how to respond to evil?

Donald Trump made a public comment last week that he "loves the smell of deportations in the morning" while warning that "Chicago is about to find out why it's called the Department of War."  This threat has not yet come to pass.  But the effort  to “round up” undocumented immigrants continues with the building of more “detention” centers. The result is fear, anxiety and anger.  

A pastor, searching for how to be in relationship with people who are complicit in Trump's agenda, asked online  "I still believe refusing to harden your heart to the humanity of those willfully complicit in evil is a faithful discipline of those following Jesus, but how do you keep your hope going?"  The senseless murder of Charlie Kirk only heightens this search for a way forward, even as the divisions grow wider.

To his specific question about prayer, I responded this way.

There is a saying in the Friends tradition describing prayer for others as "holding them in the Light." This holding does not require one to ignore in any way the evil a person is doing or to feel sentimental for them. It does require the capacity to surrender them to God and to forsake the illusion that one can change, or fix a person who is caught in the grip of evil. I believe that power belongs only to God.

One can speak truthfully- "facts matter" - and non-violently to an enemy of the gospel, without becoming an enemy in the mirror image.  

See Wendell Berry's poem: Enemies, on the link here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58187/enemies-56d23c5817a91