Some of the most vocal antagonists of the Trump administration’s attempts to rein in illegal immigration have come from men and women of the cloth. Last Friday, about 100 clergy members protesting deportation flights were arrested during a peaceful sit-in at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. Episcopal bishops in New Hampshire and Minnesota recently exhorted their flocks to be prepared even for death in order to protect vulnerable illegal immigrants.
In one sense, you can appreciate why priests, pastors, rabbis, and other clerics might feel called to intervene on behalf of illegal immigrants targeted by ICE raids in various communities across our country. The Democrats and corporate media have conducted a relentless campaign (falsely) portraying immigration authorities as heartless fascists brutalizing helpless immigrants and separating children from their families. But in truth, it’s not federal law enforcement but deluded activist clerics in need of a “come to Jesus” moment.
The Absurd Histrionics of Anti-ICE Activist Clerics
Last week Minneapolis’s Temple Israel synagogue hosted an interfaith service to launch the day of activism, with senior rabbi Marcia Zimmerman uttering the typical pablum that “history is on our side.” Washington’s Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde, the prominent Trump critic and a former Minneapolis priest, traveled to Minnesota for the Friday event, which was advertised as following in the footsteps of the 1960s civil rights marches. In a video seen millions of times on social media, Episcopal Bishop Robert Hirschfeld even urged priests “to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world, and the most vulnerable.”
Granted, there is a certain absurdity with a bishop of the Episcopal Church — the wealthiest per capita denomination in the United States and the epitome of liberal mainline affluence — portraying his priests as anti-establishment renegades and future martyrs. Moreover, such rhetoric gives the impression that anti-ICE clerics are marching off to resist the equivalent of Bull Connor and the Ku Klux Klan, rather than federal law enforcement carrying out warrants against illegal aliens, many of whom have extensive criminal records in the United States.
Yet this is the language of clerics opposed to immigration enforcement. “I believe that if someone professes to represent the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to preach it, that they should not be allowing ICE agents to drag people out of their homes,” said ordained minister and protest leader Nekima Levy Armstrong last week on the show Democracy Now! This effectively makes opinions on immigration enforcement a litmus test for whether or not you are a true Christian, which seems not a little overwrought, given the absence of the topic in the pages of the New Testament.
Immigration Enforcement Is Not Contradictory to Christianity
Many Christians and other peoples of faith may be wondering based on the extreme rhetoric of many American religious leaders — perhaps even their own pastors or priests — if supporting immigration enforcement is somehow at odds with their religious convictions, particularly those regarding caring for the persecuted and vulnerable. Undoubtedly, when we are talking about an unauthorized immigration population of around 14 million people, it’s inevitable that some of those people likely suffered a form of persecution in their country of origin, and many are in economically difficult situations here in the United States. Moreover, given everyone enjoys the imago dei, they are all deserving of respect and fair treatment, as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops noted in their November 2025 statement, praying for “an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement.”
Nevertheless, nations have the right to police their borders, especially when we are talking about the largest wave of human migration in U.S. history, and one of the largest in modern history. Citizens have a right to safety, which has been threatened by this huge influx of persons, many of whom are trafficked via dangerous cartels and other criminal networks or are engaged in criminal activity in this country. Citizens have a right to fairly compete for wages and employment, rather than being undercut by illegal aliens willing to work for below market rates, as Harvard economist George J. Borjas has argued for decades. And citizens have a right to have their taxes be spent on other citizens — illegal aliens currently impose net fiscal costs of at least $110 billion per year on U.S. taxpayers.
Unless borders and laws mean nothing, there has to be some way for governments to address illegal immigration. Ideally, our federal government would do this in close cooperation with local law enforcement, so that disruption to the peace and security of local communities would be minimalized. As we have seen in Minneapolis and a host of other American municipalities, this is not happening, often encouraged by liberal state, city, and county officials who have their own incentives to fight immigration enforcement. As Mark Hemingway recently noted here, state and local politicians are beholden to voting blocs of recent immigrants, and blue states enjoy power and congressional seats from illegal immigrants who are counted in census results.
Anti-ICE Activism Is More About Leftist Ideology Than Christianity
As protests in Minneapolis and other sanctuary cities have made clear, anti-ICE efforts are coordinated and conducted out of a leftist playbook — Renee Good was herself trained by ICE Watch activists who operate local groups across the country. These activists may appeal to language and ideas that intersect with Christianity and other religious traditions such as caring for the poor or welcoming the stranger, but they are at their core ideologues of the left with a specific political agenda: ending immigration enforcement altogether.
American men and women of good will can and should debate various aspects of immigration enforcement, such as what tactics law enforcement should use to identify and detain illegal aliens, under what circumstances deporting millions of illegal aliens already living here is moral or even practical, and even how much illegal immigration we as a country are willing to endure. And there is certainly nothing wrong with ministering to illegal aliens, given Jesus’ exhortations to love and serve the needy is agnostic regarding the needy’s legal status. But to claim that disruptions of law enforcement activities, including antagonizing, threatening, and assaulting federal law enforcement, somehow represents the Gospel is not only risible, it’s insulting.