Quiara Alegría Hudes

We Conscientiously Object

I want to consider the current ICE situation in a spiritual context. No matter what your faith, religion, or spiritual beliefs - if any at all - I hope my words find some value in your hearts as we strategize our individual and collective resistance moving forward.

One of the faith practices I inherit is Lukumí, with roots in Yorubaland, West Africa, the middle passage, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. In that light, I invoke Obatalá’s name with praise, asking that he help guide my heart and crown toward the values of patience, perseverance, charity, and love of neighbor.

Obatalá is the source energy, the natural coolness and clarity found in sky and air, the Orisha residing at the crown of our heads, our consciousness, and I invoke Obatalá today for the healing of our country, and for the resolve necessary to exercise our right to march and protest, at a time when peaceful speech is being met with lethal force. I invoke Obatalá today so that we may practice discernment and implement justice.

Now, to turn to Quakerism, and in this particular case, its first cousin, Islam.

In 1966 Muhammad Ali’s draft card arrived, conscripting him into mandatory military service during the war in Vietnam. Ali’s application for Conscientious Objector status, rooted in his Muslim faith, was rejected. Still, Ali did not show up on his induction date and was stripped of his titles, fined, and threatened with arrest.

Said Ali, quote: “My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me [n-word], they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father... Shoot them for what? ...How am I gonna shoot them… Just take me to jail.” 

Said Ali, quote: “The system is built on war.”

Today, January 31, 2026 in the United States of America, the weapons of war developed and purchased by our tax dollars have found new targets. Our nation’s weapons of war have been turned on us, our neighbors, loved ones, children, and family members, on the streets of Minneapolis, Maine, Los Angeles and more. 

All across this nation, Americans have received implicit draft cards telling us: be quiet, be afraid, and hate thy neighbor.

We conscientiously object.

The weapons of war being used against the American people include Glock 19s. Chemical munitions like tear gas launchers and long-rage pepper balls. Flashbang grenades. Heavily armored military-style vehicles have been used for ICE raids in Compton, Phoenix, and Chicago.

ICE is using close combat gear, too. Arm’s length weaponry. An ICE agent stood an arm’s length from Renee Good when pulling the trigger. He was wearing a mask to hide his identity, yes, but his eyes weren’t covered. He probably looked her in the eye, saw her humanity, before deciding to end it.

A different ICE agent stood, at most, two arms lengths above Alex Pretti when firing the first of multiple shots. I don’t think he looked Pretti in the eye, though, because he shot Pretti in the back.

On the residential doorstep of a Minneapolis nurse, military grade firearms outfitted with suppressors pointed directly into a family home. These suppressors screw onto the end of combat rifles to protect the shooter from concussive blasts. They’re used in special actions like SWAT missions and hostage situations. And today, there are suppressor-outfitted rifles pointed at nurses when they answer their door.

We conscientiously object.

Modular Advanced Weapon Lasers. There are MAWLS at the doorways of family homes where American children are eating cereal and doing homework. MAWLS are specialized battlefield tools that project laser targets visible only through night vision goggles, lasers undetected by the naked eye in daylight, used for aiming without detection in potentially lethal situations. MAWLS at Minneapolis doorways where, just inside, American children weep and beg that their parents not be taken. These are traumas they will carry with them for life, these invisible lasers aimed past their cereal bowls. 

We conscientiously object.

Incarcerating people and removing their freedoms under the bigoted rhetoric of public safety has long been an American specialty. We have the largest prison population in the world. When our neighbors are locked in prisons regulated by judicial oversight with accountability measures in place… gross violence and injustice still occurs. Our prisons remain sites of state-sponsored violence, even with due process laws in place.

So when our loved ones and neighbors are held in detention centers that are out of sight, out of mind, that lack any governmental accountability or reporting systems… we can only imagine…

But we do know what we have seen, what we, the people have reported on. Our neighbors, our community members, our loved ones, being murdered by federal actors in broad daylight, for exercising their right to march and speak. Our kindergarteners being disappeared, ICE agents outside elementary schools with weapons poised, waiting for the school bell to ring, high schools adding ICE drills to their already-busy roster of active shooter drills.

We conscientiously object.

In a recent press release, the White House celebrated its capture and detention of the supposed “worst of the worst” in Minneapolis. This press release included mugshots and conviction information for sixteen people arrested by ICE. None of those convictions, many of them misdemeanors, not one of the crimes listed, strikes me as worse than the thirty four felonies Trump has been convicted of in a court of law.

But in the Black and brown American immigrant, Trump seems to have found his ideal enemy - his Ur-other - his ultimate brown boogeyman: because the Black and brown immigrant is an outsider, a foreigner and they are also a Black and brown neighbor with deep roots here. Trump and ICE hate the Black and brown immigrant doubly and encourage us to do so, too, to celebrate as immigrants and their allies are disappeared, poisoned, shot dead. 

We refuse to buy into Trump’s brown boogeyman. Our immigrant neighbors and loved ones are ordinary Americans. The American immigrant is our forefather and foremother, our history, our present, our community collaborator.

ICE, lay your weapons down. Lay your weapons down! Until then,

We conscientiously object.

And why, really, the need for military-grade operations to apprehend sixteen low-level “criminals” who have already served their time? Tell us about the other 70,000 people currently held in ICE detention around this nation. Give us their names. Show us their pictures. 

It’s not about the sixteen. The magnitude and militarization of Trump’s ICE regime reveals the scale of his perceived “enemies.” It’s us. The American people. 

We do not accept our streets as militarized states. We do not accept our communities, our neighbors as targets of a deranged and inhumane ICE takeover.

We have dignity, we have mighty spirits, compassion thrives in our hearts, resolve brings us out to tell the truth, we speak, we march, we have our neighbors’ backs.

We conscientiously object.

Delivered on Saturday January 31, 2026, at The People’s Filibuster, New York City