President-elect Donald Trump promised during his campaign to deport millions of illegal immigrants, of whom there are an estimated 11 million in the United States. First, we do not yet know how literal this Trump promise is. Big promises about mass deportations were also made in 2016 that were not enacted during his first term. But for the sake of argument, how might Christians think about mass deportation?
There is no specific Biblical or historic Christian teaching about a particular nation-state’s immigration policy. Christian pro-immigration activists have long argued that Old Testament appeals for hospitality toward the stranger demand permissive U.S. immigration policies. They ignore that the United States is not ancient Israel and that strangers in Israel were expected fully to conform to Hebrew standards.
Hawkish Christian immigration hardliners stress Christian teachings about obeying the law and the state’s vocation to uphold order. Public order is the government’s first duty. But how order is upheld competently and justly is always a matter of prudence. There is rarely an unequivocal Christian teaching about contemporary policy specifics.
Superficially, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants is justified. It is the law, and the government is ordained to uphold the law. Case closed? Maybe not. Can all or most of the 11 million be plausibly identified, detained, and deported? It would be a massive undertaking without precedent in U.S. history. The Eisenhower administration aggressively deported hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrants. Critics plausibly alleged that legal immigrants and U.S. citizens were ensnared in the operation, which may have totaled more than 1 million deportations. Logistics were often sloppy, and many deportees died in detention or upon return to unsafe situations.
Attempted deportation of multiple millions would entail vastly more complex logistics with an even greater likelihood of confusion and death.
As to logistics, it is doubtful that the United States currently has the law enforcement manpower to apprehend, detain, and deport multiple millions of people. An estimate of the cost of detaining and deporting one illegal immigrant is nearly $20,000 and probably much more. Removing 11 million illegals in this scenario would cost at least $220 billion.
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Mark is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. A lifelong United Methodist, he has been active in United Methodist renewal since 1988. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War. He attends a United Methodist church in Alexandria, Va.