Last Saturday, May 10, 2025, the defense committee that fought against Ravi Ragbir’s deportation for 17 years gathered along with allies, friends, and family to commemorate the presidential pardon that the team secured in January. The festivities were held at Park Avenue Christian Church, where Pastor Kaji Dousa, a longtime ally of Ragbir and activist for immigrant sanctuary, presided over remarks and prayers.

Ragbir and his spouse, Amy Gottlieb of the American Friends Service Committee, thanked the community for their stalwart support. They also unveiled an exciting update: that as of two weeks prior, the Board of Immigration Appeals had fully dropped deportation proceedings against Ragbir. Remarks were then delivered by attorneys Alina Das and Jessica Rofé, who helmed the defense committee as part of their roles leading the NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic. Many of the current and former law students that had contributed to the effort were in attendance.

Speakers included longtime allies of the effort: Representative Yvette Clarke, State Assemblymember Jo Ann Simon, Representative Jerry Nadler, Mizue Aizeki and Marie Mark of the Surveillance Resistance Project, the Rev. Dr. Chloe Breyer of the Interfaith Center of New York, and The Rev. Canon Marie Tatro of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, who delivered a prayer.

At the end of the program, New York City Public Advocate Juumane Williams, who had been arrested protesting ICE’s attempted deportation of Ragbir in 2018, presented certificates on behalf of his office to Das, Pastor Dousa, and law students and Ravi Defense Committee members Djibril Branche and Mariel Gonzalez-Medellin. He then issued a Proclamation, commemorated by a framed print, to Rofé.

The event ended with a dance party marshalled by DJ Vincent Southerland, a joyous end to a heartfelt ceremony and a moment of rejuvenation for the continuing struggle against deportation.

This past Sunday, the Quaker Walk to Washington, a Project of the Brooklyn Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (or Brooklyn Quaker Meeting), completed the first day of its sojourn to Washington, DC.

Walk participants started the day at the Flushing Friends Quaker Meeting House in Queens, proceeding on foot to 110 Schermerhorn St in Downtown Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Meeting has been hosting the New Sanctuary Coalition’s meetings and work sessions. They were escorted by allies including New Jersey’s Winds of the Spirit, an immigrant resource center that has been serving its community for 25 years.

As walkers celebrated the first 13-mile leg of the 19-day trek to Washington DC with a meal, they were joined by New Sanctuary members, many of them Quakers themselves, who spoke about the organization’s ongoing initiatives to fight deportation, including the burgeoning court accompaniment program and the upcoming Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS) training on May 12.

The Quaker Walk concludes on May 22, when participants will unite with the DC Interfaith March for Freedom. That afternoon, they will walk to the United States Capitol Building and present congressional representatives with the Flushing Remonstrance, a 1657 document authored by leaders in the town of Flushing (now Flushing, Queens) to the Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, then the top colonial administrator of New Netherland. The document expresses the town’s rejection of Stuyvesant’s order to forbid Quaker worship and asserts their desire to foster religious and ethnic plurality, to “soe love,” and to “doe unto all men as we desire all men should doe unto us.” It is considered a precursor to the Bill of Rights.

At present, the Quaker Walk is on its third day, traversing southward from Plainfield Friends Meeting House to Blackwell Mills Canal House (both in New Jersey). We wish them Godspeed!

On Saturday, March 9, 2025, plain-clothed ICE agents forced their way into a residence owned by Columbia University and abducted Mahmoud Khalil, a Green Card-holding permanent resident who had been participating in protests against the war on Gaza and the occupation of Palestine. The Department of Homeland Security has since reported that the order to detain and deport Khalil came specifically from the White House. He remains in ICE custody at present.

The New Sanctuary Coalition joined many community organizations — including the Palestinian Youth Movement, Shut It Down for Palestine, the People’s Forum, Desis Rising Up and Moving, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation — for an emergency rally held the following Monday at Federal Plaza. New Sanctuary leader Ravi Ragbir joined the rally's organizers at the Thomas Paine Park fountain and delivered remarks to the crowd of approximately 3,000, discussing the similarities between ICE’s kidnapping of Khalil and their attempted deportation of Ragbir in 2018. He made it clear that both he and Khalil had been targeted for speaking out, and that the immigrant community and its allies will not be intimidated by ICE’s attempts to instill fear. He pointed out that ICE is a civil agency with no jurisdiction over citizens, and those with citizenship status should use it to resist and repel ICE’s attempts at detaining and deporting our Friends.

Ragbir was interviewed at the rally by Gothamist. Read their coverage here.

Ravi Ragbir and the Rev. Dr. Robert Foltz-Morrison

SanctuaryHood is an effort by New Sanctuary Coalition and allies to educate and train our neighbors and local businesses on how to protect each other from ICE raids.

In the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens, the site of a recent ICE raid, the community organizations Desis Rising up and Moving (DRUM) and the South Queens Women’s March (SQWM) have taken the streets to conduct SanctuaryHood walkthroughs. During walkthroughs, small teams enter businesses and talk with owners and employees, distributing resources including New Sanctuary’s Beyond Know Your Rights pamphlets and Protect Your Workplace manuals, enlisting them to join local training sessions, where they can learn in-depth information on how to protect the community from ICE.

If you are interested in organizing SanctuaryHood efforts in your New York City neighborhood, reach out to us at info[at]newsanctuarynsc.org.

Photos taken on Friday, March 7, 2025.

On Thursday, February 20, 2025, the New Sanctuary Coalition restarted its Jericho Walk tradition at Federal Plaza in New York City. A group of 35 faith leaders, organizers, and other immigrants’ rights supporters marched in a line around the building seven times, pausing at the entrance at the beginning of each lap to hold their hands up toward the building in silent prayer. After the last lap, they read aloud “Jericho Prayer”:

Dear God, you are a God of love and you call us to love and to take care of each other so that we can build a society of love, peace and justice.

In this country founded on principles of liberty and justice, millions of our brothers and sisters live under unfair laws that discriminate against them. Millions of our families are divided and separated. Parents and loves ones are deported. Every day, millions of people suffer the pain and anguish of not being able to live in dignity.

That’s the reason why we are here today in this significant place that represents the wall of injustice that divides us.

We know that you are a fair God and that you have listened to our prayers. We know that in the fullness of time, you will bring down these walls of injustice. We know that you will help us soften the hearts of our government, politicians and all people so that, every soon, we can have a new immigration law that protects the dignity of all.

We pray that you will GIVE US ALL THE RIGHT TO REMAIN IN JUSTICE, IN SOLILDARITY AND IN TRUTH. Amen

Upon the conclusion of the prayer, the group delivered a primal scream at the building as Ravi Ragbir blew a shofar.

The Jericho Walk is a reference to the biblical story in which Israelites topple the walls surrounding the city of Jericho by marching around them for seven days before finally destroying them with shouts and horn blasts.

New Sanctuary Coalition will be performing the the Jericho Walk at Federal Plaza on a weekly basis at noon.

Photo by Gil Geitz

Download the Jericho Walk flyer