CHICAGO (RNS) — At 7:30 a.m. on a chilly November morning, every member of the Luhmann family was already awake. Their cozy home, tucked into a bucolic corner of the Chicago suburbs, was bustling with activity.
Six of the eight children, almost all of them homeschooled, were mostly settled in the dining room. A large, colorful quilt — hand-stitched by Audrey, their mother, to represent various names for Jesus — hung on the wall. Andrew, their father, readied to go to work at Wheaton College, the evangelical Christian school nearby, where he serves as an associate professor of geology.
But Ben, 17, and Sam, 16, donned warm hoodies, said goodbye to their parents and piled into a well-loved sedan. Cranking the engine, they skirted a wild turkey that stalks their yard and headed out to find U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
“I don’t think Jesus would ever ignore people being hurt, especially by the federal government,” said Ben, at the wheel, to a reporter in the back seat. Sam, pounding an energy drink with one hand, scrolled through a lengthy list of group chats with the other, scouring for reports of ICE and other federal immigration agents in their area.
Mornings like this have been typical in recent weeks for the Luhmann fam …