Debate over deportations

WASHINGTON—Briana Stensrud says she didn’t know the full story about immigration enforcement efforts at the southern border until she went on a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, during the first Trump administration.

“What I saw floored me,” Stensrud told WORLD. On that five-day trip, organized by World Relief and the National Immigration Forum, she said she encountered two underage mothers, one who was 11 years old and another who was 13. That opened her eyes to the violence people face and the situations they try to escape by coming to the United States, she said.

“And I thought, ‘Surely, if my friends in the church could see what I just have seen on my trip, if they could know the fuller story, they would be just as grieved,’” Stensrud said.

Stensrud is now the director of Women of Welcome, a Christian group that World Relief and the National Immigration Forum started in 2017 to help women address the topic of American immigration from a framework of Biblical hospitality. Last month, she led about 50 women on a different trip—this time to the U.S. Capitol. They hoped to convince U.S. lawmakers that the United States, by restricting legal immigration pathways and aggressively deporting illegal immigrants, was not treating immigrants as it should.

Stensrud described the women who accompanied her to Washington as mostly conservative or moderate theologically and politically and said some had voted for President Donald Trump. “These women were hungry to do something tangible and different that was for an eternal purpose, and it had nothing to do with the fleeting political whims,” she said. “They were just like, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for. I’m not alone. I’m not crazy. I’m not turning into some kind of progressive liberal. I’m reading my Bible accurately. The Lord wants me to love immigrants and sojourners.’”

President Donald Trump and his administration have touted their efforts to deport illegal immigrants as essential steps to preserve American national security. Real-life examples of violent crimes committed by immigrants—such as the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., last month by a suspected Afghan national—have given weight to the president’s position and prompted calls for more rigorous vetting.

But while many of the president’s supporters agree with his aggressive crackdown, some conservative voters aren’t so sure. Christians who spoke to me about the issue largely agree on the need to punish crime, but some say Trump’s deportation push has gone too far. The lack of consensus shows how Christians don’t always see eye-to-eye about how Biblical principles should apply to immigration policy.

Among voting-age Americans, opposition to Trump’s immigration policies has grown. Pew Research Center said Monday that its polling found that 53% of Americans think Trump’s immigration policies are “too much.” That’s a jump of 9 percentage points since March. Roughly half of all Americans outright oppose the White House’s immigration policies, while less than 40% say they approve of them.

The National Immigration Forum released the results of a poll last week indicating that 80% of registered Republican voters want their party’s officials to work with Democrats to revise legal pathways into the country so that America can fill crucial job vacancies. They also support updating the country’s asylum process and keeping immigration enforcement actions narrowly tailored to national security and public safety threats.

Even so, the Department of Homeland Security told WORLD that it believes most Americans support the Trump administration’s agenda.

“President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem are delivering on the American people’s mandate to deport illegal aliens, and the latest polls show that support for the America First agenda has not wavered,” said Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. She cited an October Harvard/Harris poll showing that nearly 8 out of 10 Americans support deporting illegal immigrants who are criminals.

According to McLaughlin, 70% of the illegal immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have criminal convictions or charges stemming from their time in the United States. “The American people, the law, and common sense are on our side, and we will not stop until law and order is restored after [former President Joe] Biden’s open border chaos flooded our country with the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens,” she said.

But Ginger Parham, who joined Women of Welcome on last month’s trip to Washington, D.C., sees the situation on the ground differently.

“Where I’m from in Mississippi, my pastor always described it as if, on the Bible Belt, I’m sitting on the buckle,” she said. “There’s that sense of like, everything revolves around your faith.”

According to Parham, ICE raids have reached into her neck of the woods, but she claims their targets aren’t dangerous threats to the community.

“Personally, the folks I know that have been picked up are not some criminal. Some of them have been here for 20 years,” she said. “They’re just caught up in a traffic stop.”

Gabriel Salguero said that he and his wife started the National Latino Evangelical Coalition as a way to love their neighbors. As the organization’s president, he receives messages daily from people caught in the middle of immigration enforcement actions across the country.

“I just got one this morning from a pastor from Queens where a child was detained in Queens who’s a member of one of the families that goes to their church,” Salguero told WORLD. “I got a call from a pastor in the Maryland-D.C. area, where they were doing a Thanksgiving outreach, where people were afraid to show up to receive their warm meals because of indiscriminate immigration actions. I just spoke to someone in North Carolina, where people who have low resources, now instead of coming to the soup kitchens … have to go to their homes because they’re afraid to be in the streets, and they lack resources to feed their children or themselves.”

