The Need for Courageous Discernment
An update on changing immigration realities: What if the situation for diasporas in the US today is increasingly becoming similar to that of queen Esther and the diaspora Jews in the Persian empire?
This is the first article in a two-part series where Rev. Jonathan Abraham Kindberg, the founder and Executive Director of Diaspora Network, invites us to consider the Book of Esther’s wisdom and insight when it comes to our current political landscape and immigration realities. Click the following link to read the second part of the series, “Looking to Mordecai: Resisting Fear, Numbness, and Passivity through Prayer & Lament.”
First, a quick refresher on the book of Esther in the Old Testament.
It tells the story of queen Esther, an orphaned Jewish woman living in diaspora in the kingdom of Persia (modern day Iran) who is forced into the Kings’ harem. Her caretaker and cousin, Mordecai, alerts her of an edict (think: executive order) by King Xerxes to “kill and annihilate all the Jews” (Esther 3:13, NIV) in the empire. He challenges her to speak up to the king, even though she would be risking death. He says to her these, now famous, lines: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14).
“It is always hard to discern what is real.” Anne Snyder, writing in Comment magazine, speaks of the need for discernment in the current US American cultural moment. She goes on to say that “wise people [are] those who taste truth before it's trending, who can name evil without mirroring it, who forgo fashionable opinions for a deeper attunement to the Holy Spirit and to the human person. Such people are rare.”
Yes, people of wisdom and discernment are desperately needed. The church needs a kind of prophetic discernment more than ever in order to name the current reality we are in and bring clarity to a confusing and changing milieu of social media, news and political spin.
This is especially the case when considering the current attitudes, policies and broader societal action towards diaspora and immigrants in the United States. Nearly every week I visit with or speak with immigrant pastors and diaspora church leaders and hear stories of pain and fear from the “frontline” of all that’s happening in this country. I also regularly get asked: “What’s really happening around immigration?” or “What are you hearing?” and “How is all this impacting immigrant churches?”
While I can’t speak for all immigrant churches or every diaspora community, this is a personal attempt to name and summarize what I am seeing and hearing across a broad spectrum of diaspora communities and contexts both in Texas and around the country.
First some broader context: The US House passed a bill which the Senate is currently considering, that, according to Matthew Soerens from our partners at World Relief, earmarks $150 billion dollars for immigration enforcement, $45 billion of which is set aside for detainment. This is a huge increase from the current $3.4 billion and will likely be used to detain and deport Ukrainians, Haitians, Afghans, Venezuelans and other immigrants who largely 1) haven’t been convicted of any crimes and 2) came legally and were considered legally present in the US previous to this current administration.
Consider, for example, this short selection of the hundreds of chilling and heartbreaking immigration stories increasingly coming to light in Texas and around the country:
In Austin:
An 18 year old Venezuelan without a criminal record was violently taken from his home and shipped off, without any legal process, to a notorious prison in El Salvador where his family or attorneys hasn’t been able to contact him.
A Mexican mother and her citizen children were stopped at a traffic stop in Austin and then vanished. These kinds of reports are becoming increasingly common.
In Houston:
ICE says they deported over 500 people in Houston in one week in May. There are increasing reports of this kind of action becoming increasingly common
In Texas:
A Texas bill passed in early May which would ban Chinese and Russian citizens (and potentially those from other countries) from buying property in the state.
Nationwide:
4,700 international students around the country, including at places like Rice in Houston, have had their status revoked and are being detained or are being kicked out of the country for speaking out their political opinions (or for no clear reason at all) and the administration has stated that they will begin aggressively revoking Chinese student visas.
There is a national TV ad telling immigrants that “we will hunt you down” and encouraging them to “self-deport”
The same day that Afghan refugees had their temporary protected status revoked and were told to return home (to certain death) White South Africans were welcomed in the US as supposed refugees1
What if the current situation for immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, international students in the US today is increasingly becoming similar to that of diaspora Jews in the Persian empire in the time of queen Esther?
Raymond Chang reminds us in his important Christianity Today article “We Should Not Be Silent This Time” that, “In early 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, around 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes by executive order. Two-thirds of them were American citizens.” He goes on to say, “I am struck by the unsettling parallels to what immigrant communities are facing today. Even though the US is not currently at war, we are again witnessing the troubling and unchecked use of executive power that jeopardizes the rights and safety of individuals living in our country.”
According to many scholars and outside observers, the US is shifting to more of a form of “competitive authoritarianism” similar to that found in countries like Hungary and Turkey. We are also in a period of rapidly increasing anti-immigrant attitudes. This is an often repeated cycle in US history. The 19th century saw periods of anti-immigrant sentiment against southern and eastern european immigrants and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Immigration Act of 1924 established quotas for immigration from different countries, effectively restricting immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. The 1920’s and 30’s saw a rise in anti-Mexican sentiment and large deportations campaigns. How we as a nation treat the vulnerable is always a symptom of deeper and larger societal malaise and doesn’t bode well for other vulnerable populations in the future.
This is An Impending Human-Rights Catastrophe.
What we are seeing goes beyond “changing policies” to be endlessly debated or the attitudes of a specific leader or political party. I think what we are seeing now is something altogether more systematic, more targeted, more evil and destructive. Think again of that 45 billion dollars set aside to actively detain law abiding immigrant women, children and families. Think again of the political ad: “We will hunt you down.”
The One Part of the Body report released by the National Association of Evangelicals, World Relief and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity contains these stark data points:
Roughly one in 12 U.S. Christians are either directly vulnerable to deportation or live with a family member at risk of being deported
As of the end of 2024, there were more than 10 million Christian immigrants present in the United States who are vulnerable to deportation. (This number is even higher now in May of 2025)
The overwhelming majority of immigrants at risk of deportation are Christians
Using the word “deportations” for what is happening is not really accurate. Immigrants (including documented cases of even some US citizens and green card holders) are being indefinitely detained without due process and violently disappeared. Some are being sent to third-countries they have never lived in, including Guantanamo Bay, Costa Rica, Panama, El Salvador (and most recently Djibouti) to face potentially life in prisons and in limbo far from family and lawyers in places with little to no legal oversight or recourse.
This is a lot to take in. What do we do? How do we respond? What if the book of Esther can help us become people of courageous discernment “for such a time as this?” In our next post in this series we will dive into these questions and offer some prayerful suggestions.
Rev. Jonathan Abraham Kindberg is the founder and Executive Director of the Diaspora Network. He is the second-generation in his family born in Perú and was raised in Chile, Panamá and Kentucky. He currently resides with his wife Lini in Austin, Texas.
See this statement from White South African Christian leaders in response: Statement from White South African Christian Leaders on Recent Actions by the United States Government)
Thank you, Pastor Jonathan, for bringing all of these shocking developments to light. I appreciated the links for more of the story. The ads were chilling. And a great point that this is not deportation but incarceration. I look forward to your next post. Adelante en la lucha.