religious community, Stevenson told RNS that people cannot claim to want “heaven and redemption and salvation” but be unprepared to acknowledge, repent or confess to anything. The fact that very few people can name a single Black lynching victim, he added, reveals how much work remains.

Several of EJI’s lynching markers are placed on or near church properties. The Community Remembrance Project erects markers at locations where lynchings occurred, which in some cases have been churches. Yet in instances where very little is known about a lynching, the EJI has asked local Black churches to house the markers.

Black churches served as vital protective spaces for Southerners terrorized by lynchings near and far — which has made them appropriate homes for lynching history, Stevenson said.

That was the case for the marker at Wesley in Austin.

The plaque commemorates a triple lynching in August 1894 after a white child’s death while in the care of a Black female domestic laborer. Without evidence or investigation, the woman and two Black men presumed to be accomplices were quickly arrested. A white mob then abducted the three from jail, took them to a neighboring city, tied them to stakes and shot them to death. No one was ever charged with their killings. The few surviving records suggest the victims were innocent.

A lynching marker from the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project on the property of Wesley United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. (RNS photo/Chloe Landen)

Their tragic story was not unique. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, Texas was a leader in mob violence. The Tuskegee Institute recorded 493 lynching victims in Texas between 1882 and 1968 — 352 of whom were Black. Nationally, the same archive documented 4,743 people killed by lynching during that period — 3,445 of them Black. But many lynchings went unreported, and the actual statistics are believed to be far higher.

Like the three individuals commemorated by Wesley’s marker, many lynching victims were held in jails, often on false charges or scant evidence, when white mobs came for them. Law enforcement routinely served as willing accomplices and sometimes participated in lynchings.

In some cases, lynchings were communal spectacles that drew thousands and generated a tourist economy. The 1893 lynching of Henry Smith in Paris, Texas, was attended by at least 10,000 white men, women and children. Bound to a 10-foot-tall scaffold bearing the word “JUSTICE,” Smith was tortured for nearly an hour before his body, still alive, was set aflame. Smith’s bones, pieces of his clothing and photographs of his death became fiercely sought-after souvenirs.

No white person was ever convicted of lynching a Black American. And mob members did not conceal their identities when posing beside corpses they had lynched.

Religious leaders mark centennial of S.C. lynching

Several historians of religion have interpreted lynching as a form of Southern religious practice. Lynch mobs frequently conceived of their violence as divinely ordained justice and were known to praise God amid killings. The ritualized elements of lynching, including forced confessions, drawn-out physical torture and the exchange of relics in a post-lynching marketplace, bear unmistakable resemblances to religious ceremony.

Columns memorializing lynching victims at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala. (RNS photo/Adelle M. Banks)

And justifying it all were powerful mythologies of Black criminality, none more enduring than the myth of the “Black rapist.” Though accusations of sexual assault were mostly false — and though rape in the South has historically manifested as a crime with Black women as the primary victims — the defense that lynching was necessary for the protection of white women outlived all others.

These myths about Black criminality and inferiority trace their roots to enslavement, Stevenson said, allowing some to “feel moral and decent and Christian” as they sold human beings and then lynched them decades later.

With this context, placing a lynching marker at a Black church carries theological weight, functioning as a counternarrative on sacred ground. For Wesley’s church historian Arlene L. Youngblood, the symbolism is direct. “When you put daylight on something that’s ugly, something that’s shameful,” she told RNS, “Satan has to run.”

According to Youngblood, Wesley was the only Black church in Austin that agreed to take the EJI’s marker. “Even though it’s a sad circumstance,” Youngblood said it was an honor to be asked. And it took courage for Wesley’s reverend at the time, Sylvester Chase, to say yes, she added.

Church historian Arlene L. Youngblood, left, and senior pastor the Rev. Marcus A.L. Freeman III at Wesley United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. (RNS photo/Chloe Landen)

“It was a public acknowledgment (that) something has happened to us,” Youngblood said.

