As Springfield's 15,000 Haitians brace for deportations, local churches train to resist ICE

“We have orders of deportation,” said a volunteer in a raised voice, posing as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and pounding on the sanctuary door. “What you’re doing is harboring.”

Inside the sanctuary, hundreds of trainees blocked the large wooden double doors. One called out, “We’re exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of worship.”

The handful of faux ICE agents moved to a different entryway. As they pried open the side door to the sanctuary, some trainees held up phones to record the encounter while others blew whistles.

The scenario was part of a roleplay exercise at a rapid response training in Springfield, Ohio, on Saturday (Jan. 24). Despite the winter storm in the forecast, nearly 200 people from in and around Springfield gathered at Central Christian Church for the event organized by G92, a new Springfield-based coalition of pro-immigrant churches and advocates named after the 92 times the Hebrew word “ger,” which means stranger or sojourner, appears in the Hebrew Bible.

Religion & Politics

Photos of the Week: Clergy mobilize against ICE, Hindu Magh Mela festival

Faith leaders demonstrate against ICE tactics in the departures area of Terminal 1 of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, Friday, Jan. 23, 2026, in St. Paul, Minn. (RNS photo/Jack Jenkins)

In Opinion

And finally, This yogi wants Gen-Zers to see their lives transformed by yoga

Before 23-year-old Etai Atula shared everyday yogic wisdom with his 525,000 followers on Instagram, he was an anxious, nerdy teenager from Brooklyn, New York. The former drummer of the indie rock band LAUNDRY DAY, like many his age, Atula was chronically online. But everything changed when he found yoga.

Now, Atula’s “karmic assignment,” he said, is to tell his story to a largely non-religious but spiritually curious generation in their own language. His new book, "Old Path New Prints: A Gen-Z Yogi's Solo Pilgrimage Across Asia," released Jan. 7, pulls entries from his diary along his journey through 10 countries over the past two years teaching and practicing yoga. During it, he often learned more, he said, from the “ordinary people and lay practitioners” than the “gatekeepers of knowledge.”

“It’s not just the story of how yoga changed my life,” Atula told RNS in a Zoom interview on Saturday (Jan. 24), “but it’s a bit of a treasure map on how it can change anybody’s life.”

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