Congress has passed a “big, beautiful” budget reconciliation bill that supercharges immigrant detention and deportation funding. Many are concerned with how the bill could increase deficits, but few seem to realize how it could lead to a decline in American Christianity unless Congress follows up with a Republican-led effort to finally fix our dysfunctional immigration system.
President Donald Trump has acknowledged the impact of immigration enforcement on particular sectors of the U.S. economy, and indeed, the costs to American consumers of removing workers from the economy could be significant, raising prices by $2,150 annually for a typical American family. But American churches are also profoundly impacted, as recent headlines demonstrate.
In Los Angeles, an anguished pastor begs masked immigration officials not to detain and deport his congregants back to Iran. A Venezuelan pastor self-deports from Texas to comply with the Trump administration’s termination of his Temporary Protected Status. Another evangelical pastor was deported and separated from his five U.S. citizen children after decades in Florida. In North Carolina, an Anglican church pleads for the Afghan Christians among its membership, who fear murderous retribution if the administration follows through on deportation threats.
Those stories were possible with $3.4 billion allocated for detention. Only seven percent of those detained have been convicted of violent crimes. The new detention budget is $45 billion. “You think we’re arresting people now?” asked the president’s border czar prior to the reconciliation bill’s passage. “Wait till we get the funding.” They now have it.
But if the administration proceeds with its stated policy to remove all immigrants residing without legal status in the United States – and if it continues to remove legal protections and pursue deportation for many allowed in lawfully – it will profoundly impact American Christianity. A recent report from the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, and World Relief estimates that 10 million Christians are at risk of deportation.
The impacts stretch well beyond those 10 million Christians, however, as many U.S. citizens live with family members who could face deportation. One in 12 Christians in the United States is either themselves at risk of deportation or shares a household with someone else who is.
Of course, not all congregations will feel this impact equally. While some churches have few or no immigrants, others might lose half their members. Many congregations have already experienced a decline in attendance due to fear of deportation, particularly after the administration withdrew long-standing guidance limiting immigration enforcement activities at church services.
From a theological perspective, however, even if deportation does not directly affect my own congregation, it still matters to me. The Apostle Paul describes the church as a body, made up of distinct but interdependent parts, and says that when one part of the body suffers, every part suffers with it. That’s why Christians of differing theological traditions can partner together to raise this alarm.
To be clear, my concern is not exclusively for fellow Christians. Christians believe that all people, regardless of their religious beliefs, are made in the image of God with inherent dignity. Jesus’ command to love one’s neighbor extends to those outside of the Body of Christ. But among immigrants at risk of deportation, the vast majority — four out of five — are fellow Christians.
In almost every evangelical denomination, growth is significantly fueled by immigrants and their families, both those who bring a vibrant faith with them from countries that are now more Christian than the United States and by those who first embrace the gospel in this country, because of religious freedom to explore faith without fear of persecution. My own journey to faith in Christ, as a child of immigrants, exemplifies this trend. But mass deportation is a strategy for church decline – and it’s not what most evangelical voters who supported President Trump want.
Most evangelical Christians believe that those convicted of violent crimes should be a priority for deportation, but a poll by the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Lifeway Research finds less than one-fifth of evangelicals say the same about immigrants who have U.S. citizen children or spouses, who themselves arrived as children or who would be willing to pay a fine as restitution for their violation of an immigration law.
Congress should make that sort of reconciliation possible – and a newly reintroduced bipartisan bill led by Florida Republican Rep. Maria Salazar would do just that. The Dignity Act, which a broad range of evangelical leaders have praised, would ensure that violent criminals are deported but would allow other undocumented immigrants to pay a fine and meet other requirements in order to earn legal status. Those fines would more than cover the improvements to border security and processing also included in the bill. Those dual goals – an earned legalization process and a secure border – are supported by more than three-quarters of evangelical Christians.
My hope is that Congress will move quickly to pass the Dignity Act, saving most of these newly allocated detention and deportation funds for other purposes, and avoiding the removal of millions of Christians from our country. Let’s not invest billions of taxpayer dollars in a church decline strategy.