Since then, Freeman, the current senior pastor, has observed that the marker engenders a discerning “reverence” in those who walk by it, sometimes so totalizing that they don’t turn their heads as he passes behind them. “It’s amazing to watch,” he said.

Freeman sees those moments as an extension of what he calls Wesley’s “ministry of presence” and “ministry of information.” The church has a long educational history rooted in the traditions of the Black church and the theological commitments of the United Methodist denomination. The lynching marker, in his view, is fully consistent with Wesley’s tradition.

“If we don’t learn our history,” Freeman said, “we’re likely to repeat it.”

“And it’s still happening — that’s the killer,” Youngblood added.

For many Black Americans, the history of lynching has never felt distant. Instances of racial terror were not isolated events but part and parcel of systemic racism and white supremacy. Lynchings’ expansive violence reshaped the American landscape, leaving thousands dead and fueling the Great Migration of more than 6 million Southern Black refugees to the North and West, in addition to contributing to the continued disenfranchisement of African Americans.

As EJI research has shown, communities where lynchings occurred are areas that remain disproportionately poor and highly incarcerated. The Center for Justice Research has similarly demonstrated that states’ lynching rates predict current poverty levels, which in turn emerge as the strongest predictor of incarceration. The national incarceration rate of Black Americans is six times the rate of white Americans. Black people are also disproportionately sentenced to death, particularly when the crime involves white victims.

Notably, the first piece of anti-lynching legislation to be signed into law was the 2022 Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime. The victory came decades after several failed attempts in the early to mid-20th century.

Stevenson and Youngblood join countless others who understand the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery and far too many more as modern-day lynchings.

“They were victims of these presumptions of dangerousness and guilt because of their color,” Stevenson said, adding these presumptions are themselves an enduring legacy of slavery’s “great evil” — the false narrative “that somehow Black people aren’t as good as white people or less human, less evolved, less decent.”

“We are not yet free of that narrative,” Stevenson said. “The work remains.”

Vice President Kamala Harris welcomes Opal Lee to the stage during a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, June 13, 2023. Lee is considered the grandmother of Juneteenth. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Stevenson envisions America’s 250th birthday, like Juneteenth, as an opportunity to celebrate but also to acknowledge persisting challenges and commit to overcoming them. The effort of installing lynching markers that draw people of diverse racial backgrounds together “to talk about these tragic incidents of the past and to commit to a healthier future” is, he said, “a microcosm of what the whole nation must do.”

Those at Wesley who shepherd Austin’s only lynching marker are similarly sitting with the full weight of that paradox. Youngblood cited a lack of affordable housing, widespread homelessness, the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately affects Black youth, deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and ongoing redistricting and gerrymandering as reasons for grief, not celebration.

“This is the best country in the world,” Youngblood said. “But right now, this is not a pretty year to celebrate America.”

Freeman has found inspiration from Opal Lee herself. In a recent Texas Co-op Power article, Lee, now nearly 100 years old, laughed off the idea of retirement. “People who are old can’t sit in a rocking chair and wait for the Lord to come and get them,” she said. “There’s still plenty of work to be done.”

“The struggle continues, as we say,” Freeman concurred.

In Richmond, churches retrace the path of the enslaved to confront their own history

RICHMOND, Va. (RNS) — Just as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — and Juneteenth — Virginia Episcopalians are trying to reckon with the role of their city and their denomination in slavery as a founding reality of the United States.

Fiona André
June 18, 2026

RNS

RICHMOND, Va. (RNS) – From 1830 to 1860, tens of thousands of enslaved people disembarked ships at Richmond’s Manchester Docks, an entry point into a bondage system that built Virginia’s wealth and shaped the city’s history. Shackled together, the enslaved people trudged along a muddy trail connecting the docks to the city’s auction house, where they were sold and bought as property.

Today, the path, known as the “slave trail,” is part of a citywide walking tour exploring Richmond’s role as a major hub of the domestic slave trade.

As about 20 Virginians marched in line, in silence, over the muddy trail on Saturday (June 13) — some clinging to one another to understand the experience of enslaved people who walked the trail in chains — a gospel singer performed the African American spiritual “Wade in the Water” alongside them.

