On the one hand, there's the fervent turnout of evangelical and conservative Christians, who voted en masse for Donald J. Trump.
On the other hand, it's the stated intent of the forty-seventh president to...on day one...start rounding up conservative and evangelical Christians and forcibly taking them to camps.
Generally speaking, this is not the way that most of the folks who voted for Trump would frame this commitment, but it's an entirely accurate way to describe what's planned.
The plan is mass deportation, on an unprecedented scale, as tens of millions of undocumented migrants will be rounded up and returned to their countries of origin. Given the logistics of such an endeavor, detention camps will be necessary. If we're thinking only as selfish consumers, it might occur to us that this will cripple our ability to harvest crops, resulting in price increases and shortages. But if we're thinking as Christians, there's that other consideration.
We know, with certainty, that most Latino immigrants profess to be followers of Jesus. In the region of the world from which they hail, between 75% to 80% of the population are Christian. They are Baptists and Pentecostals, independent evangelicals and traditional Catholics. Those who risk their lives to reach our borders are no different, which is why so many reach out to Christian communities (or form their own churches) upon their arrival. They are fleeing a combination of things: economic hardship, violence, and political oppression, particularly those trying to escape the oppressive leftist regime in Venezuela.
Again, American conservative and evangelical Christians voted, by a strong supermajority, for an administration that is planning...very first thing...on mobilizing the military to forcibly round other Christians up and ship them to detention camps, which is perhaps the least Christian response imaginable.
Jackbooted soldiers herding Christians into trucks parses more like an Antichrist thing, or it was the last time I cringed my way through parts of one of those barely watchable Left Behind movies.
Even more odd, to my eyes, at least, is that most of the immigrants America will be forcibly detaining aren't progressives, or leftists, or even liberal. They're conservatives.
Latinos are many things, but most of those who come here are faith and family folk, the sort of people who are willing to risk their lives for the opportunity to work hard. They are, as the protagonist of a novel of mine once noted, really just rednecks. They like trucks and beer and dancing. They like fireworks and cowboy hats and traditional family structures and Hey-zuus. If America put the resources required to deport them into welcoming them in, they'd be Republicans for generations.
I know, I know, they're "illegal." If you think that ultimately matters, you're welcome to lecture Jesus on immigration law and secure national borders when you stand before him on the day of judgement. You might also try telling him about how they don't speak English, so they aren't really Christians, which I'm sure he'll appreciate. Or how you believed Trump when when he belched out the slander-pander that they were all murderers and rapists. I mean, it's not like showing hospitality to the stranger and mercy to the foreigner in one's land is ever mentioned in the Bible. He'll understand that you put country and race before Christ, which he's totally cool with. Ahem.
Que dios tenga piedad de tu alma.