Clergy Speak Out As Avelo Deportation Contract Begins

Pastor Josh Williams: "They decided to do something that was cheap in their mind. That was easy in their mind. That was convenient in their mind." Lucy Gellman Photos. 

In what now feels like another life, Pastor Josh Williams took Avelo Airlines out of New Haven. At the time, the tickets jumped out at him; they seemed cheap, easy, convenient. The airport was close by. The flight got him to where he needed to go. If he was unsettled—if something didn't seem right—he shook it off.

Now that the airline is in the business of separating families, he can't fathom making that decision ever again. And when he thinks of why, there's a migrant who comes immediately to mind, right alongside Kilmar Ábrego Garcia. His name, of course, is Jesus Christ.

Monday evening, Williams brought his impassioned words to Burr Street, as faith leaders, immigrant rights activists and advocates of due process and the U.S. Constitution gathered outside Tweed New Haven Airport to protest Avelo Airlines' contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The budget airline began to charter deportation flights out of Mesa, Ariz. through that contract on Monday. Introduced by Bishop John Selders, who leads Moral Monday CT, speakers presented a united front against the airline, pointing to the sheer inhumanity and greed that running deportation flights entails.

Rev. Scott Marks, who closed the rally, and Rev. Kelcy Steele, who spoke about the need to remember history. 

For almost an hour, faith leaders turned the street into a house of worship, turning to both scripture and personal anecdotes as they addressed the crowd. From nods to Leviticus and Isaiah to the meaning of the word Ubuntu, speakers kept the crowd at attention, pausing only for the intermittent honking of cars that drove through the space, some drivers cheering in support. Over 100 attended, in what became the culminating hour of a day-long vigil for those deported and detained without due process.   

"They decided to do something that was cheap in their mind. That was easy in their mind. That was convenient in their mind," said Williams, a pastor at Elm City Vineyard in downtown New Haven, of Avelo. "But what they did wasn't right. It was wrong. There's something about these options, the options that we have, as we choose to see how we're committed ... is to refuse what is cheap. Is to refuse what is easy. To refuse what is convenient. To do the right thing. That's what we have an opportunity to do today."

"What happens to the men and women transported by Avelo cannot be done in my name, or your name, or the name of a God I know and love and proclaim," added Rev. Carleen Gerber, associate minister at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme. "I stand in horror at this travesty."

The rally, the first to include faith leaders among its ranks, follows weeks of public outcry following the announcement of Avelo's contract with ICE. After that news became public last month, members of the New Haven Immigrants Coalition spearheaded a petition that has garnered almost 40,000 signatures. Advocates have shown up at Tweed-New Haven board meetings and spurred growing community pushback to the airline.

Rev. Carleen Gerber, associate minister at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme: "I stand in horror at this travesty."

Meanwhile, Avelo has maintained that the contract was simply a financial transaction, to get ahead of city- and statewide competition. Or in the words of Avelo CEO Andrew Levy, as first reported by the New Haven Independent, the contract was "too valuable not to pursue."

Monday, that argument didn't fly for those like Williams, who once counted himself among Avelo's passengers. Noting his own discomfort with that fact, Williams asked attendees to raise their hands if they had ever flown Avelo.

When over a dozen hands went up—his included—he acknowledged that the flights once seemed too good to pass up. But last month, after learning what Avelo was taking part in, something in him shifted immediately.

"If you're a witness, raise your hand," he said, and more hands went up. "If you know the name Kilmar Ábrego Garcia, raise your hand.” More hands, still. “Do we want to support an airline that can charter a flight that has a story like that on it? No! So we have to support something different. We have to ask ourselves: what are we willing to do? What are we willing to give up in order to do not just the right thing, but the just thing?"

He turned the clock back to the 17th century, when the enslavement of Black Americans—the treatment of people as property—was part of America's founding sin. At some point, he said, he learned that half of all enslaved families in the U.S. were separated. These were families who colonizers stole from their homes, marched onto ships as cargo, and later pushed across man-made borders into a life of forced labor. He doesn't want to support that kind of violence in anything he does.

"We want to have a different way here," he said.    

Rabbi Herbert Brockman, who led Congregation Mishkan Israel (CMI) in Hamden for over three decades. 

At times, the rally was reminiscent of those held outside of sanctuary congregations eight years ago, as migrants fought their deportation orders from within New Haven and Connecticut houses of worship. Earlier this year, the Trump Administration rescinded the immigration policy that protected churches, hospitals, and schools from immigration raids. And just as he was in 2017, Rabbi Herb Brockman is again at the front lines.    