Walking silently, Renee Munford, who is Black, said she felt her ancestors. The 65-year-old wondered what they thought as they walked, whether they were afraid, confused or both. At some point, she cried.

“Every time I looked out at the water, all I could see was people coming in on ships and disembarking, and just in a frenzy, so my heart bled for that,” she said.

The silent walk was the first part of a historical and spiritual pilgrimage through Richmond led by two local Episcopal churches. The gathering, called “Walking With the Enslaved: The Church’s Role in Slavery Pilgrimage,” seeks to cover the city’s racial history from the steps of Virginia’s state Capitol to a notorious 19th-century slave jail to Richmond’s first African church.

Participants in a slavery pilgrimage visit State Capitol square, Saturday, June 13, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (RNS photo/Fiona André) TOP PHOTO: Docent Glyn Hughes, center right, speaks to a group at the Richmond Slavery Reconciliation Statue, Saturday, June 13, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

The daylong retreat grew out of a partnership between St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Virginia’s largest Episcopal parish that was once attended by Confederate army Gen. Robert E. Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, one of the South’s oldest Black Episcopal churches, founded in 1861 by enslaved and freed Richmonders. The two congregations designed the experience centered on stories of enslaved people and enslavers, prayer and African American spirituals, which they hope will make for a transformative and eye-opening encounter for all who take part.

Just as the country prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — and Juneteenth, the commemoration of when enslaved people of Galveston got news of their liberation on June 19, 1865 — these Episcopalians are trying to reckon with the role of their city and their denomination in slavery as a founding reality of the United States. The churches’ collaboration reflects both the Episcopal Church’s racial reconciliation focus, announced in 2016, by then-Presiding Bishop Michael Curry — the first African American to lead the denomination nationally — and a broader citywide effort to confront the city’s slave-trading past.

St. Paul’s and St. Philip’s, both of whose histories were shaped by Richmond’s role as a major slave-trading center and the capital of the Confederacy, are hoping to translate these efforts into personal transformation.

Before they embarked on the pilgrimage, the group gathered for an introduction session at St. Philip’s. Nikki Fernandes, one of the tour’s docents, reminded them of the day’s spiritual goal. “We hope you leave this pilgrimage with something, and that the Holy Spirit will guide what that something is,” said Fernandes, a Virginia native and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pittsburgh.

Walking through these historic sites is more likely to transform people and help the history solidify in their minds than something less immersive, said Jerry Gilbert, one of the pilgrimage’s co-chairs and a vestry member at St. Paul’s. “That may be what people would call the ancestors talking to you, or the place talking to you. … But I think it really happens because I’ve felt it happen,” Gilbert told RNS in an April interview.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Saturday, June 13, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

Many participants had heard about the pilgrimage through the churches. The project started at St. Paul’s and took off after the congregation reached out to St. Philip’s to collaborate. Gilbert said the church needed a “nonwhite majority” partner to improve the walks.

“We knew that sometimes white privilege is very blind to seeing all of the aspects of a situation when race is involved,” he said.

St. Paul’s, perched on Richmond Hill near the Virginia Capitol, traces its roots to Monumental Church, established in 1814 by prominent Richmonders — “nearly all” enslavers, according to the church’s website. During a tour stop on Richmond Hill, Glyn Hughes, another docent, stressed that the freedom ideals that fueled America’s founding collided with Virginia’s reliance on slave trading and its leaders’ affiliation with Episcopal and Presbyterian churches.

In front of the state Capitol, which once held church services for Presbyterians and Episcopalians but also served as the Confederate States Congress during the Civil War, Hughes invited participants to “think about how they were mingling Christian values to their ideals.”


Docent Nikki Fernandes, center, addresses a slavery pilgrimage group on Saturday, June 13, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

After the 2015 killing of nine Black worshippers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, St. Paul’s started examining its own racist past. Five years later, the church removed Confederate symbols from the sanctuary, shedding the most visible reminders of its support for the Confederacy and cutting off its embrace of Lost Cause ideology after the Civil War.

