I teach in a 70% Hispanic high school in northwest Georgia. Although it has its challenges, it is generally a good place to work.
The students are quiet but respectful, dutifully taking notes and completing their assignments. I worry that some of my students are in danger of being deported.
My work buddies, most of whom voted for Donald Trump, tell me there’s nothing to worry about. They say mass deportations will only apply to criminals. They are outraged over migrant crime, such as the murder of Laken Riley, and they hold the Biden administration’s permissive immigration policies responsible for it.
Similarly, my California cousin, who has family and friends who work for the Border Patrol, reassures me that “nobody is looking to deport people who are working full-time jobs and have kids in school.” Many people suggest that the kind of mass deportation I fear is logistically impractical and impossible.
I hope they are correct and that any deportations will be targeted. However, the phrase I hear from many incoming administration officials is “mass deportations.”
I’m a bit of a pessimist and afraid. Conservative columnist George Will says pessimists are “often right and happy to be wrong.”
A story about the Trail of Tears in Steve Innskeep’s book “Jacksonland” haunts me. The day before they were “deported,” the Cherokee planted their crops for the following year. They just didn’t believe the government would kick them out, but 18,000 Cherokee were sent on the Trail of Tears.
We are considering deportations in the millions. There is a principled case, based on Christian scripture, not about why deportations will be limited by logistical constraints–but why they should be limited by moral constraints. This case rests on three pillars: the Golden Rule, the “least of these,” and specific Old Testament injunctions.
Concerning the Golden Rule, I have always held that were we in a similar situation to the undocumented, we would jump the border to feed our family. Only a Pharisee places the demands of the law over the needs of their own desperate family. When I make this point to my MAGA friends, they almost always concede that they would do the same as the immigrant.
The classic stories “The Grapes of Wrath” and “Les Miserables” put us in the shoes of protagonists who broke the law for their families. We feel no conflict in rooting wholeheartedly for the “criminals” Tom Joad and Jean Valjean.
In Matthew 25:40-41, Jesus instructs us to treat the “least of these” with special concern, as if we were showing compassion for Christ himself. We are to see the face of Jesus in our most vulnerable neighbors, including our immigrant neighbors.
In my time of teaching, I have never seen a more vulnerable face than the eyes of a student of mine who had been detained by ICE after a minor traffic violation.
Hebrew Scripture is more explicit in its instruction. In its pages, we are continually admonished to show special concern for “widows, orphans and aliens.” The people Jesus refers to as “the least of these” are given as concrete examples in the Hebrew Bible.
Specifically, Leviticus 19:33 commands us to “love the immigrant living among you as yourself.” God’s commandments couldn’t be more concrete. My conservative friends sometimes argue that we just “can’t let everyone in and that “we simply don’t have the room for every sympathetic story.” Fair enough.
I have always thought and conceded the need for border security with a wall if necessary, but we can help the people who are already here.
The Serenity Prayer, which asks God to give us the courage to change what we can, is a good place to start. So is the allegory of the starfish, which urges us to bend down and save the one starfish washed up at our feet, even if we can’t save all of them. Then there’s John Wesley, who founded the Methodist church on the idea that the way to serve God is to do all we can for as many people as we can.
The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did not engage in mass deportations. I always found scriptural arguments over moral principles persuasive with Republicans of that era.
Trump’s Republican principles, however, are less grounded in Christian scripture. But I hope that in the coming months, scriptural arguments will appeal to the better angels of Trump’s nature.
We hear all these awful stories about invading migrants overwhelming our country, but I would like to offer two counterexamples from my time teaching these students. One is literally named Jesús.
When Jesús finishes his tests, on which he always makes a good grade, he gets out his Bible and begins reading as he waits for other students to finish.
Jesús reads his Bible.
The other, Jorge, told me that when he learned he had been granted legal status, he crawled to church on bloody knees.
These students have been an honor to teach, and I pray that the Trump administration treats them with compassion.
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McKenzie is a Methodist in Calhoun, Georgia, who teaches high school and holds a doctorate in political theory from the University of Florida.
