8% Of US Christians Live In Homes Susceptible To Deportation
Carlos Sanchez, a law-abiding Venezuelan Christian who came to the U.S. on a student visa and later gained temporary protected status, believed the 2024 presidential elections were overdramatized.
After all, he said, it was President Donald Trump who in his first term “initially used executive action to allow Venezuelans to stay lawfully in the U.S.” as Venezuela deteriorated in a political and economic crisis in the late 2010s.
Speaking in a report released March 31 on the potential impact of deportations on Christian families, Sanchez proclaimed, “I’m a strong believer that Trump’s administration is split into two [goals]: Remove anything that is hurting the nation, but help anything that is helping the nation. I believe that someone like me and thousands of other people that are here and have great backgrounds, I believe Trump is going to do something about that in a positive way.”
Sanchez spoke before Trump announced a string of changes in immigration policy that will end TPS for some Venezuelans as early as April 7, and others as late as September, although it’s not clear when Sanchez’s TPS will end.
World Relief estimates 10 million or more Christian immigrants are vulnerable to deportation from the U.S., including those like Sanchez with temporary protections that could be withdrawn, as well as those with no legal status at all, Christian and humanitarian leaders said Monday in releasing the report, “One Part of the Body: The Potential Impact of Deportations on American Christian Families.”
Add the seven million spouses and children of those 10 million or more Christian immigrants, and the total impact could amount to 8 percent of the Christian population in the U.S., researchers said.
Most immigrants at risk of deportation are Christian, researchers deduced, with 61 percent of them Catholics. But 13 percent are evangelicals, seven percent are from other Christian groups, seven percent are from other religious groups and 12 percent have no religious affiliation.
World Relief CEO Myal Greene noted the Trump Administration’s recent withdrawals of legal status from about 1.6 million immigrants in the U.S. lawfully, including more than 500,000 through the end of humanitarian parole and more than 1 million by terminating TPS.
“If President Trump wants to say that he understands that evangelicals want secure borders and the deportation of violent criminals, I think he’s right about that,” Greene said. “And I think we share that concern.
“But if he’s concluded that evangelical Christians want to see deportations on a much larger scale of millions of members of our churches, millions of parents of U.S. citizen children who could be left behind, hundreds of thousands of people who have come to this country lawfully and are here lawfully today,” Greene said, “I think he’s gotten his assessment completely wrong, and I hope he will hear the pleas of evangelicals and Catholics and other Christians, voters in this season, who are asking him to reconsider that position.”
Joining World Relief in releasing the report are The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration.
The report is not designed to affirm or renounce deportations, World Relief Vice President of Advocacy and Policy Matthew Soerens said upon its release, but to provide readers data that when combined with their faith, will inform them how to respond.
“Our goal with this report is also certainly not to contribute to fear,” Soerens said, “because the reality is that there are significant logistical, legal, political and financial barriers to the administration deporting all those who are vulnerable to deportation.”
NAE President Walter Kim said most evangelicals do not want to see mass deportations, citing Lifeway Research data.
“A poll of American evangelicals conducted by Lifeway Research in January found that the vast majority of evangelicals support simultaneously strong, secure borders, but also pathways of immigration reform,” Kim said. “While they support the deportation of those convicted of violent crimes, this same survey found that less than one-fifth of evangelicals, including those who supported President Trump last November, support deportation for those who have U.S. citizen children or spouses who have been in the U.S. for 10 years or longer or who are willing to pay for a fine as restitution for their violation of any immigration law.”
Upon the report’s release, Stephanie Gonzalez, an American of Colombian descent, shared the story of her parents’ forceful detainment and deportation after 35 lawful years in the U.S. They had fled Colombia’s political violence of the late 1980’s and had sought asylum in the U.S. since 1989.
“Unfortunately, my parents became victims of immigration fraud and dealt with several fraudulent lawyers who took advantage of them,” Gonzalez said. “Although it felt discouraging not getting the outcome we wanted over the years, our family never put our trust in a flawed system but in Jesus Christ. As a family, we committed to praying for every check-in appointment and every immigration officer and that something would ultimately change for my parents.”
But her parents were handcuffed and shackled without explanation Feb. 21, she said, describing “a living nightmare that we couldn’t wake up from.
“There was no explanation as to why they were detained, no justification for why they put my parents in handcuffs from their wrists down to their ankles, and there was no information given as to where they would be going,” Gonzalez said. “All we could do was trust that the Lord would protect them and keep them safe.”
While her parents are safe in a Colombia that has improved greatly from decades ago, the family is traumatized and changed by the deportation and separation, Gonzalez said.
“We believe that God sustained our family through this time and that He’s given us a voice to bring awareness to the broken, unjust, cruel and heartbreaking reality that so many immigrant families are facing,” she said. “The separation of families is heartbreaking, and I believe this separation breaks the Lord’s heart.”
The full report is available here.
This article has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.