The wind picked up as the procession made another lap around 26 Federal Plaza. Hail stones and chilling weather pelted demonstrators, some using canes and walkers, who would not be deterred from completing their silent march around the city’s immigration courthouse.
More than 50 protestors gathered in lower Manhattan on Nov. 13 for the New Sanctuary Coalition’s weekly “Jericho Walk,” a ritual of prayer and public witness. The coalition is a faith-based advocacy organization protesting the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
The action, held each Thursday, took on added significance this week as Catholic communities across the country marked the feast of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants. Two Jesuit parishes, St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius Loyola, joined the march this time, along with over a dozen clergy from different faith traditions.
Demonstrators march through hail outside of the federal building. Credit: Edward Desciak
The procession lasted more than 90 minutes as temperatures dropped and hail gave way to bursts of freezing rain. Marchers, bundled in scarves and gloves, pressed on, walking past security officers who observed in silence from behind metal barricades.
Participants walked seven laps around the federal building, drawing from the biblical account of Joshua circling the walls of Jericho. At the end of each lap, the group paused at the courthouse entrance—where people waited in the cold for their court appointments—offering a short prayer before a three-fold blast of the shofar sounded across the plaza.
After the seventh lap, gatherers stretching down Broadway recited the Jericho prayer, calling for an end to “unfair laws” that “discriminate” against “millions of our brothers and sisters.” Following the prayer, the crowd shouted as loud as they could toward the building, evoking the triumphant scene of the Israelite army crashing down the walls of Jericho.
The symbolism of the day was amplified by the fact that the building has been showing some signs of structural stress because of waterproofing problems and sub-basement deterioration since N.S.C. began the Jericho Walk in 2012.
“You see the bandages they have on the windows?” joked Ravi Ragbir, the executive director of N.S.C., who led the procession. He pointed to black, sleeve-like tarp covering sections of the facade of the towering building. “We are taking credit for that,” he said with a wry smile.
Mr. Ragbir, a Trinidad-born immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1991, fought his own deportation for 19 years. He described the long-term trauma of that struggle. “Even though I won my case, the P.T.S.D.” does not go away, he said. Sometimes, his “body breaks down without warning.”
After serving time for a wire fraud conviction, he was detained by ICE in 2006 and had his green card revoked, beginning an almost two-decade-long battle against deportation. In 2018, Mr. Ragbir was again detained at 26 Federal Plaza while attending a routine check-in. “They targeted me because of my organizing and my free speech,” he said.
Just one day before Donald Trump took office for the second time, Joe Biden pardoned Mr. Ragbir.
He credits the intervention of faith leaders and elected officials for preventing his deportation. “I’m still here because people stood up,” he said. “We can win if we are working together.”
Mr. Ragbir, who was raised Hindu but converted to Christianity, emphasized the biblical significance of N.S.C.’s prayerful witness. He urged people to say the Jericho prayer in solidarity with migrants or “find an institution in your own community that needs a Jericho walk.”
N.S.C. has long organized accompaniment inside New York’s immigration courts at 26 Federal Plaza and 290 Broadway, supporting immigrants facing hearings and monitoring federal enforcement activity.
Since May, the organization has repeatedly witnessed coordinated courthouse arrests carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection with the aid of other enforcement agencies, according to a press release.
Before the Jericho Walk on Thursday morning, elected officials, including Assemblymembers Micah Lasher and Linda Rosenthal, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and New York City Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro, joined N.S.C. for a court watch.
Alan Yaspan, N.S.C.’s director of communications, told America that after seeing “troops of ICE officers,” they spoke with a supervisor from the Executive Office for Immigration Review about volunteers being denied access to waiting rooms and courtrooms and barred from distributing non-soliciting information about immigrant rights.
“It’s a First Amendment [violation] when we’re told we can’t go into a waiting room or even witness a hearing,” Mr. Yaspan said. “They make excuses. ICE agents…harass us. They bully us and curse at us.” He noted instances of ICE officials using vulgar language to attack volunteers.
“The pressure is high; the paranoia is higher,” he said, describing how the second Trump administration has changed in its response to N.S.C. demonstrations. “But the work has remained the same at its core.”
Protestors with Rise and Resist line the sidewalk. Credit: Edward Desciak
On the Worth Street side of the courthouse, another group maintained a parallel witness. Members of nonviolent direct action group Rise and Resist stood in a silent vigil, holding signs on both sides of the sidewalk impossible for passersby to miss.
Jerry Goralnick, a longtime organizer and pacifist, has been attending these weekly vigils. His group, he explained, shows every Thursday at 12 p.m. “to protest the presence of ICE in our community and the cruelty that happens to our neighbors.”
“We have never seen the federal government act this cruelly,” Mr. Goralnick said, contrasting the current moment with the tenor of the immigration system he experienced a decade ago. “It was a very different world then. People would go for their hearings, and the judge would say, ‘Come back in six months with a lawyer.’ They would be able to go on with their life. Now, people go in for their hearing, and then they’re kidnapped and whisked off to who knows where.”
He gestured toward the building behind him. “What’s going on in there is truly horrible,” he said. “The citizens of New York and this country need to know what’s going on.”
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