Below please find the remarks delivered by the UUA’s President, Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, at today’s interfaith “Praying with Our Feet” (Facebook video) action held in Washington, DC. The event was held to advocate for the defunding of ICE in advance of today’s vote in the U.S. Senate regarding the Department of Homeland Security budget. 

Beloveds, I am the Reverend Doctor Sofía Betancourt, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I am a proud daughter of immigrants and have experienced up close what it means to believe in a United States that takes pride in being a “nation of immigrants” and insists on the sacredness of all people. The breach of that foundational story and the targeting of our immigrant neighbors sounds a clarion call to condemn the ongoing violence and violation of basic human rights.

As an Afro-Latine woman born in this country, I am also aware that the violence we are seeing directed today at Black and brown communities, and queer and immigrant communities, already made vulnerable by systemic oppression, is yet another foundational story of this nation. From slave patrols in the past to ICE and DHS targeting our neighbors, all people of faith and conscience must resist the structures of empire, fascism, and tyranny that called us here today.

We are faithfully following the leadership of those who are giving everything they have to protect their neighbors. And we will do everything in our power to end the desecration and to restore the soul of this nation.

We must defund ICE.

Unitarian Universalist believe in the values of pluralism, interdependence, justice, and generosity as matters of religious faith. We hold sacred the belief that love lives at the center of all that we do. Recent events have torn apart families, terrorized already vulnerable communities, and killed individuals doing nothing more than protecting their neighbors. They not only violate basic human decency, they are also an affront to the values that all people of faith and conscience hold sacred.

I have just returned from Minneapolis where hundreds of clergy and faith leaders from across religious traditions responded to a call for spiritual care and moral witness in response to the actions of an agency our tax dollars are supporting.

I am here today with my siblings of many faith traditions because we know that budgets are moral documents. There is no moral justification for voting for a budget that will put more resources toward the violation and dehumanization of our neighbors. As religious leaders, we have an ethical obligation to show up and say that this will not be done in our name.

While we are glad for the first steps taken this morning, we still demand instead that the Senate vote NO on any appropriations that increase or maintain current funding levels for DHS, ICE, and CBP now and in the future. We will not fund the persecution of our immigrant neighbors, the slaughter of innocent protesters, nor the further traumatization of our children. We call for an immediate stop to all ICE activity and for full transparency and immediate accountability for all those involved in recent killings and their supervisors.

My thanks and gratitude to those keeping us organized and engaged, particularly Faith in Action, ISAIAH, MARCH, and Faith in Minnesota. We will continue to follow your lead.

To our beloveds, so many, who are in harm’s way. We will not forsake you. We are here with you in the name of all that we hold Holy, until the very end.

May you be held safe and whole until that day. Thank you.

Further Reading

UU World — UUA President Arrested During D.C. Protest — January 29, 2026

UUA.org — Statement from the Unitarian Universalist Association on the Arrest of Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, UUA President, at the U.S. Capitol Complex — January 29, 2026