U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson has defended federal immigration enforcement against allegations of hostility toward religious leaders protesting the Trump administration’s deportation push.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Johnson responded to a question from Religion News Service asking him to weigh in on video footage showing federal immigration law enforcement “shooting Christian clergy with pepper bullets, pepper rounds and rubber bullets.”
Specific examples cited included videos documenting one minister “being hit in the head with pepper rounds” and a United Church of Christ minister “shot directly in the face with a pepper round.” Johnson was asked if he shared “the concern of this clergy that this is a religious freedom issue.”
“I can’t comment on any of those instances. I haven’t seen or heard any of those videos,” Johnson replied. “Religious freedom does not extend and give you the right to get in the face of an ICE officer and assault them, if indeed that was what happened there.”
Johnson defended federal law enforcement’s response to the protests against the Trump administration’s immigration policies as “measured,” adding “ICE officers, by the way, are under tremendous strain and pressure.”
The top House Republican listed the challenges faced by ICE officers as he urged members of the media to consider “How would you like to do that job?”
“You have the media criticizing [your] every move and you have wild protesters in your face cursing at you, waving their finger in your face and sometimes pushing you and assaulting you,” Johnson explained. “Thank the Lord that there are people who are willing to do that difficult job, to put on the badge and show that kind of courage. We should be on the side of law enforcement and anybody who’s trying to disrupt those operations … they need to be handled the right way.”
Johnson concluded his remarks by calling on all those protesting ICE, including members of the clergy, to “get out of their face and let them do their job.”
One of the incidents highlighted occurred on Oct. 23, as protesters sought to block federal immigration officials from entering Coast Guard Island in Alameda County, California. Protesters pounded on the hoods of a dozen law enforcement vehicles and agents got out to push protesters out of the way, NBC Bay Area reported.
Video footage from the protest shows protesters hurling obscenities at the ICE agents and Rev. Jorge Bautista of College Heights Church in San Mateo, California, getting shot in the face with a pepper round. In an interview conducted after the protests, Bautista still had cuts on his chin.
The other incident occurred on Sept. 19 outside an ICE Facility in Broadview, Illinois. Video footage of the unrest shows law enforcement officials stationed on the roof of the facility shoot Rev. David Black with a pepper ball. Black, who leads the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, has joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration filed by the ACLU of Illinois last month.
The complaint alleges that in addition to getting struck “repeatedly in the head with pepper balls,” Black was also “sprayed in the face with tear gas by officers in the street.” The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, maintains that the Trump administration violated Black’s rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in addition to engaging in what it characterized as multiple constitutional violations.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
