Key points:
- The Rev. Mariah Tollgaard, a United Methodist pastor in Minnesota, was the only non-elected official speaking at a U.S. congressional hearing on March 4.
- She spoke to a U.S. House committee about the impact of the federal crackdown on her parishioners and state.
- “No nation can build a true future on the terror of its own people,” she said.
A United Methodist pastor testified March 4 before the U.S. Congress about the impact of the federal immigration crackdown on both her church and home state of Minnesota.
“I come before you today in my personal capacity — as a pastor, as a citizen, as a mother — an ordinary Minnesotan who has witnessed, up close, the fear and harm that Operation Metro Surge has inflicted on our state,” the Rev. Mariah Tollgaard told a hearing of the U.S. House Oversight Committee.
The senior pastor of Hamline Church United Methodist in St. Paul, Minnesota, went on to testify that some parishioners of her 450-member congregation have been afraid to come to worship and even postponed funerals of loved ones.
“ICE vehicles drive recklessly through our neighborhoods in packs of four to six, stopping people of color for proof of citizenship, including a local police officer,” she said in her opening statement.
“In St. Paul Public Schools, where my three daughters attend, nearly a quarter of students enrolled in distance learning because families were too afraid to leave their homes. My 8-year-old struggles to sleep at night because she is afraid ICE agents might break into our house.”
Tollgaard was the only person speaking at the hearing who was not an elected official. Also addressing the House committee were Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison.
The hours-long hearing mainly focused on long-brewing investigations into widespread fraud in Minnesota social service programs.
Republicans on the committee accused Walz and Ellison of failed leadership in not stopping the theft of federal dollars, while the Democratic officials testified that the chaotic and at-times violent immigration crackdown actually has hampered efforts to combat fraud.
Nevertheless, no one at the hearing denied that fraud has been a real problem in Minnesota. The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports that the state has deemed 14 Medicaid services high risk for fraud, cut off payments to hundreds of providers and referred cases to law enforcement.
More than a dozen people have been charged so far with defrauding programs meant to help young people with autism, the elderly and disabled Minnesotans. The new charges come after the Feeding Our Future scheme, which already has resulted in nearly 60 convictions, stole hundreds of millions from a federal child nutrition program.
“You have not been good stewards of the taxpayer dollars,” Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky and committee chair, told Walz and Ellison. “And the Democratic position is: Keep the money flowing. The American taxpayers have had enough.”
Tollgaard — as well as Walz, Ellison and many congressional Democrats on the committee — asserted the surge that at one point brought some 4,000 federal agents into the state did nothing to fight fraud. Instead, they said, the onslaught of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents terrorized communities and led to the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Even as Operation Metro Surge winds down, close to 650 federal agents remain in Minnesota — by comparison, about 300 agents were deployed during the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.
“At local elementary schools in Minnesota and across the country, students are practicing drills for what to do if ICE is near their school,” Tollgaard testified. “Let that sit with you. American children are now practicing two kinds of drills at school: one for an active shooter and one to protect themselves from their own government. That is not security. That is a nation failing its children.”
After the hearing, Tollgaard spoke to United Methodist News about the experience and about how she ended up being invited to speak before Congress.
She said Democratic congressional staff reached out to her a week earlier after seeing media reports featuring Tollgaard. The United Methodist pastor and about 100 other Minnesota faith leaders were arrested Jan. 23 after they tried, in an act of civil disobedience, to block the airport where ICE has been transporting people to detention in other states.
Tollgaard said she never expected that her civil-disobedience arrest, which she said was handled respectfully by local law enforcement, would land her before such a high-profile audience.
“You see these hearings on TV or the clips from them, and I had never seen one of them, and thought, ‘Oh, that looks like a fun thing to do,’” she said.
She does not know Walz or Ellison well. She had once heard Ellison speak about his Muslim faith and public service with students from United Methodist-related Hamline University near her church. She had encountered Walz, who is Lutheran, more frequently because he was a regular visitor at her congregation’s dining hall at the Minnesota State Fair. None of these encounters prepared her to join the two officials before congress.
Nevertheless, she felt obligated to speak up on behalf of Minnesotans, and paid her own way to come to D.C.
“There could have been thousands of Minnesotans who could have been there today to tell the story of what we’ve been living through,” she said. “Especially, there are so many clergy in Minnesota who have also been just amazing voices and leading in this time.”
Tollgaard testified that ordinary Minnesotans — including many people of faith — also have been stepping up to love their neighbors as themselves.
“When unidentified, masked agents appeared on our streets, Minnesotans put on their own uniform — and it said ‘Neighbor,’” she said. “Motivated by faith and conscience: We bought groceries for families in hiding. We paid rent. We drove children to school. We stood vigil at mosques. We served as constitutional observers. We pledged to care for children if parents were detained. We sang. We marched. We prayed.”
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In addressing members of Congress, she was following a long tradition of Methodist advocacy not for a political party but for public policies in line with church teachings. The United Methodist Church’s Social Principles, based on multiple passages in Scripture, affirm “the dignity, worth, and rights of migrants, immigrants, and refugees, including displaced and stateless people.”
A week before her testimony, United Methodists were among more than 2,000 people of faith gathered in Washington, D.C., to worship, march and speak to U.S. lawmakers as part of the Feb. 25 “Faithful Resistance: A Public Witness for Immigrant Justice.”
While Tollgaard was not able to attend that gathering, she told UM News she did want to speak up for immigrants.
She said she has been especially disturbed to hear so many disparaging remarks from national leaders about Somali Americans, most of whom are now U.S. citizens.
“I just want to be clear that Somali people have made tremendous contribution to Minnesota — along with so many other immigrant communities — to make our state a better, more diverse, more interesting, more loving, more caring place.”
Part of the reason she is a pastor today, she said, was because of the welcome her home congregation of Owatonna United Methodist Church in Owatonna, Minnesota, provided Somali refugees when they first moved into the community when she was in high school.
“Really seeing that lived example of what it means to show hospitality to strangers and to love your neighbor has been core to my faith,” she said. “And it is core to why it’s been so important for me to speak out on immigration for many years, and especially right now in Minnesota.”
The hearing came as much of the nation’s attention is consumed by other developments. They include the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and a weeks-long partial shutdown of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as Democrats seek to force changes to bring more accountability in immigration enforcement. One day after the hearing, President Trump fired Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary. The same afternoon as the fraud hearing, the House Oversight Committee also voted to summon U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to testify about the investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But even amid scandal at home and war in the Middle East, Tollgaard hoped to encourage U.S. lawmakers to heed the voice of God in their work.
While they addressed most of their questions to Walz and Ellison, several members of Congress thanked Tollgaard for her presence during the hearing.
After the hearing, Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum, the dean of the Minnesota congressional delegation, also issued a statement thanking her “for offering the committee a glimpse of the suffering that Minnesotans have experienced....”
Tollgaard concluded her testimony by pointing the U.S. Congress members to the Gospel message of Jesus.
“Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25, ‘Whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me,’” she said. “History will tell its story about us — but long before then, our own souls will know whether we stood with them or turned away.
“No nation can build a true future on the terror of its own people,” she added. “Security built on fear will shatter the first time it is tested. Only a community that chooses love of neighbor over fear will endure — and that is still within our power to become.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
