President-elect Donald Trump promised during his campaign to deport millions of illegal immigrants, of whom there are an estimated 11 million in the United States. First, we do not yet know how literal this Trump promise is. Big promises about mass deportations were also made in 2016 that were not enacted during his first term. But for the sake of argument, how might Christians think about mass deportation?
There is no specific Biblical or historic Christian teaching about a particular nation-state’s immigration policy. Christian pro-immigration activists have long argued that Old Testament appeals for hospitality toward the stranger demand permissive U.S. immigration policies. They ignore that the United States is not ancient Israel and that strangers in Israel were expected fully to conform to Hebrew standards.
Hawkish Christian immigration hardliners stress Christian teachings about obeying the law and the state’s vocation to uphold order. Public order is the government’s first duty. But how order is upheld competently and justly is always a matter of prudence. There is rarely an unequivocal Christian teaching about contemporary policy specifics.
Continue reading at WORLD here.
Comment by Brian Evers on November 14, 2024 at 2:19 pm
Those are a lot of IFs to come to a conclusion. The people who are doing the cost assessments are biased toward deportation. You can prove identity via documentation. Today everyone has an ID. Think of deportation as herding cattle. We don’t use a crane to pick up every steer to move it into the trailer. We start the first few moving in the direction we want them to go, and 300 head follow. You make an example of 1000 or 15,000 illegals and self deportation will do more than any other effort.
The bible makes a moral case for deportation. Several times the Bible notes that permission had to be had to live in Egypt. You sought permission of a ruler to settle in their land because the ruler had dominion over the land. A just King would consider your case because it was his right. Abraham v Pharoah and Joseph v his brothers are two good examples.
Comment by Corvus Corax on November 14, 2024 at 3:39 pm
Competition for wages, housing, medicine, and public services deprives all of us of the common good. An unsecured border allows human trafficking, drugs, guns, and violence to spill into American towns. This occurs against the will of the people, in violation of their duly enacted laws. It is done for the benefit of corporate interests, such as those in Big Ag who do not want to pay American workers an American wage. Perhaps these are some of the “moral complications” that Christians should also consider, because they are natural outgrowths of our current immigration non-system.
Additionally, there are many ways to enforce immigration law, such as nationwide mandatory e-verify, or severe punishments for employers who hire those without required documentation. Deportation is one tool among many. But a nation is not sovereign if it cannot exercise authority over its own borders.
I wonder why we should give up our sovereignty in order to preserve a system of chaos and exploitation. We are told that innocents might be caught up in the enforcement process. But this is a hazard of every law and does not justify inaction. We are told immigrants want to “work hard” and enjoy a “better life.” But so do the tens of millions of Americans struggling against downward wage pressure and rising costs, crowded schools and hospitals, and so forth. We are told “America is a nation of immigrants.” But that’s nonsense. America is a nation of citizens who get to determine and enforce their own laws.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 14, 2024 at 4:10 pm
I think the summation of “this side believes this, and others believe that” was fairly balanced. One thing I would add to the list of moral considerations for Christians:
It should make a difference what kind of place immigrants are being deported back into. Many who came here from Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala were fleeing gangs that had expressly threatened to kill them if they didn’t allow their children to become gang members. They face the very real prospect of death if they were returned. I know people who came here from Mexico to flee the daily violence in places like Juarez and Matamoros. They also are at risk if they are sent back.
Our asylum laws were meant to account for such situations, and most of those who are coming here now are surrendering themselves immediately because they WANT to go through the asylum process. But there are so many asylum seekers now that the system cannot handle them.
Is it moral to send them back if their risk of death is significant?
In asking this question, I can’t help but think of the infamous “ship of fools”–Jewish asylum seekers from Europe who sought to enter the US in the late 1930s. Our quotas at that time were small, and we did not make a compassionate exception in their case. We turned them away, and the Nazis took them all.
Comment by John on November 14, 2024 at 6:39 pm
Corvus Corax,
The link between immigration and drugs is tenuous at best. While both immigrants and drugs do come in from across the border, the vast majority of drugs (especially fentanyl) are passing through legal points of entry and are usually being carried by either U.S. citizens or documented visitors. The cartels (who are basically the Mexican equivalent of the mafia) aren’t dumb enough to entrust their goods to undocumented persons who might die in route, be denied entry, or thoroughly searched and questioned. This means a wall, more detention centers, and most of the other things Trump is calling for won’t make much of a dent in the drug trade. The cartels will keep finding a way. Same with guns, though in this case I would argue we have more American-made guns crossing into the Mexico than the other way around. Mexicans have long been the unintended victims of our country’s more lax policies when it comes to firearms.
