On Sunday, hundreds of Jewish Marylanders gathered outside of the Baltimore ICE office to pray, mourn and demand that ICE end its “attacks on our immigrant communities” for Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year.
The demonstration, sponsored by Jews United for Justice and a coalition of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.-area synagogues, comes in response to the recent surge in deportations and detentions of immigrants.
The Trump administration has directed immigration officials to make at least 3,000 daily arrests, according to The Washington Post. In a July 28 statement, Sen. Chris Van Hollen said the Trump administration has pursued a “cruel mass deportation agenda” where many immigrants are held under “inhuman conditions” at places such as the Baltimore ICE office and “shipped off without any due process.”
“Tisha B’Av is all about recognizing and mourning the loss of sanctuary, and that is so intertwined for me with what we’re seeing right now,” Matan Zeimer, JUFJ’s Maryland policy director and a Baltimore City resident, told Baltimore Jewish Times. “For us as Jews to show up and display that we are not only mourning our own history of loss of sanctuary, but we’re mourning what we’re seeing happen right now. Today feels not only emblematic, but true to the nature of the holiday, which seems particularly powerful.”
Rabbi Ariana Katz of Hinenu Baltimore, one of the main organizers of the event, opened and closed the prayer service, contextualizing the current situation for immigrants in the United States.
The nearly 250 attendees then encircled the Immigration Court at the George Fallon Federal Building in downtown Baltimore, which houses the local ICE office: “I pray[ed] with my whole heart and pray[ed] for the people that are locked up inside,” Katz said.
“What I hope to accomplish is for our Baltimore and Maryland legislators to see how serious the Jewish community is about defending our immigrant neighbors,” Katz told Baltimore Jewish Times.
“This issue is so critical to us as an organization because it’s one that’s deeply bound up with our Jewish values and with our shared history,” Zeimer said. “Throughout history, there’s the stories of Jews as migrants, Jews as immigrants, movement of Jews across regions [and] continents, so we know in our own experiences that standing up for immigrant neighbors, our family members and our friends is totally intertwined with fighting for our own safety and justice.”
The local partnering congregations included Baltimore Jewish Cultural Havurah, Beth Am Synagogue, Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, Bolton Street Synagogue, Chevrei Tzedek Congregation, Chizuk Amuno Congregation, East Bank Havurah, Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation, Hinenu Baltimore, Kol HaLev and Oseh Shalom.
“It’s been extremely clear … that Jewish communities are really activated around immigrant justice and feel deeply passionate,” Zeimer said.
This event isn’t the first time JUFJ and Baltimore’s Jewish community have rallied for immigrants’ rights. In 2019, 400 residents attended a Tisha B’Av demonstration to urge Howard County to stop using the Howard County Detention Center as an ICE detention facility, Zeimer said.
Katz said these mass deportations aren’t some abstract idea, but reality. Although she hasn’t personally witnessed a deportation or arrest by ICE, she learned that one recently occurred down the street from her Charles Village home.
“It is not only a memory this Tisha B’Av,” Katz said. “The stories of expulsion and dispossession and destruction of our homes and our safety are happening not just in the Book of Lamentations, but also in our newspapers and in our headlines.”
She urged fellow Jews to contextualize Jewish observance with current events.
“To read the words from the Book of Lamentations that describe mothers weeping for their children … [and] to not talk about ICE forcibly ripping families apart in front of their children and neighbors’ eyes is, I believe, missing the point of observance,” Katz said.
Rabbi Tyler Dratch, the associate rabbi of Beth Am Synagogue, said that Jewish texts encourage Jewish people to strive for the dignity of all, specifically the immigrant, who is considered most vulnerable. Exodus 22:21 states, “You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.”
“It comes right from our most ancient scriptures, so I was really proud to read Torah in this moment to say that we have the power to stand for these most fundamental values of our tradition in the public square,” Dratch said.
Attendees then heard from activists representing the advocacy groups CASA, the DMV Accompaniment Network and the Stop Avelo Campaign and learned how to support immigrants in the battle against ICE.
“I want to live in a peaceful city wherein all my neighbors, regardless of their documentation status — or, even worse, suspected documentation status — can be safe and at home, because Baltimore, like everywhere in this country, is enriched and built by immigrants,” Katz said.
