Now is the time to make your voice heard: Religious Liberty or Religious Bigotry?
by Rabbi Nancy Kasten If the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) expects public school curricula to promote the priorities
For one year, interfaith clergy and faith leaders with CLEAR DFW have gathered outside the ICE field office in Dallas to pray, bear witness, and stand with immigrant neighbors.
The reason for these vigils has not gone away. Families are still being separated. Due process is still being threatened. Fear is still being used against people who came here seeking safety, stability, or a future for their children.
But week after week, this community keeps showing up.
As Rabbi Nancy Kasten said at Monday’s anniversary vigil, “Our country is strengthened and secured by welcoming people, not terrorizing them.”
CLEAR DFW will continue gathering for weekly vigils on Mondays, and you are invited to stand with us.
We continue to pray. We continue to witness. We continue to insist that our immigrant neighbors deserve dignity, safety, and justice.
Just over a year ago this group of interfaith clergy and faith leaders in North Texas formed the Clergy League for Emergency Action and Response, now known as CLEAR DFW, to mobilize, speak with moral clarity, and take collective action to protect immigrant communities and the rule of law.
Week after week we have stood here and witnessed innocent neighbors entering this building in good faith and being detained. We have tried to comfort partners and parents and children who are left bereft and bewildered. We have been frustrated by the inconsistent rules and arbitrary decisions that impact our ability to provide pastoral presence and care to people inside and outside this facility.
Our witness has not curbed the injustices perpetrated by ICE or its affiliates. But we refuse to turn a blind eye. We will not live our lives as if this has nothing to do with us.
When we feel disempowered, we can feel demoralized. But standing here, week after week, we have felt re-empowered, and re-moralized.
Our country is strengthened and secured by welcoming people, not terrorizing them.
Both faith and patriotism call us to welcome the stranger, not simply out of compassion, but out of loyalty to God and Country.
If due process is denied to anyone it can be denied to everyone. If the government can remove a person from their home, their workplace, their child’s school, or anywhere else without a warrant and without cause, no one is safe.
What we are left to do is to remind each other, and everyone else who sees or hears us, this is not right. This is not fair. This is not just. This is NOT what God demands of us.
These actions by those in power erode the very foundations of our communities. The members of CLEAR are determined to do what we can to rebuild that foundation through faith and with our bodies. We hope you will join us.
I am proud to be a founding member of CLEAR, and while I lament the reason we must continue to hold these vigils, I am grateful for the community of faithful upstanders who show up, for our neighbors, for our country, for our God.
Today, we have told the truth.
We have named what is too often hidden—
the fear that waits in the early morning hours,
the anxiety that sits in the chest before a check-in,
the grief of families separated not by choice but by policy,
the quiet courage of those who show up anyway.
For a year now, week after week, we have stood on this ground.
We have prayed, not as a gesture, but as an act of resistance.
We have insisted—by our presence—that no one is invisible,
no one is disposable,
no one is beyond the reach of God’s care.
And if we are honest, this year has changed us.
It has made us more proximate to pain.
It has stripped away easy answers.
It has taught us that faith is not only what we believe in quiet rooms,
but what we are willing to stand beside in public places.
So today, we are not making an end.
We are marking a milestone, yes—but not a conclusion.
Because the work of compassion is not finished.
Because the call to justice does not expire.
Because love—real love—does not turn away when it becomes costly.
We leave this place with the same commitment that brought us here:
to keep showing up,
to keep praying,
to keep bearing witness,
to keep standing with our neighbors—whatever may come.
And we do so trusting this:
that even here—especially here—
God is present.
God is in the waiting.
In the trembling voices.
In hands that reach for one another.
And in the stubborn hope that refuses to die.
So now, go from this place—
Not with easy peace,
but with a peace that has passed through lament.
Go with hearts that remain open,
even when it would be easier to close them.
Go with courage enough to stand where love requires you to stand,
and humility enough to listen when others speak their truth.
And may the God who hears every cry
strengthen your spirits,
sustain you in hope,
in courage,
and in love—
until justice and mercy meet,
and all are gathered in dignity and peace.
Amen.
by Rabbi Nancy Kasten If the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) expects public school curricula to promote the priorities
“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all‑wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form