Comment by Nine on November 14, 2024 at 7:18 pm
If we owe the nations of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala government services for their people if they don’t provide it, then the other side of that obligation is that the US has the right to depose those governments and install a government that will provide those things to its own people. Nothing says we have to give them free stuff here, inside our borders.
Comment by Dan W on November 14, 2024 at 8:05 pm
Roughly 20 years ago, my employer discovered one of our best employees was in the U.S. illegally. This young man worked full time, and had two part time gigs. He paid taxes on his income. He told us he was here for medical treatment he couldn’t get in Mexico, his home country. The U.S. needs a guest worker program. Let them enter and work legally, and pull their visa if they misbehave. Guest workers could earn points towards legal residency, but they would need to go home to apply for the program. We do need to deport the criminals that prey mostly on other immigrants.
Comment by Tim Ware on November 15, 2024 at 12:37 am
Look in the Old Testament, in Ezra and Nehemiah, how they sent their foreign wives away, along with the children those women bore to them. No indication they provided for them, iust told them “get out.”
Comment by John on November 15, 2024 at 9:23 am
Tim Ware,
Not everything recorded in scripture is meant to be instructive.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 15, 2024 at 11:02 am
Agreed, John, but it’s a great illustration of the dangers of proof-texting with no regard for original context. After the exile in Babylon, the lesson that the rebuilders of Jerusalem applied was that the nation went wrong by allowing foreign influences, foreign wives, foreign gods (looking at you, Solomon) until idol worship became rampant. Based on that conclusion, the obvious remedy was to rid what remained after the exile of these foreign influences.
But a competing voice against that view is Jonah, which affirms God’s concern for non-Israelites, even the hated people of the Assyrian empire that had destroyed the Northern Kingdom and the identity of the 10 northern tribes.
In any case, the treatment of foreigners under Ezra and Nehemiah doesn’t offer much if any insight into the current situation of refugees attempting to immigrate to the US–assuming one isn’t using that to argue that foreigners are “vermin” who corrupt the nation’s blood and culture.
Comment by Gary Bebop on November 15, 2024 at 12:57 pm
Arguments for an incontinent border conceal political agendas. Duplicitous arguments are used to cloak the heartaches and headaches generated by unmanaged boundaries. Don’t be gullible. Leftward lurching advocates want to play American voters for fools.
Comment by Dan on November 15, 2024 at 1:45 pm
Isn’t it interesting that the most vocal advocates for open borders also tend to be the most vocal anti-Christians. Let’s not forget that the church bodies advocating for open borders are the recipients of hundreds of million of federal government dollars for providing services to illegal aliens (yes, that’s the legal definition). Follow the money!
Comment by Wilson R. on November 15, 2024 at 2:32 pm
What to do now about border security is of course a separate question from what to do about undocumented immigrants who are already here. Some of them have been here for 30+ years, long before anyone accused the border of being “incontinent.” Some of them have children and grandchildren who were born here and are American citizens, so that becomes part of the question, too.
The majority of those who have come across in the past several years are asylum seekers who freely surrender themselves once they’re over. But then the system is currently set up so that they are released until such time as they can have an actual asylum hearing (most often, this involves family members who are already here). So it’s not so much the case that the border itself is porous as that the system catches and releases people. There are any number of policy ways to address that, and there was actually a plan in Congress in early 2024 that had bipartisan support and probably would have passed.
I have deep family roots on the border, and I actually own property on the Rio Grande. I can guarantee you that the border is not “unmanaged.” Facts matter.
But that’s a separate question from deporting those who are already here, revoking birthright citizenship, etc. One proposal now being floated is to put immigrants into private prisons rather than build government detention camps. And then the private prisons would make the detainees work as unpaid laborers on area farms and in plants, and the resulting revenue would make it possible for the private prison operators to charge less to the government.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 15, 2024 at 3:05 pm
Dan wrote:
“Isn’t it interesting that the most vocal advocates for open borders also tend to be the most vocal anti-Christians.”
