Camas church members protest ICE

During the past few months, the “open sharing” portion of the Camas Friends Church’s weekly gatherings has included a lot of discussion about current events — in particular, the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Pastor Matt Boswell knew that some of the church members had been participating in anti-ICE rallies in Vancouver and Portland. While out for a run on Jan. 29, he experienced an epiphany that he should organize a local protest following a tradition of activism within the Quaker faith, a centuries-old Christian denomination.

Less than one week later, about 50 church and community members stood on the sidewalk in front of the church on Third Avenue in Camas, holding signs and waving to drivers.

“I didn’t need to point our folks in any particular direction,” Boswell said. “I was just reading the room.”

Church members have peacefully protested every Wednesday afternoon in February and may continue into March and beyond. The protests are an effort to “build solidarity, visibility, and demonstrate that ‘the religious left’ is active in standing with the marginalized in our communities,” according to a church statement.

“I have been to those big protests in Portland with tens of thousands of people, but there’s something really special about doing it in your own neighborhood, waving at cars (driven by) your neighbors waving back,” church member Jacki Kehrwald said. “Last week a friend told me, ‘I had a neighbor wave at me, and I didn’t know what she believed about these issues, but getting a honk and wave from your neighbor can open up a dialogue.’ ”

The rallies “protest the action and existence of ICE and a government that enables their destructive activity in our communities,” according to the church statement.

“Something that comes up a lot in the Bible is a constant concern for hospitality to strangers,” Boswell said. “There’s no Bible verse that says, ‘Go and do protests on Third Avenue.’ But I think that’s our interpretation of what it means, in this place and time, to show hospitality to the ‘stranger’ — in this case, immigrants. That’s really the biblical underpinning of it.”

Quakers have a strong history of activism. They called for the end of slavery in America, participated in the United States’ civil and women’s rights movements, and seek social justice and prison reforms.

Two Camas Friends Church members, acting on a tip from an Afghan refugee family the church helped to resettle in 2021, recently helped a girl return to her home country of Guatemala after her father was detained by ICE. Other members who are employees of local school districts have talked about their experiences with students who switched to remote learning because they’re terrified to leave their homes.

“Violence is completely out of alignment with the Quaker commitment to peace and nonviolence,” Boswell said. “Anything that is powered by any kind of prejudice (is out of alignment). I don’t have a well-thought-out scholarly view of the solution to immigration in the United States, but I know that this is not it.”