Immigration protesters bring their own Bible verses

Richard Buckley held up a sign near City Hall in Los Angeles on Saturday. “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross,” it read. I asked him why he chose that message to display.

“I believe in the fact that fascism is coming,” he said. “It comes when people think they're better than others.”

“And you think these Christians”—the ones supporting President Donald Trump and his policies—“think that they’re better?” I asked.

“They’re judging us,” he said, as if that answered the question. “They're pushing their agenda onto other people,” he added. Buckley explained that he, himself, is a Christian—and a former Republican. “I voted Reagan to Romney,” he told me. “But I don't believe in Trump.”

Los Angeles is starting to recover from more than a week of destructive protests sparked by the Trump administration’s deportation of illegal immigrants from the city. On Tuesday, Mayor Karen Bass lifted a curfew put in place during the protests. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said dozens of protesters were facing criminal or misdemeanor offenses, but said he supported the people’s right to peacefully protest.

As the debate over whether and how to enforce U.S. immigration laws rages across the country, advocates on all sides of the conflict are employing Christian imagery and claiming that Scripture supports their arguments.

Anthony Rios is an associate pastor at New City Church in Los Angeles. At the protest Saturday in downtown LA, which drew about 30,000 demonstrators, he sported a beaded necklace with a cross over a Carhartt shirt. His eyes frequently scanned the street from behind blue-tinted Oakleys as he spoke to me. In a time like this, churches need to stand up—especially Hispanic churches, he said.

“This is our opportunity for us to show Jesus, to show our faith in action, and show people that we're not staying silent, right?” Rios said. And he added: “Some may even say that the Christian community has caused this, has been part of causing what is happening right now. So we must call it out and stand in solidarity with our immigrants.”

Rios explained that his congregation is diverse and progressive.

“I think somewhere in somewhere in that history of church development, we decided to follow, how do I say it to follow an agenda that doesn't belong to us,” he said. “And I think that's the problem with our Christian community as a whole in the United States. We're not good at calling things out. We're just good at following whatever they tell us.”

One protester on downtown on Friday held up a sign featuring a verse from Romans 12: “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good,” it said. He said his first name was Mauricio, but declined to give his last name.

He said his sign aimed to “let everybody know that peace wins over hate.” He said his mother had been in the country for 25 years. But if ICE arrested her, she was in jeopardy of getting deported. An upside-down American flag hung above his sign.

“I am [an] American citizen, so I'm all for maybe getting rid of the people who deserve it,” he said. “But not individuals who have been here for more than 25 years, that are honest workers trying to chase the American dream.”

Some Latino faith leaders see the matter very differently. Samuel Rodriguez, pastor of New Season church in Sacramento, Calif., and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, applauded the Trump administration’s increase in immigration enforcement.

“I want to thank President Donald J. Trump for making crystal clear the focus of enforcement must be on real dangers—‘criminals’, not on the quiet, hard‑working people who have built their lives here,” Rodriguez said. “This emphasis echoes what many of us have been saying for over 20 years: secure the border, halt illegal immigration, and deport only those involved in nefarious activities—not God‑fearing, family‑oriented individuals who have lived here for 15, 20, 25, even 30 years, raised children here, and committed no crimes other than overstaying a visa or entering without documentation.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, says it’s trying to get rid of only those individuals who deserve it. Its operations are highly targeted and not directed at just anyone, the agency said. “We will follow the president's direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America's streets,” the agency added.

Some churches in Los Angeles tried to find a middle ground between supporting immigrants and law enforcement. Pastor Jeremy Treat, a contributor to the Gospel Coalition and the preaching pastor at Reality Church of Los Angeles, took to social media to list his personal opinions about the protests. That list of opinions included statements such as, “I believe that undocumented immigrants are made in the image of God and are worthy of dignity and respect,” alongside statements such as, “I believe that there should be immigration laws and that they should be enforced.” He also said that many aspects of immigration enforcement in California were wrong and driven by partisan politics. He supported people’s peaceful protests as a valid form of advocacy.

If churches from more conservative traditions disagreed with either the message or the tone of the protests, they did not make public statements or gestures saying so. In three days of reporting at protests, I saw no counterprotesters. Many of the churches and Christian organizations I contacted to ask about their views on the issue did not respond or declined to comment.

One church, Oceanside Christian Fellowship, told me in an email that it strove to keep its political views out of the pulpit and the press. When it came to discussing the protests with anyone in its congregation, the church said it would gear its remarks toward those individual souls.

On Saturday, among a crowd of thousands milling about and chanting in front of City Hall, stood Fiest—he declined to give his real name. He wore a black hat, black shades, and an American flag gator mask tucked up over his nose. He carried a roughly 6-foot tall sign bearing words from Leviticus 19:33-34, which states, “When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and kyou shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”

“There's other verses, so many other verses, that talk about how we should treat our neighbors, how we should love our neighbors, but this one just stood out to me because it was very direct that we should treat them like natural-born citizens,” he said.

He emphasized that laws were important, but not more important than loving your neighbor.

”I'm not an anarchist. I'm not against laws. They're all necessary, but most of all, we should follow God's lead,” he said. “The highest authority is God's authority. And if God is love, what are we supposed to be? Of course, you know, truth, laws, all those things are important, but they cannot supersede God's authority.”

Not everyone using Biblical language on their signs at the protest held Biblical beliefs. Anthony Rios said that he spoke to a group of girls at the protest holding up signs with Biblical language. He asked them if they went to church and they said they didn’t, but they’d been raised in the church.

“I think there are a lot of people who understand that the Christian narrative is being used in the administration right now, and people are kind of understanding that it's not genuine,” Rios said. “I think a lot of people kind of understand that it doesn't mirror what Jesus would do.”