Stephen Lam AP
Shot while protesting
The Rev. Jorge Bautista, pastor of College Heights Church in San Mateo, Calif., was shot in the face with a pepper ball while peacefully protesting in Oakland, Calif. (Photo by Stephen Lam/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)
Special to United Methodist Insight | Oct. 31, 2025
This picture is worth a thousand words of outrage. Rev. Jorge Bautista is the pastor of College Heights Church in San Mateo, CA – the church I served as pastor for 11 years. Recently he was shot in the face with a pepper round while peacefully protesting against ICE in the Bay Area. This picture conveys his misery – which landed him in the hospital – but it also conveys the suffering of the millions of people in this country that he protested to protect.
Jim Burklo Ident 2023
Roberta and I have a close friend who has lived for over 20 years in this country. He is undocumented. His wife and young kids are US citizens. He has been 1,000 miles from home, working a job for the past few months. He is a big, tough guy… who is terrified of driving home and being pulled over by ICE and deported and separated from his beloved family.
For our friend, Jorge took a pepper round in the face. Jorge entered into the pain of our long-term, otherwise law-abiding undocumented neighbors who should not be punished for the failure of our country to pass sensible and humane immigration laws. We owe them amnesty and a pathway to citizenship – not a shadowy existence, cowering in fear.
Jorge’s pain got national press coverage. What happened to him is a stain on the conscience of America, because of the profound contradiction of a government run by people who claim to be Christians brutalizing a peaceful Christian clergyperson who stood up for the most vulnerable among us. This picture illustrates why it is so important for our progressive churches to stay the course in the struggle to resist the cruel immorality of our government’s immigration policy. Our work and witness are particularly potent in this crisis!