This photo shows alleged members of El Salvadoran gangs in April 2020, five Eastertides ago, while guards were searching their cells. Notwithstanding what we sometimes see on social media, they’re not the prisoners Trump has been sending to El Salvador as his fraternal ties grow with the wildly popular hardline Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele. Bukele has made his cities and towns dramatically safer by imprisoning 1.7% of his population. Due process is not his first priority.Our Holy Saturday question is how we feel when we see this scene. A Salvadoran parent who had lost a child to gang violence would be entitled to strong feelings. For the rest of us, I hope we take some time to think as well as feel. Did everyone in the photo get a fair shake? Realizing they were innocent, Bukele has released over 8,000 after they’ve spent weeks or months in these conditions. As for gangs themselves, we should learn about the political and socio-economic conditions from which they spring, even though someone will jump to say that we’re soft on crime and don’t care about crime victims.
But that’s OK. It’s Holy Saturday. We are poised between our worst loss on Good Friday and the promise of Easter Day. So we have time to go a little deeper. We can afford to take a little risk for the sake of identifying some Gospel truth.
And we have to admit that Trump knows some of us like this picture, whether or not we have a personal grudge against gangs. One of his homies went to El Salvador to be photographed in front of a cage containing the prisoners he actually had deported. She wanted to be in a picture like this. She knew people would like to see that. Trump also knows that some of us don’t care about due process. The Supreme Court has ordered him to arrange the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom he illegally deported to El Salvador on the basis of questionable accusations of being a gang member. Abrego has the right to due process. But Trump says that doesn’t matter, what the Supreme Court says doesn’t matter, and millions agree.
Not much due process, either, when Jesus was tried, convicted, and executed. On that occasion, in the streets of Jerusalem, he lost both the popular and Electoral College vote. The old Apostles Creed said that he died and descended into hell. According to ancient Christian tradition, that was the harrowing of hell — Jesus freeing souls in Hades, righteous and unrighteous alike.
So look at the picture again, and imagine Jesus sending his angels to lift up those who are innocent by their weary shoulders. Imagine him saying to El Salvador, and to us, that, even when someone has been pronounced guilty, or they’re waiting for their hearings, they deserve to be treated humanely, especially when they’re suffering from addiction or mental illness.
Imagine Jesus having to remind us that our hard-won and still deeply imperfect system of justice is based on making sure that no single person — no Pilate, no Herod, no Trump — has the power of life and death over those born in the blood of the Lamb, those made in the image of God. If we want to say we are a Christian nation, we had better worry a little more about what Jesus would say about this photo.