What Does it Profit a Nation to Deport Immigrants & Lose Its Soul?

Immigration enforcement isn’t the problem. Dehumanization and injustice are. 

by Esau McCaulley

The Blackhawk helicopter that carried ICE agents to an apartment complex in Chicago last week did not begin its journey when the pilot entered the coordinates. No, its course was set as far back as 2018, when President Donald Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and much of Africa as “sh*thole countries.” It was sped along when he wondered aloud why America couldn’t increase immigration from Norway, and later made claims that immigrants were eating the pets of residents of Columbus, Ohio.

The American public was being conditioned to ignore ICE’s ill-treatment of Chicago residents when President Trump warned that immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our nation” and “coming in from prisons and mental institutions.” His repeated (false) claims that Chicago is the murder capital of the world prepared us ahead of time to accept the federal government’s recent invasion of one of its neighborhoods.

The Department of Homeland Security said this apartment raid resulted in the arrest of 37 people, two of whom were accused of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua. No one is upset about dangerous people being removed from our country, and every nation has the right to pass laws that regulate its borders. Nonetheless, the way those laws are enforced must respect the essential dignity and rights of human beings. We have ample reason to believe that both are being violated in Chicago at this moment.

The raid resulted in children being awakened in the dead of night to flash bangs and battered doors. Pertissue Fisher, an African American resident of what is supposedly the most dangerous city in the world, never had a gun pointed in her face until she encountered one in the hands of a government official sworn to protect the public. She, along with many other citizens, was handcuffed for the crime of living in the same building where immigrants resided. She said, “They treated us like we were nothing.”

How did we get to a point where significant parts of this country believe it is morally permissible to treat human beings like they are nothing? We can find some insight by looking at a similar period of dehumanization in American history: the slave trade. 

Let’s be clear: I am not arguing that immigration enforcement and the slave trade are the same. A nation has the right and responsibility to police its borders, provided that those laws are just and humane. What I am suggesting is that the logic which allows migrants to be crowded into the Broadview ICE processing center well beyond capacity, without soap or toothpaste, and forced to go to the bathroom out in the open, is impossible unless you’ve convinced yourself that the victims are less than human, just like what many Americans did during slavery.

During the abolitionist movement, many formerly enslaved people, including Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, told their stories. These narratives, alongside images of backs battered by the whip, played an important role in communicating the logic of the golden rule: “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” (Matt 7:12). The goal behind exposing the horrors of slavery was to help the American public understand that no human being should be subject to such ill-treatment, as no one would want those similar evils visited upon them. The narratives served as a testimony against the institution of slavery itself and threatened to turn the nation against it.

The enslavers responded with their own propaganda: they blamed our “lying eyes.” They argued that, despite the fact that these Africans seemed human enough, they remained different from the rest of us. By defining Africans as less than human and particularly fit for slavery, they calmed the troubled consciences of people whose livelihood depended on human chattel. Any empathy or compassion ignited towards the enslaved, so the argument went, was misplaced.

We, too, are living in a world that constantly warns us of the dangers of empathy or allowing our hearts to run away with us. We are told to turn the TV off or close social media, lest we be led astray by videos of parents weeping, neighborhoods being destroyed, and children stumbling about with glazed looks in their eyes. The people being shoved into the backs of unmarked vans must have done something wrong, or they must be the wrong kinds of people; otherwise, nothing bad would have happened to them. The government’s explanation, apparently, is the only one that matters. 

This is the same set of beliefs the abolitionists fought against – that dehumanization can ever be justified, that stories of suffering are the exception, not the rule, and that the real problem is simply our stubborn eyes.

Chicago represents two groups of people that the president would prefer us not to notice: poor Black and brown citizens in urban communities, and foreigners. President Trump is not the first one to link the poor and the foreigner; that distinction was originally made by God. For God, however, the poor and the foreigner are not objects of scorn or unfortunate casualties in the battle for power. Instead, they are targets of his compassion. God describes himself as the one who “watches over the foreigner” and “defends the just cause of the poor.” 

This administration cloaks much of its language in religious imagery, whether calling Operation Midway Blitz a revival or using Scripture to support ICE’s actions. The issue isn’t whether one can quote biblical texts, which this administration has shown a great willingness to do. The real issue is whether Christianity’s insistence on the dignity of every person is binding on the consciences of those in power, and whether the innate value God places on persons extends to people on the streets of Chicago. Thus far, the answer to that has been no, it does not – with devastating results. But the president is not the only person who gets a vote. The Constitution begins with “We the people” for a reason. We must (peacefully) demand better from our leaders. What does it profit a nation to gain secure borders and lose its soul?

Esau Mccaulley is Pastor of All Saints Church in Naperville, IL, host of the Esau Mccaulley Podcast, and author of the forthcoming book God’s Colorful Kingdom Storybook Bible: The Story of God’s Big Diverse Family. He serves as an Associate professor at Wheaton College.