ICE Is Counting on Our Silence

When thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents invaded Minneapolis this past January, Twin Cities residents, and people across the country, jumped into action, trailing these agents, organizing major protests, and dropping off food and supplies to those understandably afraid to leave their homes.

Both of our organizations, too, took action. Bend the Arc: Jewish Action leadership traveled to join a clergy day of protest alongside close partners in Minneapolis, and T’ruah sent some 50 rabbis to support dozens of their colleagues who live and work there.

Lay people and clergy alike similarly stepped up in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and other cities targeted by major Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Minnesotans successfully diminished the massive ICE takeover of their city. This is a testament to the power of citizen organizing and action.

But the absence of visible deployments of thousands of agents to a single city does not mean that the threat of ICE has disappeared, or has changed its tactics of kidnapping our neighbors, detaining immigrants without due process, and deporting people to places where they won’t be safe–including both their birthplaces and countries they’ve never even been to.

Every time we show up in the streets matters as we move through the wilderness to become the country of our aspirations.

Without the daily photos of masked ICE agents facing off against citizens armed only with whistles and cell phones, or dragging children in bunny hats or dads in pajamas out of their homes, it is easy to sit back and to believe that the threat to our neighbors has dissipated.

This is far from the truth. Last year's “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” gave the Department of Homeland Security $191 billion for immigrant detention and deportation, the largest immigration enforcement funding surge in American history. ICE alone received $75 billion, nearly nine times its annual budget. With that money, ICE is detaining more than 70,000 people per day across the country in truly horrific conditions; at least 17 people have already died in custody this year, which follows a record high 32 deaths in 2025.

ICE has yet to spend most of the money they received last year, and still they can enact this much violence in our communities. But for President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans this is not enough—right now they are trying to funnel up to $140 billion more dollars to these agencies to separate immigrant families.

In the Jewish calendar, we are currently counting the Omer, noting each day and each week between Passover and Shavuot. Within the biblical narrative, the Israelites have achieved freedom from slavery, but have not yet reached Mount Sinai, where they will receive Torah. With the drama of fleeing Egypt and crossing the sea in the past, they are stuck in the day-to-day slog of becoming free. They are disoriented, complaining, backsliding, and agitated. Counting the Omer reminds us that liberation does not come in a single moment, but rather takes days and weeks and even years of plodding through the wilderness.

It would be easy to throw up our hands and demand to go back to Egypt, as the Israelites did. But the true work of liberation requires continued action, even in the absence of flashy images and dramatic victories.

This is why our organizations, along with over 60 co-sponsoring Jewish groups, led a national day of Jewish moral action against ICE last month. This day of action followed a massive protest outside ICE headquarters in February that involved more than 600 Jews, including some 100 rabbis and cantors.

Scholars of fascism and democracy teach us that sustained nonviolent protests engaging only 3.5% of a population have been effective at multiple points in history at creating regime change. Every time we show up in the streets matters as we move through the wilderness to become the country of our aspirations.

Indeed, it is even more critical to be in the streets, showing up for our neighbors, advocating to our elected officials, and using all the tools available to us to show the Trump administration that we are still paying attention. That their attempts to distract and wear us down will not work. That we will always show up for each other.

Minneapolis may not be in daily headlines but the impacts of ICE’s violence will linger. The same remains true in far too many American cities. In the wilderness, the ancient Israelites kept complaining. They built a golden calf. They begged to go back. And they still made it to Sinai. Not because the wilderness was easy, but because they kept moving through it.

This is not a metaphor for passive endurance. Counting the Omer is an active process—you have to say the words out loud, with intention, or the count does not count. We can’t drift through the 49 days on autopilot. We have to choose, each day, to be in the middle of the story. We have a vision of the Promised Land we are trying to achieve here in the United States. It’s one where all of us, regardless of faith, race, ethnic background, ability, or birthplace, can be free.