More than a dozen area synagogues co-sponsored a Tisha B’Av demonstration outside the ICE Baltimore Field Office for the second consecutive year on July 23, with attendees using the Jewish holiday that mourns the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and other tragedies to protest ICE.

Local rabbis led a Mincha service at the event sponsored by Jews United for Justice. This year, dozens were in attendance despite the protest coming at the end of the day on a Thursday.

Debbie Steinig, a Baltimorean and member of Chevrei Tzedek Congregation, said that Tisha B’Av directly relates to what those at the protest were speaking out against last week.

“If you read the text, Tisha B’Av is about war and a refugee crisis and starvation and homelessness and problems that we see today, both here and around the world. The traditional teaching that the Temple was destroyed because of baseless hatred is also something that we see today,” she said. “So, I think it’s a pretty relevant holiday, and this is a fitting place to pray with your feet, as the saying goes.”

Last August, hundreds of community members protested at the same building for the same cause on the same holiday.
Rachel Kutler, JUFJ’s Baltimore director, organized both demonstrations. She said the event is just as necessary a year later.

“For over a year now, the federal administration has been targeting immigrants for deportation with cruelty and violence and without due process or regard for constitutional rights,” Kutler said.

Additional incidents involving ICE agents and other federal officers have made headlines since the federal immigration crackdown that inspired the August demonstration, including the fatal shootings of 37-year-old Renée Good and 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

In the span of a week in July, ICE agents fatally shot 26-year-old Joan Sebástian Guerrero in Maine and 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas.

“It hasn’t gotten any better since a year ago, and unfortunately, we feel like we have to continue to demonstrate,” Kutler said. “We felt like we had to do this event again to demonstrate our collective outrage and mourn and demonstrate Jewish communal resistance to the ongoing attacks on immigrant communities.”

Betsy Krieger attended a vigil Thursday morning in Pikesville for Sebástian Guerrero and Salgado Araujo, saying that it’s important to do so in part because it is a reality that hits close to home for Jews.

“We’ve experienced the worst [as Jews], and now people are experiencing something that’s related,” she said.
Susan Gewirtz of Kol HaLev echoed this idea.

“It’s a Jewish value to be paying attention to those who are ostracized and treated inhumanely, particularly in our own country,” she said.

ICE activity has also upended lives close to home. The Baltimore ICE field office is the site of many detentions. Federal immigration agents arrested two people outside a Baltimore elementary school in June.

Julia Fernandez is a community leader with CASA, an immigrant services nonprofit that works on behalf of the documented and undocumented. She came to the United States in the 1970s with her parents, and Baltimore has been her home for many decades. She said that in all her years in the U.S., she hasn’t experienced anything like the terror that ICE is inflicting on the immigrant community.

“I have never seen the things that are going on in this country right now. It makes you think and reflect. This community is fighting for a good cause. We are all equal in this country, and we all have some kind of background of immigrants. It could be Jewish people, Hispanic people, African people, wherever you are from, that is who built this country — immigrants,” Fernandez said.

Elise Saltzberg of Chevrei Tzedek and Baltimore Jewish Cultural Chavurah is the grandchild of undocumented immigrants from Europe, and she said that, ultimately, the U.S. is a place that should welcome those who are fleeing untenable situations. If the country hadn’t done so with her grandparents, she wouldn’t be alive.

“The relatives that [my grandparents] left behind in Lithuania were all killed in the Holocaust. I wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t gotten into the U.S. by not entirely honest methods,” Saltzberg said.

Kerian Havens encouraged people to give time where they can, depending on what they have to offer.

“We have great tools and great communities out there that are doing the hard work, and really all it takes is a phone call or a Google search, and you’re going to find some group that is looking for volunteers to probably make use of some skill, whatever skill it is that you’re willing to give them right now, because that’s how dire the situation is,” she said.

For Dr. Zack Berger, who works with the Esperanza Health Center Health Services Clinic, a free clinic that serves undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants, that means offering medical care — something that is inaccessible for many.

“Our society gives undocumented people and immigrants in general with healthcare the shaft, right?” he said. “Doctors often face the situation. How do you try to give the best possible care to the individual when society is against them, or when societal structures are against them?” Berger said. “And then, very practically, these days people in Baltimore are getting kidnapped off the streets. Either it’s my patients, or their spouses, or their loved ones, and so that understandably terrifies them. They don’t want to come to their appointments, or their lab tests, or their specialist appointments.”

While attendance was lower compared to last year’s protest, which fell on a Sunday, 17 synagogues co-sponsored the demonstration — up from 14 participating synagogues.

“I think it really just shows that this issue of immigrant justice is felt deeply in the Jewish community,” Kutler said.
Ruti Kadish, a Baltimorean in attendance, said that Jewish history shows us that we need to stand with communities at risk, because you never know who is next in line.

“We know very well that if it’s not us this time, it’ll be us next time. But not even [just] because of that — because it’s the right thing to do,” Kadish said.

Another Baltimorean, Amy Chapper, said that Tisha B’Av in particular shows us this.

“It makes us remember our past and what happened and the need to go out now and improve the world,” she said.
For Fernandez, the dire situation she sees outside — with her and her neighbors scared to do things as simple as take out the trash — doesn’t make her want to be here any less. Even though her family could have feasibly ended up elsewhere after leaving Honduras, she is glad that she is here, in the U.S.

“It’s still the land of opportunity. If you know your rights, if you fight for your rights, if you fight for the future of the next generation of people … I’m here for my grandkids, my great-grandkids and for the future of this country. This is what this country is all about. That’s why we’re here,” Fernandez said.

Berger added in her view, while the United States hasn’t met the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence — or even the Constitution — that doesn’t mean people should give up.

“America has never quite reached that standard, but we want to reach that standard. We’re receding from that standard [right now], so that’s the other reason we’re coming together today,” he said.

While Kutler hopes this same demonstration won’t be necessary next Tisha B’Av, she and JUFJ are prepared to organize as long as it takes for ICE to stop unlawful actions.

“I hope we will have ended attacks on the immigrant community by this time next year,” Kutler said.

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com