They Held the "State of the City" in a Church and Called the Cops on Me for Protesting ICE

By Martha Jean Schindler, Founder and Leader, North Georgia Community Action Network

This is one of the signs I held. Small enough to hold with one hand. Very disruptive and scary, right?

On January 30, 2026, Mayor Michael Caldwell delivered his State of the City address and declared Woodstock "stronger, safer, and better off than it was four years ago."

He was not wrong that things are being built. Over $50 million in public projects. $210 million in private construction. A six-story hotel downtown. A 600-space parking deck. A new park. Grammy-nominated artists for the summer concert series. Full police staffing for the first time in a decade.

By the numbers Mayor Caldwell chose to share, Woodstock is thriving.

But here is what he did not say: earlier in December, while that address was being prepared, ICE agents swept through a single Woodstock neighborhood and removed 27 people in one day. Not over a week. Not across the county. One neighborhood. One day. Twenty-seven people gone.

Those are not statistics. Those are families. Those are children who came home from school to empty houses. Those are coworkers who did not show up Monday morning. Those are neighbors you may have waved to from your driveway.

Mayor Caldwell did not mention them. Not once.

Let me tell you what happened the morning of that address.

Woodstock CAN organized a Sips and Civics visibility action outside Woodstock City Church, where the event was held. We chose to show up because this is a civic address about our community and our tax dollars, and residents were being charged $15 to attend. Canton held their State of the City free and open to the public. Woodstock held theirs on private church property with a ticket price.

Two of us stood quietly at the entrance with small signs: "No ICE in Cherokee," "Abolish ICE Now," and "What Would Jesus Do?" featuring Jesus flipping tables.

Some people who arrived scoffed. Some mocked. I smiled and said, "Hope you have the day you voted for."

When that lands wrong, it is because people know, somewhere inside, that these policies cause real harm. They just want the harm inflicted on others.

A police officer approached us and said the church had demanded we leave. Private property. We could go or go inside without signs.

I ran inside.

Police grabbed me near the food area. I said what needed to be said, loudly, where people could hear it: this church was calling cops to silence protesters while platforming a city government that has stayed silent while ICE terrorizes our neighbors. I said ICE is evil. I said it contradicts the Bible. I said Jesus was an immigrant. I said 27 people were taken from one Woodstock neighborhood in a single day.

Police dragged me out. They detained me, handcuffed me, and put me in a car.

From inside that car I kept talking loud enough for anyone nearby to hear: "Why are you following the words of MAGA and not the words of the Lord?"

A church leader eventually came out and spoke to the officers. I was told I could re-enter without a sign. I refused. My choices were arrest or public property. I moved to the sidewalk.

The cold drove me home.

Now hold those two things side by side.

Mayor Caldwell says the city is "stronger, safer, and better off." He points to a 15% tax rate reduction, a doubled rainy day fund, and the "build intentionally" philosophy guiding Woodstock's future.

What does it mean to build intentionally when 27 of your neighbors are taken from a single block in a single day and your mayor says nothing?

What does a 600-space parking deck mean to a family that just lost a parent, a spouse, a breadwinner to an ICE raid?

What does "full police staffing" mean when those officers are available to handcuff someone protesting family separation at a ticketed civic event held on church property, but local leadership has no comment about federal agents terrorizing residents?

The mayor's address was a celebration of physical infrastructure. Roads and parks and hotels and concert series. None of it is meaningless. But a city is not its parking deck. A city is its people. And right now, some of those people are living in terror.

The choice to hold this address at Woodstock City Church was not incidental. Private property creates a mechanism that public space does not: the ability to remove dissent on demand. When a civic address is held at City Hall or a public park, you cannot call the cops on someone holding a sign. When you hold it at a church, you can.

And this church used that mechanism. Against two people standing quietly with signs about family separation. About neighbors being taken in the night.

A Christian church called the police on people defending immigrant families and then returned to hosting a government address about how great things are going.

There is a name for that. It is called complicity.

The question the church ensured I could not ask from inside that room is the only question that matters: how do you hold a "State of the City" address and leave out the part where your neighbors are being rounded up?

Mayor Caldwell, here is the state of the city you did not deliver:

Twenty-seven people were removed from one neighborhood in one day. ICE activity is ongoing across Cherokee County. Families are in hiding. Children are afraid to go to school. Workers are afraid to go to jobs. People who have lived here for years, who pay into this community, who built the businesses and filled the churches and coached the youth sports teams, are being taken.

A civic update that does not address that is not a state of the city. It is a brochure.

You cannot build a city worth living in while the people in it are being terrorized. You cannot celebrate "quality of life" while some residents live without basic safety from their own government. You cannot point to a park and a parking deck and call it leadership when your neighbors are disappearing.

Woodstock CAN will keep showing up. We will keep saying it out loud, wherever we have to say it. ICE has no place in Woodstock. ICE has no place in Cherokee County. And the people being terrorized in this community deserve leaders who will say so, not just when it costs nothing, but especially when it costs something.

North Georgia Community Action Network serves Cherokee, Pickens, Bartow, Forsyth, and Cobb counties. Learn more and get involved at https://www.ngacan.org