Brockman—who led Congregation Mishkan Israel for over three decades before he retired in 2017—remembered his own childhood in Youngstown, Ohio, where he grew up as the child of immigrants. His father, a rabbi from Riga, Latvia, grew up in poverty, separated from other kids and unable to learn in school because of his Jewish faith.

His mother, also raised in a Europe cleaved apart by war, remembered hiding in the woods to avoid sexual violence when soldiers raided the village where she lived. Her brother, who was older, would run there with the other girls in the family. They didn’t shy away from talking about what they had escaped—and sacrificed—to make it to the United States for their future generations.

"When they came to this country, all of them felt very strongly about what this country was all about," Brockman said.

For a while, that buoyed him. Each day, a young Brockman would walk into school, turn toward the flag, and say the pledge of allegiance with his classmates. Decades later, he thinks of that pledge—a pledge "to justice, and to what is right"—as an echo of the millennia-old words of the prophet Micah, who asked his followers: "What doth the Lord require of thee?"

"Only to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God," he answered, the crowd cheering and clapping. "So every day, I got up and I recited that pledge—I was so proud to be part of that tradition."

But the older he got, the more he realized that the pledge was "an ideal," a statement about America as it could be rather than America as it was. He kept his faith, urging those who listened to practice that commitment to justice. He did that himself, fighting back against the Trump Administration from sanctuary coalitions to recent lawsuits.

And still, he feels the heavy weight of this moment. As he spoke, he sported two intertwined symbols of freedom: a yellow ribbon for Israeli hostages, and a tiny red poppy, which has long been a symbol of Palestine.

"Every morning I wake up, I feel what's happened overnight," he said. "What evil has occurred? What is the government doing to people that are vulnerable, that live on the edges of society, who themselves were immigrants to this country and are treated without respect?"

Bishop John Selders, who leads Moral Monday CT, welcomed a lineup of speakers that lasted for almost an hour. ""How many of you feel just a little bit outraged?" he said at the top of the rally. "How many of you feel like this ain't right, we got to do something?"

Turning his attention to attendees, who cheered and lifted signs that read Hell No! Avel-o and CT Says Avelo: End The ICE Contract! he urged them to defend the rights of all people, including and especially immigrants who now fear for their lives, their livelihoods, and the safety of their families under the Trump Administration.

Invoking his parents a second time, he drew a parallel to railroad lines across Europe that eight decades ago entered into similar contracts with the Nazis.

That network—from France to Germany to Holland—was extensive and deadly; countries are still reckoning with that history, and paying for it too. History, Brockman said, will remember that Avelo is committing the same atrocities. "That's exactly what's happening today," he said.

Dr. Kelcy Steele, pastor at Varick Memorial AME Zion Church in New Haven's Dixwell neighborhood, echoed that call to heed history, reminding attendees of how recent—and chilling—the history of chattel slavery still is in this country. Avelo can call the flights whatever it wants, he said—but deportation without due process is just another word for trafficking.

That seems especially true when it's the business of tearing families apart for profit.

"People are being taken, not after a trial, not after a hearing, but without ever seeing the judge," he said. "They are our neighbors, our coworkers, the mothers, the fathers, who have raised our children, the one who stands next to us in grocery stores and sanctuary pews and yet they are disappearing ... always silent and always cruel."

Luis Luna called on attendees to help strengthen the Trust Act. 

Their words resonated for attendees like Margarita and Crismar, a mother and son who are part of Unidad Latina en Acción. Earlier this year, Margarita and her husband attended what they thought would be a routine immigration check in in Hartford.

At the end of it, "he was kidnapped," she said through translator Ramon Garibaldo Valdez. Four days ago, he was deported to his native Ecuador, she said. Now, she feels that her only option is to follow him there. She is trying to raise funds to afford the trip back. 

"They feel that it is the best to keep their family together, although it really hurts her, to see that her kid's dreams are put on hold right now," Valdez translated. "That is the situation that they're facing."

So too for Luis Luna, a longtime immigrants rights organizer who has worn hats for the Semilla Collective, Working Families Party, Make the Road Connecticut, and most recently HUSKY 4 Immigrants. This month, he is working on the final push to strengthen the TRUST Act, including in an interfaith advocacy at the State Capitol in Hartford this Thursday. He also encouraged attendees to make calls to Gov. Ned Lamont.