More than 150 rabbis and cantors protested outside ICE’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in what they billed as the largest demonstration by all Jews against the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
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WASHINGTON — More than 150 rabbis and cantors protested in front of Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, February 11. Organizers say this is the largest all-Jewish protest amid the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement.
“I will not stand on my neighbor’s blood! I will not stand idly by,” they sang in English and Hebrew., I’m quoting a Bible verse.
Hundreds of rabbis, cantors and other Jews waved placards reading “We are resisting the greatest oppression since the Pharaohs” and “Looking more like Nazi Germany every day” to protest the government’s mass arrests and forced removals of immigrants.
“It’s time for the Jewish community to stand up and say, ‘You know what? What’s going on is not acceptable. It’s just not acceptable. It’s not consistent with Jewish values,'” said Sol Glasner, 74, of Chevy Chase, Maryland. “I’m glad to see so many Jews coming out and expressing themselves as Jews, especially as Jews. We’re Jewish Americans, we’re concerned as Americans, we’re concerned as Jews.”
Beth Rubin, 67, said she drove six hours from Raleigh, North Carolina, to participate because she saw ICE on the road her family fled in the 1930s.
“We lost 17 people in various concentration camps,” she said. “What’s happening today to immigrants, to citizens, to innocent people, to people who overstayed their visas, to undocumented people, to documented people, is very similar to what happened then.”
Since immigration authorities dramatically increased arrests and deportations in major cities in the early summer of 2025, pastors, clerics, imams, rabbis, and priests have stood between police and demonstrators, insisting that now is the moral moment.
They were arrested by ICE agents in Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Portland, Oregon. They were detained at the Capitol and in Congressional offices as they spoke, prayed and marched in peaceful “No Kings” rallies that drew millions to the streets in thousands of communities across the country.
While conservative evangelical Christians have long been a dominant force in U.S. politics and overwhelmingly support the Trump administration and its current actions, moderate and progressive Christians and other faith communities have taken the lead in opposing the Trump administration’s actions, particularly on immigration.
“The people of this country look to their religious leaders for moral guidance.”
On February 11, representatives from more than 60 synagogues and organizations from across the country attended ICE headquarters. Protesters regularly gathered outside ICE’s Washington headquarters, with at least a dozen employees gathered at a window to the sound of the crowd blowing the traditional shofar, chanting “shame” and singing in Hebrew.
Similar protests were held in Boston and Minneapolis.
“People in this country look to their faith leaders for moral guidance, inspiration and hope,” Jamie Beran, CEO of the progressive Jewish nonprofit Bend the Ark, told USA TODAY. “Having a really strong and vocal group of believers who say, ‘This doesn’t represent us, this isn’t what we believe, there’s actually a better way to involve all of us,’ is one of the best antidotes we have to the authoritarian overreach that we’re seeing.”
Beran’s group helped organize protests and encouraged rabbis, cantors and others to return home and encourage their congregations to speak out about immigration and immigration policy.
Protesters: ICE’s mass arrests are ‘obviously wrong’
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of the rabbinic human rights group Torua, which also helped organize the rally, told USA TODAY that rabbis protested during a surge in ICE cases in cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. However, the Feb. 11 protest was “the first large-scale, widespread Jewish community protest against ICE.”
She said seeing clergy participating in protests sends “the message that this is not a political or partisan issue, this is a moral issue.”
Jacobs said Jews are particularly tied to immigration policy. Most American Jews have only lived in this country for a few generations at most, she said.
“Jews are also not only immigrants to the United States, but they have also experienced the experience of being expelled from dozens of countries throughout history and having to find a new place to live, their transience and the vulnerability that comes from transience,” she said.
“ICE is an affront to the law, and ICE is an affront to God,” Jacobs told the audience.
Charlie Richman, 69, of Bethesda, Maryland, said he came to protest because ICE’s mass arrests are “obviously wrong.”
“When I look at the Hispanic workers building and cleaning homes in our community, I see my grandfather,” Richman said. “I look at these people, I look at my grandparents, I look at my parents, and I worry about my children, my grandchildren.”
Sarah D. Wire, USA TODAY’s senior national political correspondent, can be reached at swire@usatoday.com.
