WWJD
Who Would Jesus Deport?
“A poem cannot stop a bullet. A novel can't defuse a bomb. But we are not helpless. We can sing the truth and name the liars.” ~Salman Rushdie
In addition to Trump’s well-known hopes to deport Central American immigrants and legal US citizens (citizens by birth), he has recently taken aim at Ukrainian war refugees and others who were granted humanitarian parole under the Biden administration; those granted humanitarian parole are legal immigrants who cost the US government nothing. Sending such refugees back to their home countries would put their lives in peril. MAGA Christians have sided with Trump against what they call “illegal aliens.”
Which makes me wonder, WWJD: Who Would Jesus Deport?
But instead I started thinking, WWDJ? Who would deport Jesus? In the well-known Christmas story, baby Jesus, mother Mary, and Joseph escape to Egypt because King Herod was searching for Jesus to kill him. After they escape, an enraged Herod ordered the killing of all the boys in Bethlehem under the age of two. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, however, entered Egypt where they found refuge until Herod died.
What if, instead of this lovely Christmas story, Jesus, Mary and Joseph had been stopped by a wall? Or what if the Egyptian Border Patrol has been ordered to turn away all Jews? Or what if a local Cairo mob, call them MEGA (Making Egypt Great Again), had thrown Jesus’s family out of Egypt? Or what if Jesus, Mary and Joseph had been granted humanitarian status by a Pharaoh I who was sensitive to their plight, only to have their humanitarian status revoked by a new Pharaoh II?
Forced to return, Herod’s henchmen quickly find Jesus, Mary and Joseph and then kill Jesus.
What would you do (WWYD) if you had been a first-century Egyptian and Egypt had declared Jews illegal aliens? If you had been a member of MEGA, would you have insisted on following the law that forbids Jews from living within the Egyptian border? Would you have thought, as I’ve seen on many right-wing websites:
Come legally or don't come at all.
Distraught women, babies crying, etc....I don't care....GET THEM OUT!
Put a bounty on them.
Not illegal aliens, murdering border-jumping criminal scum.
Just another pig at the trough.
How can you defend ILLEGAL aliens?
Would you have said or done nothing to help Jesus, Mary and Joseph? Or would you have done something like complain about them Jews or report them to the authorities? Because the law.
Either way, with the enthusiastic endorsement of MEGA, Jesus would have been captured, deported, and shipped back to where he belongs and then slaughtered by Herod.
Jesus’s teachings on immigrants, which are typically translated as “alien” or “stranger” in the Bible, assume the Jewish tradition with which he identified. So we read, for example:
“The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” –Leviticus 19:34
“You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who reside among you and have begotten children among you. They shall be to you as citizens of Israel; with you they shall be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel.” –Ezekiel 47:22
The Leviticus text applies the so-called Love Commandment explicitly to immigrants—you shall love the immigrant as you love yourself. As far as I can see, no exception is made for whether or not the immigrant is legal or illegal. The text grounds the compassionate treatment of immigrants in empathy—the ancient Hebrews share or should share the feelings of the immigrant because they were treated shabbily (though legally) as slaves in Egypt. The Ezekiel passage not only claims citizenship for the children of immigrants born in their land, but also to immigrant, birth-giving parents.
In the New Testament, Jesus ties our eternal destiny in part to our loving treatment of the stranger:
“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” —Matthew 25
According to Jesus, the failure to invite the stranger into your home and feed them and clothe them is sufficient to disqualify you from entering into the joy of the Master. If you disregard or disempower or dehumanize or deport immigrants, you are doing it, Jesus asserts, to Jesus himself.
Now back to our original question? Who Would Jesus Deport?
Let me start with the obvious—no one granted humanitarian parole (granted to people who have demonstrated an urgent need for safety) should be deported unless and until the conditions in their home country permit a safe return. Jesus, after all, should not have been deported until Herod was dead. Although US law makes precisely this point, Trump and his henchmen, simply ignore the law. Since Ukraine and Afghanistan, for example, have not improved at all, sending Ukrainian and Afghani refugees back to their home countries will almost certainly put their lives in peril (many Afghani refugees were granted humanitarian parole because they assisted US troops against the Taliban, the current regime in Afghanistan).
Who would Jesus deport? Not, as Trump would do, immigrants granted humanitarian parole; they should not be deported unless and until the conditions in their home country permit a safe return.
What about birthright citizens who have every right of every US citizen because according to the 14thAmendment of the US Constitution they are US citizens? Trump, in opposition to the Constitution, rejects birthright citizenship and seeks to deport millions of legal US citizens (by, with one stroke of the pen, declaring them “illegal,” thus deportable).
Trump, in defiance of both Ezekiel 47 and the Constitution, is seeking to force legal US birthright citizens to move from their home and country to a strange land.
Why would the Bible and the Constitution alike assert birth-right citizenship? Those born in the United States have no geographical and often no linguistic connection to their parent’s home country. They are no more, say, Nicaraguan than Trump is German. Neither could find their way around their ancestor’s neighborhood nor ask for directions. Trump would uproot US citizens from their homes and friends and family and country—the communities which have nurtured them and within which they flourish. But the Bible says—don’t do that.
Who would Jesus deport? Neither birthright citizens nor their parents. Both should be treated as citizens and given their part in the land.
I could go on with other classes of immigrants, but I’ll stop here and ask, what should Christians do if Trump and/or the laws of the land demand the deportation of an immigrant that Christians have an obligation to protect and defend?
Christians should do everything within their power to empathetically care for the immigrant, legal or illegal, and treat them as a citizen in the land. Christians should speak truth to power on behalf of the disempowered immigrant, protest against vicious laws that separate parent from child, pay for legal services to protect the rights of immigrants, and open up their homes and share their food and drink. All of that, at least for now, can be done within the confines of the law.
I think Christians should go one step further. Since their spiritual home includes their physical church, the doors of their church-homes should be thrown wide open to the poor, the widow, the orphan and the alien. Says Jesus. Christians should reclaim the church as sanctuary—as a refuge and protection for the disempowered and the dispossessed (those people that Jesus commanded us to especially care for).