Chicago Presbyterian minister David Black, who was shot in the head by ICE goons with a pepper ball, is joining a group of Chicago reporters and protesters to sue the Trump administration for unconstitutionally threatening their First Amendment rights to free speech with “a pattern of extreme brutality” designed to “silence the press and civilians.”
The lawsuit also cites and accuses the administration of violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which states that the government “shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.”
Video captured ICE launching pepper balls at protesters, which struck Black in the head on September 19. ICE officers on the roof above them “suddenly and without warning” shot pepper balls that struck the top of Black’s head and exploded into a puff of white powder. Minutes later officers on the street sprayed him with tear gas.
Black, the senior pastor at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago in Woodlawn, was “offering prayers and urging ICE officers stationed on the roof of the Broadview ICE facility to repent from their unnecessarily brutal enforcement of the immigration laws” before officers fired at him, according to the lawsuit.