St. Philip’s, nestled in Richmond’s North Side, has served as a refuge for Black Richmonders through the Civil War, the Jim Crow era and today. Despite its prominence for the city’s Black Episcopalians, the church didn’t gain full representation at the diocesan convention until 1937.

The churches’ partnership has been “transformational,” said Crystal Green, a co-chair of the project and a member of St. Philip’s. “It’s part of a healing process that is 400 years in the making, so it’s transformed our lives, our worship styles, and it’s also built a lifetime of friendships.”

Beginning at the “slave trail” shapes participants’ experience of the pilgrimage’s nine remaining stops, organizers noted. The recovered stories of Black Richmonders also ensure participants center the perspectives of enslaved people during the pilgrimage.

At the fifth stop, the First African Baptist Church, Fernandes recounted the story of Henry “Box” Brown, a member of the congregation born into slavery on a Louisa County plantation. In 1849, Brown escaped by shipping himself to Philadelphia in a wooden box to reach freedom in the North.

Four years after promising $10M for racial reparations, Virginia’s Episcopalians have little to show

The tour cultivates a sense of sacredness through prayers, silent reflections and songs. The pilgrimage’s opening prayer, which invites participants to “leave the familiar, the comforting, the known” to find a deeper sense of God, is echoed through the Bible verses associated with each stop. A preacher-style call and response ritual in front of each site also reinforces the pilgrimage’s spiritual dimension.

Participants in a slavery pilgrimage take some quiet time in St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, Saturday, June 13, 2026, in Richmond, Va. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

“God of love who traces our journeys,” Hughes said as the group approached each stop. “Enlighten the eyes of our hearts,” participants replied in unison.

The spirituals — including “Amazing Grace,” a hymn that predates the United States, and Thomas Dorsey’s 1930s classic “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” — also help set the pilgrimage’s solemn tone. For Shauntae Lilly, the gospel singer who accompanies the group, the songs are a tribute to the enslaved.

“My voice provides the voice of the journey,” said the 43-year-old singer. “ … Sometimes stories are easier felt than heard.”

Lilly, who grew up attending both Southern Baptist and Black Episcopal churches, said years of observing and listening to church choirs compensate for her lack of classical training. Like some Black participants, Lilly said she feels the presence of her ancestors during her performances.

“I feel as if the good Lord uses my voice to do that,” she said.

The pilgrimage’s last stops — the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground, the sunken slave jail of Shockoe Bottom and its dried-up reconciliation fountain — sit under the shadow of Interstate 95. Built in 1958, the highway severed Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church, a 150-year-old Black Baptist congregation and the pilgrimage’s final stop, from Jackson Ward, Richmond’s historical Black neighborhood.

Participants in a slavery pilgrimage stop under Interstate 95, Saturday, June 13, 2026, on the way to Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground in Richmond, Va. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

To Hughes, the interstate’s path through Jackson Ward is an example of “infrastructural violence” and a reminder of continued harm inflicted on Black Richmonders, he told participants on the bus ride back to St. Philip’s.

After lunch at St. Philip’s, participants scattered across the sanctuary and garden for a period of silent reflection. Guided by a Gospel of Matthew verse quoting the Prophet Isaiah about people who “listen, but never understand … look, but never perceive,” participants then shared their emotions, frustrations and awakenings. Equipped with a form inquiring about how they felt, what they thought and what value they carried as they completed the walk, the group embarked on an hourlong discussion on the pilgrimage.

As she sat on a bench by herself in St. Philip’s garden after the walk, Monica Melton, an educator who has lived in Richmond for 20 years, said she was thinking about how to get more involved.

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Louisiana congressional map that included two Black-majority districts, thereby hollowing out a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Melton said she has been concerned about Black voters’ political power in the South.

“I was really thinking less, maybe about the experience throughout the day, but like ‘where is my voice?’ like my political voice,” she said.

The personal stories of the enslaved, which she called the “most powerful piece,” also changed how she plans to approach discussions on racial history with her students.

