Independence Day is for fireworks, hotdogs, and beach sand castles, not drawing lines in the sand. But it’s becoming hard for millions of Americans to remain in cordial conversation with the millions who think it’s okay to hurt immigrant workers and their families on purpose. My colleague and friend Robert L. Fitzpatrick, the Episcopal bishop of Hawaii, put it this way: “The fact that government officials are referring to a migrant detention center as ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ is very telling,” he wrote this week. “Jokes about people being caged and dying in swamps is consciously evil.”
Our government’s calculated unkindness is far out of proportion to the misconduct of most undocumented immigrant workers. Trump’s apologists used to say he was only going after criminals. That was a lie. Fewer than a third of those arrested over the last month fall into that category. Then Trump shifted gears again and said some industries’ workers were necessary, notwithstanding their undocumented status. So now only those who don’t work for industries that have crossed Trump’s palm with a coin have to participate in the alligator olympics. This only makes sense in an atavistic wilderness where only the strong, privileged, or lucky survive. You pick crops in the Central Valley? Then you shall remain under the wing of your masters, and the great orange chief in Washington will protect you. This is pretty close to what Trump said in Florida, standing in his concentration camp. You do landscaping in Santa Ana? Sorry, Narisco Barranco, but you run with the gators — even if you did raise three United States Marines.
The only reason I can think of why someone might find it acceptable to deem some undocumented workers good and others bad is the utilitarian notion that they exist purely for our convenience. If we need them, they can stay. If we don’t, we hunt and expel them. This is exactly how we treated the enslaved. We can talk all day about immigration reform. Make the best case you can for any rational policy. But do not try to sell me on official sadism, on cruelty for cruelty’s sake, on taking satisfaction when good people are seized and beaten and their spouses and children left weeping as the unmarked van with them and their masked captors roars away.
Thanks to Trump’s inconsistency, his policies have lost any semblance of moral or economic justification. Yet thanks to Congress, funding for his round-ups will soon take on obscene proportions. Unless Congress changes hands and reins him in, it looks like he will try to keep his promise of deporting untold millions. As bad as other elements of the new legislation are — the tax cuts and deficits and cuts in Medicare and food stamps — the creation of an anti-immigrant police state unprecedented in U.S. history is the Fourth of July news lede.
It may just be to curry favor with those supporters who love Trump when he’s mean to immigrants of color. He may also bargain on a level of political resistance which would give him an excuse to finish the job he and John Eastman started with their attempted coup. The existential dilemma of the second Trump administration is the lingering stench of his acquiescence in political violence in an attempt to keep power illegally. If he did it once, chances are good he’ll do it again. Most violent offenders reoffend, especially when they’re not held accountable. He’s not the only person in power who thinks this way. Many around him are tired of representative democracy and would like the U.S. to be an authoritarian country. The months between now and the November 2026 midterms may be a time of considerable peril for the last best hope of earth. We may have to struggle to keep our democracy.
In the meantime, we also have to do all we can to oppose Trump’s campaign of cruelty. In declaring our independence from the gathering evil, where do we look for guidance? Where in our civic or religious canon can we find inspiration? And what can every Christian agree on, no matter what their views are on immigration?
We begin by being honest about how well democracy is working. Next year at this time, the 250th anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence will reportedly be organized by Hillsdale College in Michigan. I used to know its president, Larry Arnn. He could move an audience to tears talking about how the Declaration and the Constitution contained all things necessary for civic salvation. Just stick with the spirit and letter of these documents, he said, and the United States would always be okay. Unfortunately, on Jan. 6, Trump desecrated and befouled them and got away with it. Larry’s naive idealism has been overtaken by events. Just ask Trump. Following the Constitution is for suckers. It won’t work optimally again until we have an executive who treats it with respect.
This brings us to scripture. Christians often quote Hebrew Testament prophets who command us to welcome the foreigner and stranger. Hospitality is a vital Christian virtue. But I don’t find this to be a useful policy argument. Romans 1, which condemns homosexuality as it was dimly understood by first century Palestinians, teaches us nothing about wholesome, inclusive 21st century life. In the same way, the insights of prophets writing up to seven centuries before Christ, when nations were often neighboring towns, don’t help modern states navigate complex political and economic challenges. If all the church says is welcome the foreigner, Trump will say we’re for open borders. We’ll be marginalized in the conversation while he’s off to his gator games.
No, this is a job for the New Testament. Jesus Christ and the golden rule, treating others as we would wish to be treated. Jesus’s new commandment, that we love one another as he has loved us. He said that the loving way we acted would show a skeptical world who God is. Also St. Paul’s principles of kindness, humility, forgiveness, forbearance, and gentleness and especially his proposition that love does not insist on its own way.
Of course love must at least insist on love — and in civic life, that means policies based on every person’s right to be treated with kindness and decency. Every single person, foreign and domestic. So a word to the Trump round-up supporters. I favor regularizing the 13 million or so undocumented workers who have committed no crime. Some have been here for 30 years or more, raising their families and paying their taxes. This policy was good enough for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and it should be good enough for us. I don’t insist on citizenship; just secure residency.
You may take a different view. That’s okay, because we’re looking for something to agree on. But if you’re a Christian, then you must naturally abhor Trump’s alligator races. Insist on due process and humane conditions for every detained undocumented person. If you hear Adelanto doesn’t let people change their clothes for six days, and there isn’t enough food, I want to see you out front demonstrating or writing letters and emails complaining. If those ICE seizes leave behind family members who can’t pay their electric bills or put food on their table, you should be the first to contribute. If those in detention don’t have funds for legal representation, help pay for it.
It doesn’t mean you’re in favor of open borders. It just means you’re a mature Christian disciple. If asylee families are stuck in Tijuana, spurned by Trump yet unable to return to Bukele’s cruel El Salvador, support nonprofits such as Mama2Mama and Nest Global that make sure their children get classroom education and expectant parents get prenatal care. You can think whatever you want about immigration policy, but you will not be unkind to immigrants and asylees, nor will you countenance unkindness your government does in your name.
Jesus said we will find our way to heaven by making sure that the least among us always get the best seats in the dining hall. The church rarely asks that much. But if you can’t bring yourself to extend yourself in kindness to those being ground up by an absurd immigration system that leaders in both parties have refused to fix for the better part of a century — if you don’t have a compassionate word for the undocumented McDonald’s clerk who serves you every time you go in for a Big Mac; if you don’t offer a scrap from under your family’s table to help feed her family when ICE takes her away — then, my sibling in Christ, you are surely putting the Almighty God to the test. Either way, I will pray for you — but a lot harder if you insist on hardening your heart.
(Photo: At a naturalization ceremony last July 3 in Indianapolis; Brett Phelps/IndyStar)