Well. Isn’t that interesting?
Comment by Gary Bebop on November 15, 2024 at 3:31 pm
Regarding border rules, I have my own anecdotes of family experience that could be offered. My daughter did not cross a boundary illegally but went through a process that consumed a couple of years. She willingly obeyed the law. The mess we have at the southern border needs to be unwound little by little, not compounded by more civic irresponsibility. Leftward lurching churches have played fast-and-loose with border realities (“the facts”).
Comment by JoeR on November 15, 2024 at 6:12 pm
Deportation is an issue of morals? Nope. Open borders are. Dereliction of duty and safety but no way enforcing the law is a moral issue.
Comment by Tim Ware on November 15, 2024 at 9:53 pm
Funny how we can always find a way to interpret away parts of scripture that don’t fit with our own independently derived opinions. “Oh no…that doesn’t apply to this situation.” But for the parts of scripture that do agree with our independently derived opinions, we always make sure not to interpret them away.
And we have been blinded to the fact that we do that.
Comment by David Gingrich on November 16, 2024 at 7:05 am
Prediction: We will deport criminals and gang members. We will fix the border. We will make a humane way for citizens already here to become citizens.
Make your prediction and check with me in a couple years.
Comment by MikeB on November 16, 2024 at 9:55 am
Dan W,
There are a number of guest worker visas.
They do exactly what you ask for.
Curious how that employee was paying taxes, did he use someone else’s ssn or did he have a taxpayer ID number.
Comment by George on November 16, 2024 at 4:26 pm
We have laws against noncitizens coming across our boarders and making this their home.
We also have people within our government, high officials included, who ignored our laws and allowed the mass influx of noncitizens to come here. I don’t fault these immigrants (excluding those with criminal history) for coming but I truly believe that those in our government who allowed this to happen should be punished. They empowered millions to break our immigration laws. Call it mass deportation, repatriation, or anything you want but the harm can never be undone. There are hundreds of unelected federal judges who will block ICE from deporting even a small percentage of those who came. Get ready for even more higher crime and higher taxes. And never forget who caused it.
Comment by Ellie on November 17, 2024 at 6:06 am
R.Wilson I too have roots (not deep but still extant) in the close vicinity of our southern border: I was raised about 35 miles from the Pass of the North, El Paso. I live in Arizona now. I wouldn’t compare the situation during the Eisenhower administration with the present. We have many means of identification and tech now that didn’t exist in the 1950s, so I don’t think there’s much risk of American citizens being accidentally deported! Deporting illegal aliens is not going to cause confusion and death.
We can start by removing the illegals who are on US or international terrorist watchlists, or have committed violent crimes while in the US, or whose home countries have records of them committing violent crimes. Using your data, it would cost $20 billion to deport 1 million illegal aliens. We could start with that. We spent more than $20 billion on military and economic aid to Ukraine in the past six months. We should be able to spend at least the same amount of money defending the borders of our own nation.
I recommend reading the full article, linked at the end of this one. It concludes by stating:
“There is no clear Biblical teaching telling Americans what to do about illegal immigration in 2024. But the logistical, economic, and moral complications of deporting millions of people must be very carefully considered by Christians interested in wise statecraft.”
The first sentence is clearly true. I’m less clear on the linkage between Christianity and logistics or statecraft.
I think Corvus Corax (raven?) and George make good points. JoeR explains why this isn’t a moral issue.
Comment by Wilson R. on November 26, 2024 at 1:17 pm
I’ve met people who came here from Mexico and El Salvador to escape gang violence and even direct threats of death. Some go through the formal asylum application process and are awaiting a final decision from an overloaded and underfunded system; some just arrive without papers.
Sending such people back when they face a clear and present risk of death is absolutely a moral issue unless you choose to look the other way.
I’ve met people who were brought here extralegally as small children; now they’re grown and married and have kids who are birthright citizens. They have no memory of their country of origin, and many have no family back in Mexico or Central America to help them if they were to return there. Sending back such people–especially without concern for those born into citizenship here–is obviously a moral issue, and that’s true even if you stick your fingers in your ears, shout “La-la-la-la!” and pretend it’s not.