Her husband, the Rev. Brent Melton, has also been impacted by the enslaved people’s stories. When the couple, who are white, got home on Saturday, Brent Melton modified the sermon he had prepared for the next-day service to mention the pilgrimage.

As he told the parishioners of Richmond’s Grace & Holy Trinity Church that the “work of the Kingdom coming near” requires building communities, Brent Melton noted how the pilgrimage created community by pushing participants to convene with strangers.

“It was kind of like doing the stations of the cross, we had a simple liturgy, the story slowly unfolded, we even had music with a cantor,” he said. “Before we met in our small group, we were asked to do the most hated thing: do not sit with anyone you know. It was a God experience of movement with strangers. We were in the action of bringing God’s kingdom near.”

As she stepped into St. Philip’s that morning, Munford said, she felt weary of the experience ahead. Time invested in multiple racial reconciliation efforts that ultimately stalled had left her skeptical. “It made me kind of bitter towards the whole reconciliation thing,” she said. But seeing white Virginians willing to face this history gave her hope.

“All I could think is, you’ve got these white people that are interested enough to take out time on their Saturday and go through this process with us,” she said.

Five things resettlement orgs want you to know this World Refugee Day

(RNS) — As the U.S. welcomes individuals from all over the globe to celebrate the world’s game, most refugees remain largely shut out. On this World Refugee Day, faith-based resettlement organizations say caring for the stranger is a spiritual concern.

Pastor Jennifer Castle joins others outside the U.S. District Court after a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s effort to halt the nation’s refugee admissions system, Feb. 25, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ryan Sun)

David Katibah
June 18, 2026 

(RNS) — 5.4 million people became refugees in 2025. With the global total eclipsing more than 35 million refugees — not including the 69 million internally displaced persons — resettlement remains a vital lifeline for the most vulnerable communities.

For more than four decades, the U.S. has been on the front lines of that process. But in 2025, the U.S. only resettled 11,500 refugees, a sharp drop from the more than 100,000 in 2024. In 2026, the number so far is less than 6,000 — all of them from South Africa.

As the U.S. welcomes individuals from all over the globe to celebrate the world’s game, most refugees remain largely shut out.

This Saturday (June 20) is World Refugee Day, celebrated by the U.N. since 2001. In light of ongoing changes to U.S. immigration and refugee policy, we asked faith-based resettlement organizations what communities of faith should know about current U.S. refugee policy.

The U.S. refugee program has been devastated in recent years.

Matthew Soerens. (Photo courtesy of World Relief)

The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a bipartisan effort established in the wake of the fall of Saigon, has all but been gutted. Some of the most vulnerable communities in the world are now barred from seeking entry into the United States.

But many Christians are not aware, said some of the major faith-based refugee resettlement agencies.

“The average person in the average church I go to has no idea that the refugee resettlement program has been shut down,” Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy for World Relief, told Religion News Service.

The change in policy has meant these agencies have had to make major staffing and programming adjustments. Some of them have had to survive the termination of significant U.S. grant funding. But more importantly, they say, the change has felt like an abandonment of these needy communities.
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During the first Trump administration, the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. was cut drastically, leading resettlement agencies to cut staff and reduce programs. Those programs were rebuilt during the Biden administration, only to be shut down again when Trump returned to office.

In fiscal 2026 (which began Oct. 1, 2025), the vast majority of refugees who have been resettled are white Afrikaners, a minority community from South Africa. Persecuted Christians and other religious minorities, who have historically been a priority for the USRAP — such as through the Lautenberg Program — are no longer given special consideration.

“We’re unfortunately quite confident that zero Christian refugees from countries where Christians are known to face persecution will come to the United States as refugees this year, down from more than 29,000 two years ago,” said Soerens.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau greets Afrikaner refugees from South Africa, May 12, 2025, at Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Despite the restrictions by the current administration, most Protestant pastors prefer a much wider net for refugee admissions. Only 18% of pastors in a 2026 poll run by Lifeway identified Afrikaners as a priority for refugee resettlement.

