A Pastoral Response to Promises of Mass Deportation
A Statement from the Diaspora Network Board of Directors
We are grateful for President-elect Trump’s commitment to secure borders and provide protections for those fleeing religious persecution. At the same time, we are concerned about statements from the incoming administration promising mass deportations of immigrants, cutting or ending the refugee resettlement program and reports that it is considering allowing Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct arrests in churches, schools, and other sensitive locations (See this statement from our friends and partners at World Relief).
Every immigrant church has someone that would be affected by these policies. Many immigrant families have a cousin, son, an aunt in some kind of immigration legal limbo: someone who has overstayed a visa; someone taken advantage of by unscrupulous, “supposed” immigration lawyers; someone waiting years for paperwork to be approved; Dreamers or DACA recipients brought to this country as children. There are undocumented Filipino and Nigerian pastors who have been in the US for decades and have no legal resource to fix their status. Guatemalan asylum seekers, pregnant mothers or youth, who have missed one of their court appearances. Afghan or Ukrainian parolees waiting for a path to open up to apply for more permanent status. In the heat of partisan politics, nuance is lost and all of these folks get lumped into the catch-all and dehumanizing category of “illegals.” And they are all potentially vulnerable to deportation if the incoming administration does what it has said it will do.
At the Diaspora Network, we believe that immigrant Christians represent one of the greatest hopes for renewing the church and revitalizing the city in North America. We believe every immigrant here is a potential missionary! We also believe that every immigrant, regardless of legal status or how they arrived in this country, is made in the image of God and deserving of dignity, compassion, and love. While we uphold the rule of law, we also declare that laws can and must submit to higher principles derived from the word of God; including, in this case, God’s love and welcome for immigrants and refugees. We also know that the immigration system is broken in the US and desperately in need of comprehensive reform.
We are concerned about the fear that many immigrants (regardless of status) are feeling and the signs we are seeing of increased racism and division. We are also alarmed about a hardness of heart we have seen within some sectors of the immigrant church towards those with a different legal status. Statements in support of inhumane policies that include an attitude of “But we came the right right way” reveal both a pharisaical hardness of heart misaligned with the message of the gospel, as well as a lack of understanding of how broken and unjust the immigration system in this country is. These kinds of attitudes also reveal a lack of understanding of Scripture.
The Bible has a radically different perspective: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt” (Lev. 19:33-34). Jesus (who as child was a migrant-refugee to Egypt) commands us to “welcome the stranger” (Matthew 25).
Diaspora Network is not a partisan, political organization. Our primary purpose is not speaking out about political policies. We love the local church and exist to strengthen, encourage, and mobilize churches and church leaders. We do believe, however, that the church has the responsibility of speaking out when the government departs from the Word of God.
So, how can we prepare for potential mass deportations? How do we respond as the church?
One of the challenges is that we don’t know exactly what the incoming administration will do. Conflicting and changing statements have been given by different officials. Still it is important, as Pastor Gabriel Salguero of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition has said, that we “prepare for the worst and hope for the best.” If we look at President Trump’s first term, we can expect, one way or another, drastic and dramatic changes to immigration policy (such as the ban on immigration from Muslim majority countries which he enacted) that will affect mission to and by immigrants in this country.
Some things we can do as we wait:
Listen to (starting at minute 52) this interview with Pastor Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, on how to hope for the best but prepare for the worst:
Pray for discernment. Pray for President-elect Donald Trump. Advocate and Pray for those who are vulnerable: especially refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in legal limbo here in this country who are afraid.
Speak out against any kind of racist or dehumanizing language or politics, whether in the media or in the church.
Read what the Bible has to say about immigrants. Check out these resources: https://worldrelief.org/welcoming-the-stranger/ and https://evangelicalimmigrationtable.com/resources/
Advocate alongside the National Association of Evangelicals and other Christian leaders for bipartisan, common sense, comprehensive immigration reform (www.evangelicalimmigrationtable.com)
The Diaspora Network Board of Directors