BILLINGS — Billings First Congregational Church recently set up a display outside its downtown front doors of a cage with a mannequin woman and baby inside in protest of Yellowstone County Commissioner Mark Morse's proposal to the federal government offering MetraPark grounds as a holding facility for undocumented immigrants.
Marcus Frye, the interim sabbatical minister at the church, said the church has done several displays in the past commenting on "various issues" and the church had the desire to make a stance on this one.
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"I want it to be something that makes people feel empathy," Frye said on Thursday. "What I'm hoping that display does is makes it apparent to people that those people don't go away. They are still human beings made in the image of God that have value and putting them in a detention center potentially at the Metra, like the county commissioners proposed to the federal government, is not going to solve any of these problems that we are having as a community."
Signs saying "MetraPark" and "Not in our town" are above the mannequin. Frye said when attending the Yellowstone County commissioners' public comment meeting last month, many were saying the phrase that dates back to the early 1990s, when the community responded to hate groups in Billings targeting Jewish residents.
"People were saying, 'Not in Our Town.' We don't want this to be who we are as a community and so we felt it was appropriate to include that banner in the display," Frye said. "Far too many people are put in cages."
Morse declined to speak with MTN News for this story. He sent his proposal to the four members of Montana's congressional delegation in January, noting that Yellowstone County could need more detention space outside its overcrowded jail if a large number of immigrants are detained as part of President Trump's mass-deportation plan.
The Trump administration has not responded to the offer.
“The county commissioner said they haven't dealt with any specifics yet. They haven't, you know, started building anything yet, but the very fact that there is that this proposal was made is deeply troubling for us,” Frye said. "We want to call our community to do better."
Frye said the display will stand until something changes.
"My current plan is to keep it up until either the letter from the county commissioners is rescinded or until there is a firm decision to not have the detention center be at the Metra," Frye said. "Do we want people in cages at the Metra when you're going there for a rodeo or a concert? Is that really what we want to be as a community?"
On the church's marquee, the words "You Shall Love the Immigrant as Yourself" can be found.
"That is an exhortation several times in the scriptures. In the Hebrew scriptures, people are exhorted to treat the foreigner in your land as your native born," Frye said. "We are to care for the strangers in our community. Even Jesus himself said that the way a people cares for the strangers among them will have an impact on their soul."