On the other hand, 70% of pastors identified those who have fled persecution and have family members already in the U.S. as a priority.
Families have been separated, and more families are at risk of separation.

Many of the individuals who come to the U.S. are hoping to chart a path for their families, said Matt Misterek, director of communications at Lutheran Community Services Northwest, one of the plaintiffs in an ongoing case against the U.S. government’s refugee restrictions.

“When individuals come, they’re often almost always here to put their front foot forward with the hope that in fact they’re going to be able to reunite with their families in the United States,” said Misterek.

Family reunification is considered a priority by Congress, especially uniting children with their families that are already stateside. Yet while exceptions to the ban are being made for South African refugees, the same is not true for these children.

One such child is a 9-year-old boy from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He’s been stuck alone in Burundi, even though his parents and siblings are already in the U.S.

“These actions are discriminatory, cruel and arbitrary,” said Mevlüde Akay Alp, senior litigation attorney for IRAP and lead attorney in the case against the selective application of the refugee ban. The boy’s family is a new plaintiff in an amended complaint put forth by IRAP.

Other policies put in place by the Trump administration in November have made reunification much more difficult. They included a freeze on all asylum applications and a pause on immigration applications for individuals from a list of 39 countries.

The result? Millions of people whose cases were in process were left in limbo.

As of last week, a judge determined the policies were “arbitrary and capricious” and forced U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to restart processing applications. Milagro Sique is the CEO of Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island, the primary plaintiff in the case that led to this ruling. She told RNS the ruling means folks can finally escape this limbo.

“It gives them some clarity, so that (they) the petitioner can make a meaningful decision on their lives,” Sique said.

For many, however, the pause on refugee resettlement means there is still no pathway for their families to join them.
Some refugees already in the U.S. could be in jeopardy.

As part of a crackdown, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested some refugees already legally in the country and detained them for questioning. A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to pause these detentions.

But refugees remain at risk of a “revetting” process, which could result in revocation of their permanent status.

Leliz Bonilla Castro, left, and her sister Xochina Michelle Castro, refugees from Honduras, participate in an English class for refugees, April 11, 2024, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)

For HIAS, the world’s oldest refugee resettlement agency, restrictions on immigration are something it has weathered in the past, particularly in the 1920s. But the refugee revetting process, which risks separating families who believe they have finally made it to safety, is unprecedented.

“This is one of the instances where there is a really fundamental attempt to transform the nature of immigration and refugee resettlement in the U.S. in ways that we haven’t previously seen,” said Noah Gottschalk, chief external relations officer at HIAS.

Gottschalk said the intention in revetting refugees — who already go through one of the most stringent vetting processes in the world — is to create a “climate of fear, a climate of confusion.”
Caring for refugees is a spiritual concern.

For HIAS, caring for refugees is not altruism; it’s an outgrowth of a deeply felt experience.

“We are motivated as we are, by our Jewish values, by the Jewish experience of being persecuted, of being discriminated against for who we are and what we believe,” said Gottschalk.

In June of 1939, the St. Louis, a ship carrying nearly 1,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, was refused entry into the U.S. Forced to return to Europe, 254 of its passengers were eventually murdered in the Holocaust.

For HIAS, remembering this tragedy is an inspiration to welcome refugees today.
People of faith have stepped up.

Many people of faith have done that and more in the past two years. Synagogues, mosques and churches have all met the gap in her community, Sique said, even though DIIRI is not a faith-based organization itself.

Some church members have even gone to great lengths to assist refugees impacted by the recent policies, such as a pair of families who traveled from Minnesota to Texas to assist a refugee who had been detained and released without documentation. For some detainees, this is a deadly experience.

Jewish communities across the country, likewise, have rallied in support of refugees, even in places where such support has come at great cost.

Despite the funding restrictions, many faith-based resettlement organizations have found new ways to support vulnerable communities.

Nevertheless, the support faith communities can offer is not sufficient to meet the needs long term. This is why Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island has turned to fighting some of the restrictions in court.

“We need more of a sustainable plan for these folks,” said Sique.