Salguero and his organization support the U.S. government deporting dangerous criminals. But he said he doesn’t support deporting individuals who have positively contributed to their communities.

Still, other Christian thinkers are more sympathetic with the Trump administration’s stance.

Nathan Pinkoski, a Catholic and an immigrant from Canada, argues that the Trump administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants are long overdue and do reflect Christian values.

Illegal immigration breaks down social unity and the rule of law because someone is crossing the border unlawfully yet “is trying to benefit from the relationships of civic friendship when that person is not a fellow citizen,” explained Pinkoski, a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America. “And it’s also an issue if we don’t have the law enforced. Because what we’re saying to the rest of us—those who have consulted with our representatives, those who have worked to pass a particular law—‘Well, all that effort didn’t really matter.’”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other witnesses last week testified to the House Committee on Homeland Security that they believed the greatest threat to American security comes from illegal immigrants or allegedly unvetted legal immigrants inside U.S. borders.

Last week, Noem’s DHS announced a “Worst of the Worst” webpage touting its arrest of illegal immigrants it says have committed heinous crimes against American citizens. Among the criminal convictions: sexual assault, child abduction, domestic battery, robbery, and murder.

Experts have pointed out, though, that the database features fewer than 10,000 entries—less than 2% of the total number of illegal immigrants DHS claims to have deported since Trump took office. (The department says nearly 2 million other migrants have left the country through means other than deportation.)

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told WORLD that although the administration is arresting and deporting illegal aliens with additional criminal charges, “anyone illegally present in the United States is eligible for deportation.”

Christians hold various views about who should or shouldn’t be deported, and whether U.S. immigration should be reduced overall. Pinkoski, for example, supports deporting all illegal immigrants, not just those who’ve committed crimes in the United States. Stensrud and Salguero maintain they want to see criminals who are threats to public safety deported. But they believe people who are already in the country illegally yet are positively contributing to their communities should be allowed to stay.

Salguero backs the DIGNIDAD (Dignity) Act of 2025, a bill that has made little headway in the U.S. House of Representatives so far but has garnered support from organizations like the National Immigration Forum. The legislation would allow for a strong border and the deportation of illegal immigrants who have committed crimes inside the United States. But it would also allow illegal immigrants who have positively contributed to their communities to pay a fine for their illegal crossing and attain legal status in the United States.

Stensrud says that if the U.S. government has to deport people, it should do so in a humane way.

“We want people to have due process. We don’t want family separation. It feels like [Trump’s immigration policy] is, in many cases, in many communities, family separation by a different name,” she said. “At Women of Welcome, we say we want safe and secure borders, we want thorough vetting, but we also want the humane treatment of people who we believe are made in the image and likeness of God.”

Christians who support widespread deportations, Stensrud argued, are not fully living in line with what they believe.

“When you read Romans 15:7, it says, ‘Welcome others as I have welcomed you,’” Stensrud said. “And if Christ’s welcome cost Him His life, and I’m supposed to be like Christ, why would I not think that my welcome wouldn’t cost me the same?”

Pinkoski, on the other hand, cites Thomas Aquinas and other church fathers who he says taught that Christians aren’t called to love all people in the same way.

“The love I give my spouse demands particular responsibilities and duties of me that is different from that I give toward my parents or my cousin,” he said. At a social level, Christians need to ensure they attach the appropriate kind of love to each relationship. He used Matthew 25:36—which says, “I was in prison and you came to visit me”—as an example.

“The exhortation there is not, ‘I was in prison, and you broke me out,’” Pinkoski said.

He added that Scripture called the Israelites to draw distinctions between different kinds of people in their midst.

“Think of someone like Ruth—the beautiful story of Ruth—where, to join and become a full member of Israel, she converts,” Pinkoski said. “Now, I’m not saying the same rules apply nowadays, but the point is to distinguish between sojourners, between foreigners—in our context, temporary residents, people who might be coming in for economic reasons, and those who are on the path to citizenship and what their responsibilities to integrate are.”

Pinkoski further argues there may be times when a society should reduce legal immigration—such as when native-born citizens are struggling to find employment.

But Salguero said he believes Christians can both support law and order and find a welcoming stance toward immigrants.

“I think we should deal with border security. We should process violent criminals. We should seek an earned path to legalization for immigrants who’ve been here, who have families who are working hard, who have not committed any violent crimes,” he said. “And I think that those principles should reflect our commitment to the gospel when Jesus said, ‘I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.’”