A capacity crowd filled a church in Reston yesterday (Thursday) to remember two U.S. citizens recently shot and killed by federal immigration officers in Minnesota.
Rep. James Walkinshaw, who helped organize the vigil, was joined by local religious and human rights leaders at United Christian Parish to commemorate the lives of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, along with others who have recently died in the custody of or during encounters with federal immigration agencies.
Pretti, an intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot on Jan. 24 during a scuffle with border patrol agents in Minneapolis. His death came 17 days after Good was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer while driving home after dropping one of her children off at school.
“Each of them was a human being — not a statistic, not a talking point,” Walkinshaw told attendees.
Walkinshaw, who visited Minneapolis earlier this month following Good’s death, emphasized the importance of “loving thy neighbor” during his remarks.
“To love thy neighbor demands accountability,” Walkinshaw said. “A community, a society, a nation that values human life cannot accept brutality. It cannot look away when force, when violence is used where it shouldn’t be, or when families, including children, are terrorized instead of protected. Speaking to that reality is not partisan, it’s moral.”
Joining Walkinshaw were six local religious leaders, including representatives from Muslim, Jewish, Episcopal and Baptist faith organizations.
Rev. Elisabeth Williams, who leads United Christian Parish, encouraged attendees to go forward not with sorrow, but with hope.
“May this time be a time for us to grieve, but also a time to take courage and a time to build hope that those candles that we light as we leave will not extinguish the darkness,” she said.
Imam Mohamed Magid, the resident scholar of the Adams Islamic Center in Ashburn, described Good and Pretti as embodiments of the idea that “speaking truth in the face of oppression … [is] among the greatest acts of faith.”
“They stood up for justice when silence would have been easier,” Magid said. “They defended the marginalized when others turned away. They spoke truth to power, even when it placed them in harm’s way.”
Rabbi Michael Holzman of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation conveyed the need not to fight fire with fire, but to embrace love.
“We must remember that Dominionism feeds on hate,” Holzman said. “It sees virtue and violence. We cannot fight it head on. Instead, we counter it with love.”
Approximately 3,000 federal immigration agents remain in Minnesota under the Department of Homeland Security’s so-called Operation Metro Surge, which began last month at President Donald Trump’s direction.
Attorneys for the state and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have challenged the mass deployment of federal agents in court as an unconstitutional occupation that has endangered public safety and disrupted neighborhoods, schools and public services.
While politics weren’t the primary focus of the vigil, some speakers expressed concern about the country’s current direction and reflected on how they would respond if the Trump administration targeted Northern Virginia the way it has Minneapolis.
“Law without love becomes cruelty, and authority without accountability becomes deadly,” First Baptist Church of Vienna Pastor Vernon Walton said before reading the names of some people who have died in ICE custody or were killed by federal immigration officers.
According to the limited information released by ICE, there were 32 people who died in immigration custody last year, and another six have died in just the first month of 2026. More than 352,000 people have been arrested by ICE, and almost as many have been deported since Trump returned to office last January.
Rev. Charles Cowherd, the rector at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Herndon, described the “dehumanizing” experience of tracking one of his parishioners, Walter Bladimir Lopez-Ayala, “like an Amazon package” as he was transferred from one facility to another before being deported to his native country of El Salvador.
Though he enlisted lawyers, nonprofits and anyone else he knew to try to help, Cowherd says “we found out the government is a lot better at deporting people than we are at protecting them.”
Arrested outside a McDonald’s in Sterling on Feb. 20, 2025, Lopez-Ayala was branded by ICE as a “documented member of a notorious criminal gang” — an allegation completely out of step with the “gentle, young man who ate pupusas” that Cowherd knew.
“I think the reason there was such a disconnect was because the government was lying. He was not any of those things, and they knew it,” Cowherd said.
Advocates for immigrant communities urged community members to stay informed about what federal agencies are doing locally and to support policies “rooted in safety, humanity and the rule of law,” as Legal Aid Justice Center attorney Rohmah Javed put it.
Centreville Immigration Forum Executive Director Samantha Zaboli encouraged attendees to channel their feelings of anger or hopelessness into action.
“Use your voice, your talents and the tools you have at your disposal to make sure not one more neighbor is disappeared, not one more family is torn apart, and not one more member of our beloved community is taken,” Zaboli said. “Invest in survival programs for our communities that strengthen and unite us and defund those that seek to divide us.”
In case there was any ambiguity about which programs she believes should be defunded, Zaboli concluded her remarks to applause with a call to “abolish ICE.”
Funding for ICE has become a sticking point in Congressional negotiations over new federal spending, which must be approved by midnight today (Friday) to avoid a partial government shutdown. A deal between Senate Democrats and Trump would include a separate, two-week funding bill for homeland security to allow for more debate.
