Bundled in a warm jacket and gloves, a laminated paper sign hanging from his neck, Al Nodarse stood among a sea of faith leaders and congregants outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the South Waterfront holding a small battery-powered candle. The sign bore the name of his close friend, Danny Quach, who is currently detained by ICE.
As the holiday season begins, Nodarse — like many gathered — said he has felt the weight of heightened immigration enforcement and the tension surrounding ICE’s presence in Portland. Monday’s vigil took the form of a Blue Christmas service, a tradition meant to offer space for grief and heaviness during a time typically associated with joy.
“Blue Christmas allows us to hold space in the holiday season for grief and lament and anxiety and fear,” said the Rev. Heather Hellman, pastor at Multnomah Presbyterian Church in Southwest Portland. “That tradition just seemed to fit well for the atmosphere of protest of what is happening with ICE right now and the trauma that Portland is experiencing.”
More than 75 faith leaders and congregation members gathered to participate in the service, meeting at Elizabeth Caruthers Park before walking to the ICE facility together. In the alleyway between the ICE facility and storage center next door, organizers held a short service consisting of prayers, carols and scripture readings.
“I think a lot of the folks that are being detained — I can speak for the Latino community — most of them are people of faith,” Nodarse said. “We want them to know that they are being heard, that we are thinking about them, that we are praying for them.”
The service was organized by local Presbyterian pastors with the help of Together Lab, an interfaith organization focused on building community, and local Quakers, who acted as peacekeepers during the event.
“We’re really just trying to be a presence of peace and compassion and comfort,” Hellman said about the interfaith group. “We’re not preaching … it’s about recognizing how we’re all feeling in this moment.”
Organizers hoped the event would show congregants it’s OK to be near the ICE facility, to stand alongside protestors and bear witness. For many of the vigil attendees, like Christy Thomas, the service was their first time at the facility during active protesting.
Thomas, a member of Village Grace Church in Southwest Portland, described the vigil as beautiful and peaceful, adding that it felt safe to stand witness among the congregants.
“There’s a lot of heaviness in the world right now,” Thomas said. “It feels like this is one small way to kind of have some hope and light in the midst of darkness, to remind people that they aren’t alone — there are a lot of us in the faith community that stand with them.”
For attendees and organizers, the Blue Christmas theme felt like a fitting way to acknowledge the many kinds of suffering present in the community.
“There are people that are hurting right now,” said the Rev. Joshua Dunham, pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Gresham. “Be they people who have lost loved ones, people who are houseless, people that have really tough family situations. Coming into this new era, we’re talking about people who are being targeted because they’re LGBTQ. We’re talking about people who are being targeted because they’re immigrants.”
Being people of faith, Dunham said, includes standing up for others when they can’t stand up for themselves.
“This is the craziest thing to me in the world: there are people who are scared to come to church because they’re being targeted by other people that profess to be Christian,” Dunham said. “That just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
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