The Christian Case for Deportation

Donald Trump’s resounding victory in November indicates widespread public support for radical action on immigration.

In October, a Marquette Law School poll showed support for “deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home countries” at 68% among registered voters. After the election, a separate poll found that 57% of respondents favored deporting at least 11 million people living here illegally.

The once and future president has a clear mandate to restore law and order to our immigration system. The question is how long it will last.

Legacy media outlets are sure to flood the airwaves with heart-wrenching images. The press would like nothing more than for deportation to generate maximally painful images of crying abuelas with a dozen American grandchildren being loaded into ICE vans, idealistic DREAMers killed by cartel violence after being deported to Guatemala, and jackbooted thugs beating good samaritans with nightsticks as they use their bodies to shield the migrants claiming sanctuary at their Unitarian church.

In the ideal scenario for Democrats, these sympathetic victims replace Laken Riley as the face of the immigration issue, Trump’s approval numbers tank, Americans’ folk-libertarian instincts shift blue, and they win big in the 2026 midterms.

Trump and his team appear to recognize this danger and are already attempting to mitigate the potential PR backlash. Prominent figures like Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and incoming border czar Tom Homan have emphasized that early deportation efforts will focus on criminals and national security threats. But as Homan also acknowledged, tackling criminal migrants “first” implies that non-criminal ones will follow.

If Republicans are serious about seeing this project through to the end, they’ll need to prepare voters to withstand a full-court press of emotional manipulation and moral outrage. Christian conservatives especially should be ready to have all the usual Bible verses hurled in their faces: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” “love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt,” “[t]he foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born,” and so on—mostly from the mouths of non-believers.

Trump’s 2024 victory relied in part on maintaining his decisive margins among white evangelicals while flipping the Catholic vote red. These voters in particular must resist attempts to co-opt their faith in service of progressive globalism. And for the sake of their own souls, they’ll need to do so without embracing racial or ethnic hatred.

To that end, it seems useful to return to New Testament passages on civil government.

“[R]ulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good,” Paul wrote to the Roman church. “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”

Similarly, Peter instructed his readers to submit “to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.”

Taken together, these verses outline the biblical vision of politics: the civil realm exists to punish criminals, deter would-be offenders by making them fear punishment, and uphold public morality. Civil magistrates who violate or neglect these duties sin against the people God has entrusted to him. (A regime that does so flagrantly enough may even lose its legitimacy—though the bar is pretty low, considering that Peter and Paul were writing about an empire that condoned infanticide and slave rape, ruled by the arch-degenerate Nero.)

All this remains true. What’s changed is that we no longer live under an autocracy. In every political order depicted in the Bible, there is a sharp divide between rulers and ruled.

In a republic, those two roles coexist in every eligible voter. The authority to determine public policy devolves indirectly upon the electorate. As a private citizen, the Christian must turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and all the rest. But when he steps into the voting booth, he participates in the duties of the collective magistrate.

This includes voting for policies that would be sinful to undertake for oneself. If my father were murdered, my duty as a Christian citizen would be to refrain from vengeance. But as a partial magistrate (that is, voter), my duty would be to see the killer imprisoned or executed. I might, with perfect consistency, forgive my father’s murderer and then vote for a DA who would seek the death penalty.

This can be a difficult balance to strike. I might stab the killer myself, thus improperly executing the vengeance that belongs to me only in my impersonal capacity as a partial magistrate. Or I might vote for a soft-on-crime DA, thus improperly allowing my moral duties qua individual to override my moral duties qua voter. To commit the latter error would be a sin against my law-abiding neighbors, for whom I (as partial magistrate) bear responsibility.

It used to be only rulers who bore this burden of dual personhood. The Torah’s command to welcome the foreigner forbade King David (as an Israelite) to mistreat his Philistine-born servants. It did not require him (as king) to let 100,000 Philistine men walk across the border. Today, we’re all in the same situation.

It’s recently become fashionable among immigration hardliners to attack Christian charities that serve illegal immigrants. But while it’s perfectly legitimate to denounce NGOs that facilitate human trafficking or lobby for open borders, when it comes to supplying basic human needs, it’s time to set politics aside. Does offering aid to illegal immigrants incentivize more illegal immigration? Maybe. It’s not your job to worry about that.

The way churches (and individual Christians) should respond to mass migration is by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, and caring for the sick. So donate your spare coat to the clothing drive, volunteer to teach free ESL classes, drop a casserole at the shelter, provide legal aid to those navigating the asylum system, and help a migrant dad make car payments so he can feed his family driving Uber.

Then go cast your vote for those who stand for fully enforcing immigration law, knowing full well they plan to deport the people you’re trying to serve. (You could even continue serving immigrants once they’re deported, whether through direct financial support or by partnering with churches or other organizations in their home countries.)

This vision of political theology does not require mass deportations. It does, however, dispense with the objection that aggressive immigration enforcement is somehow un-Christian. People of goodwill can disagree on the ideal immigration system, but the current anarchy is unacceptable.

Individual charity demands that you help those in need. Political charity demands that you (in your role as partial magistrate) maintain order and punish wrongdoing. Perhaps in other forms of government it would be possible to avoid this complicated dual responsibility. But not in ours.

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