A Chicago pastor is suing the Trump administration after ICE agents shot him in the head with pepper balls.
Last month, Reverend David Black, the senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was shot right in the face with a pepper ball by an ICE agent standing on a rooftop above him while he was protesting at the Broadview ICE facility. Black can be seen with his arms spread wide, praying at the masked, armed agents above him, before being shot in the head at least twice and falling to his knees. Black said he could hear ICE laughing at him when it happened.
The video has now gone viral.
So much for “Christian values”:Rev. David Black stood in silent prayer outside a Chicago ICE facility.ICE agents fired pepper balls from the rooftop — one struck him in the head.They didn’t just attack immigrants.They attacked a minister mid-prayer. pic.twitter.com/c1AXYCjtt5
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) October 8, 2025
“I invited them to repentance,” Black told Religion News Service. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”
The lawsuit hinges on ICE infringing upon protesters’s First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and religion, as agents have displayed “a pattern of extreme brutality” aimed to “silence the press and civilians.”
Black is not the only clergy member involved in the lawsuit. Unitarian minister Beth Johnson was “fired upon without warning or justification as she and other protesters and clergy members stood on the sidewalk singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and other traditional songs of protest,” according to the lawsuit. United Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was also shot at with pepper balls.
It’s obvious in the video that Black—standing out among the crowd in his preacher’s garb—was absolutely a target, and it’s likely that the other faith leaders can say the same.
The Trump administration accuses Black of trying to “dictate crowd-control policy in ways that would tie the hands of federal law enforcement officers,” while online MAGA has dismissed him as “antifa” for his vocal support of equal rights in Chicago.
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