SOUTH PORTLAND — Faith leaders bowed their heads in silence, their colorful woven stoles fluttering in the breeze off the ocean. 

They mourned the lives lost through Immigration and Customs Enforcement violence in recent weeks, including 25-year-old Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Biddeford on July 13.  

Some closed their eyes in solemn prayer. Others stared straight ahead with resolve. 

About 20 faith leaders from across the state gathered at Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse in South Portland on Thursday morning to call for an end to ICE violence. 

“Faith leaders will not stand by quietly while people are murdered,” said the Rev. Sara Ewing-Merrill, the founder of the Greater Portland Multifaith Clergy Organizing Group, which hosted the event. 

Similar remembrances — all organized in collaboration with the Minnesota-based multifaith organization Faith in Us — took place in Texas, where Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was killed by an ICE agent while on his way to work, and in Florida, where Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán was struck by a truck and killed while fleeing federal immigration agents.

“I am not alone,” said the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Bangor. “I am not an idealist. I am speaking from the outraged moral majority of Americans in this country who do not want masked death squads.”

The Rev. Jane Field, the executive director of the Maine Council of Churches, said that most faiths draw upon similar principles: “Welcoming the stranger, valuing the human dignity of every person and calling for an end to violence.” 

Ewing-Merrill, the lead pastor at HopeGateWay Church in Portland, saw a quilt in Biddeford’s Mechanics Park that displayed the commandment: “You shall not oppress the stranger.” She said that federal immigration agents have violated this charge. 

“We claim (Guerrero) as our fellow Mainer,” she said. “He might have been from Colombia, but he was one of ours. We mourn his death, not as the death of a stranger, but as one who walked our streets, who drove our roads and played an essential role in our community.” 

Multifaith leaders will be hosting weekly nondenominational vigils at Mechanics Park on Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. in August, except for Aug. 4, according to the Rev. Devin Green.

“It’s a space for people to come together in solidarity and support,” she said. “It’s not about proselytizing. It’s about being together.”

Many clergy people said that members of their congregations have felt distraught, in despair and wary. Some of their immigrant parishioners are afraid to leave the house, go to work, send their children to school or go grocery shopping. 

“Our job has been to reach out, show solidarity and provide support,” Kerbel said. 

Abdullahi Ahmed, a community leader with the Islamic Society of Portland, said that while on his own immigration journey nearly 30 years ago, he chose to settle in Maine because people were welcoming.

“These are the people I can create community with,” he said. He urged people to consider the bravery it takes to leave behind everything you know to enter a new land. 

House Island, referred to as the “Ellis Island of the north,” served as a backdrop and a reminder during the faith leaders’ gathering. The island, in view of the lighthouse and just past the tourists walking along the stone jetty and the bobbing sailboats anchored in the harbor, served as a federal immigration quarantine station from 1907-37. 

“We have been welcoming immigrants into this harbor, into Maine and into this country for over 300 years,” said Fritz Weiss, a leader of the Portland Friends Meeting and a docent at the lighthouse. “It’s not a clean history. It’s a consistent history.”