Trump's mass deportation campaign denounced at interfaith rally in Huntington Station

They prayed and sang Woody Guthrie songs. They marched to the site of an ICE raid. They gave a standing ovation to two young men who were deported from Long Island to El Salvador and Zoomed in for the vigil.

Nearly 200 people gathered at a church in Huntington Station on Tuesday for an interfaith event to denounce President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign and pledge to fight it. There were Catholic nuns and priests, Jewish rabbis and lay people from various faiths who came to support the cause.

"I stand here because I know with every fiber of my Jewish being that what is happening is wrong," Rabbi Jeffrey Clooper of Temple Beth El of Huntington told the crowd at Gloria Dei Evangelical Lutheran Church. "I am sickened that there is even a need for this vigil. I am heartbroken and I am angry."

Nadia Marin Molina, a leader of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, told the crowd that "Long Island immigrants are under attack." The deportation campaign, she said, is an "abuse of power and it's racial profiling."

Trump has argued that illegal immigration is out of control and that the campaign is aimed at dangerous and violent criminals.

Speakers at the event said landscapers, nannies, restaurant cooks and other workers with no criminal records are getting swept up.

Jose and Josue Trejo Lopez, 20 and 19, attended the vigil by Zoom, their images projected on a large screen. "We can show them that we are not criminals, and that we are good people ... We have never caused harm to anyone," Jose told the crowd.

After they finished speaking, Richard Koubek, an event organizer, said deporting young people like the brothers, who were good students and youth leaders of a church, was "crazy."

"We're going to fight for you and we're bringing you back," Koubek said as the crowd applauded.

After the speeches, the crowd processed to a nearby street corner where organizers said 17 day laborers were arrested by ICE about two weeks ago.

Letter condemns crackdown

The vigil came as nearly 200 religious leaders from across Long Island signed an open letter condemning the crackdown.

"Eleven million undocumented immigrants — almost 90,000 here on Long Island — now live each day in terror, fearing deportation," the letter said. "This is not who we are as Americans. This is not who we are as people of faith."

"We denounce, we condemn, the current United States mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, many of whom have fled extreme violence and poverty in their native lands," the letter said. "We are a nation of immigrants. ... Immigrants are still making America great."

The leaders, mainly Christian and Jewish, said the deportation program is ripping apart families who have lived here for years.

Those who signed the letter include the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, the heads of two major orders of religious sisters on Long Island, and a former president of a Catholic university, St. Joseph’s.

Several Catholic priests signed, although Bishop John Barres, head of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, did not.

Trump’s crackdown has accelerated in the past month after Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff at the White House, said in late May the administration wanted to increase arrests of immigrants from about 600 a day to at least 3,000 a day.

The crackdown is generating criticism from a growing number of religious leaders around the country.

"A very large number of Catholic bishops, and religious leaders in general, are outraged by the steps which the administration is taking to expel mostly hardworking, good people from the United States," Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of Washington, D.C., told The New York Times this week.