Three years ago, St. Thomas Lutheran Church in Bloomington welcomed a Syrian refugee family through Exodus Refugee Immigration, Susan Kinzer told the crowd of 60 at the “Supporting Immigrants on Inauguration Day” event Monday. Since then, the father has received his commercial truck-driving license, the daughter is studying at IU and the son is pursuing a career as a mechanic, she said.
The family’s siblings have been waiting in a refugee camp in Lebanon for 10 years, so the church applied to bring the sibling and their family through a federal program called Welcome Corps. But with President Donald Trump’s impending executive orders, it may already be too late.
“That application is pending, and we expect in the next 24 hours it will be shut down,” Kinzer said.
One by one, faith leaders, immigration lawyers and advocates at the event shared resources and tentative expressions of hope amid the uncertainty of Trump’s inauguration, which is expected to be followed by executive orders targeting immigration, including an attempt to end birthright citizenship.
During the event’s keynote, Bloomington Mayor Kerry Thomson stopped short of explicitly refusing to comply with Trump’s immigration orders but expressed support for the refugee and immigrant population, highlighting the difference between just and unjust laws in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
“Policies do not define our humanity,” Thomson said. “Our actions do.”
While Bloomington does not have a particularly high foreign-born population, Exodus Refugee Immigration has served roughly 150 refugees in Bloomington per year since the city was federally approved in 2021 as Exodus’s second refugee resettlement site in Indiana. These refugees come primarily from Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.
Several Democratic local government leaders joined Thomson at the event, including Bloomington City Councilmember Isabel Piedmont-Smith and newly elected Monroe County Councilor Liz Feitl.
Christie Popp, a Bloomington immigration lawyer, didn’t mince words on the effects of Trump’s proposed immigration policy, which includes suspending refugee resettlement and carrying out mass deportations.
“There’s no question that horrible things are going to happen,” Popp said.
Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan told Fox News last Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would launch large-scale raids in Chicago and other U.S. cities as early as Tuesday. Homan later said the administration is reconsidering the raids after details were leaked to the media.
Popp emphasized the importance of local advocacy, particularly when it comes to the Indiana General Assembly. Republicans in the state legislature have filed several bills to crack down on illegal immigration, including one that would make being undocumented in Indiana a Class A misdemeanor and punishable by up to a year in jail. The legislative session officially begins Tuesday.
Toward the end of a stream of speeches from faith leaders, Pastor John Nyota from First United Methodist Church, whose congregation includes refugees from Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, recited Amos 5:21-24 from the Bible to a hushed crowd.
“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music,” Nyota read. “When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice — oceans of it. I want fairness — rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”
After adding a special emphasis on the last sentence, Nyota concluded with his own line.
“I hope our words, that we sound and talk all the time, will be transitioned into justice and fairness for all,” he said.
More information on resources available to refugees is available at bloomingtonrefugees.org.
