Nearly 30 years ago, I spent a summer between college semesters in Mali, ministering to the Fulani people—a nomadic Muslim tribe largely unreached by the saving Good News of Jesus. Our team of five Wheaton College students aided a Ghanian doctor and his wife in organizing mobile health clinics and outreach events, and we showed the Jesus film to hundreds of members of this tribe spanning much of Western Africa.
As I understood it then, we were heirs of the great evangelistic legacy of men and women following Jesus to the ends of the earth, just as he’d commanded us in the Great Commission.
Two years ago, the proverbial ends of the earth arrived on my doorstep. Thousands of Fulani (mostly Mauritanian men) made their way to Cincinnati. Trekking more than 10,000 miles, members of the mostly unreached Muslim tribe legally entered the United States at its southern border. They sought refuge from racism and forced labor in Biden-era policies that assured them of provisional legal status as asylum seekers. To pay for the journey, their families sold livestock and liquidated assets.
In the years since their arrival, as the newcomers have awaited asylum court dates and legal employment status, they have shown up to English classes held at a local community center, taught by a group of volunteers from area churches, including me. Last week, one man wrote at the top of his paper, “My teacher is nice.” He smiled broadly, then asked for the missing word for the negative form of the sentence we’d been practicing.
“My teacher is not … ?” He looked at me quizzically.
“Mean,” I said. “My teacher is not mean.”
It’s unthinkable to me that our friends may now be going home. They have committed no crime—not even the offense of illegal entry. Many entered through the now-defunct CBP One app, which allowed “undocumented aliens to submit advance information and schedule appointments at eight southwest border ports of entry.”
I couldn’t have imagined the last week of chaos, as our volunteers’ text thread blew up with concerns about the legal rights of our friends and the protections that may (or may not) be afforded them. Our friends’ opportunity to defend their asylum cases is now severely diminished, given a recent executive order that halts funding for court education. Most, who arrived fewer than two years ago, are in danger of expedited removal under recent legal changes.
“Do we need blinds for the center?” someone asks. Someone else prints cards with verbiage to teach our friends to recite in the case of a confrontation: “I do not wish to speak to you, answer your questions, sign or hand you any documents based on my Fifth Amendment rights under the United States Constitution.” Someone else cites an Ohio law invalidating such a response. Confusion abounds, but we gather to pray.
Lord, keep our friends here.
Immigration is a contentious and complicated issue in the United States. In the first hours after President Donald Trump was elected, Reuters reported 25 percent of Americans saw it as the most pressing problem for the new administration to address.
Among other concerns, there is fear of criminality and anxiety about scarcity of resources. Undoubtedly, with the porousness of the southern border under the former administration, when illegal crossings soared—averaging 2 million per year from 2021 to 2023 as reported by The Washington Post—we’ve understood these numbers cannot be sustained.
Our country sorely needs both policy overhaul and common-sense immigration enforcement. But I want to argue for what I consider a particularly Christian response (and indeed, Christian resistance) to the recent immigration news of the last week.
This news includes the intention to expeditiously remove many asylum seekers like my Mauritanian friends, the suspension of the refugee resettlement program and the order to stop assistance to refugees already arrived in the country, and the new executive order that now dispenses with “sensitive locations” like churches and makes provision for law enforcement to enter for immigration raids.
These are not simply troubling facts. They are not simply threats to American decency. These actions run counter to the righteousness and justice and mercy we are called to image in the world as those belonging to a righteous, just, and merciful God.
“Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” I was caught by this phrase in my reading of Genesis 18 last week, as each day brought worse news for my Mauritanian friends. In the chapter, Abraham pleads with God to spare the city of Sodom: “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (v. 25).
The new administration’s efforts to deport immigrants lack a commitment to separate righteous from wicked, innocent from guilty. As of December 2024, weeks before the inauguration, nearly one million migrants had entered with the CBP One app. This legal status will now very likely be revoked, not because of any wrongdoing on the part of asylum seekers, but because of political machinations.
As Catholic bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso articulated in a recent statement, “As shepherds, we cannot abide injustice, and we stress that national self-interest does not justify policies with consequences that are contrary to the moral law.”
My brothers and sisters, this must not be. To be sure, we can tighten the border, let migrants plead their case in the immigration courts, and then let courts decide their permanent status. But we must not unjustly revoke a provisional status that was obtained legally, endangering the lives and livelihoods of nearly a million people, nor should we obstruct access to legal advice.
Moreover, the federal government should not suspend the good work of the refugee resettlement program, temporarily or permanently. For decades, it has been the most secure entry process for those wishing to resettle here, and it has historically enjoyed bipartisan support.
In fact, some of the highest annual rates of refugee admissions in recent decades came under Republican presidencies: Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush both admitted 142,000 people, respectively, in 1982 and 1993. The refugee resettlement program must continue to welcome the most vulnerable globally.
Finally, church leaders, church volunteers, and parachurch spokespeople must speak out against any policies that would infringe upon religious freedom and allow for immigration raids in houses of worship. As World Relief president and CEO Myal Greene wrote in a public letter from the Evangelical Immigration Table (of which Christianity Today is a member), the federal government must respect religious liberty “both by avoiding immigration policy changes that scare families away from church services and by sustaining the U.S. refugee resettlement program.”
Pastors must pastor, and volunteers teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) should teach. We cannot now tackle the job of immigration legalities and worry about jeopardizing those in our care, though this is exactly what we’re forced to do. In Cincinnati, one of the most “immigrant-friendly” cities in the country, volunteers like me are attending legal workshops to understand recent executive orders and how they impact our friends. I understand that we cannot grant entry to every suffering family in the world, but we can protect those in our midst now.
These actions I have pleaded for seem easy ways to image God in the world as his people. As the psalmist tells us, our God “loves righteousness [tzadequah] and justice [mishpat]; the earth is full of his unfailing love [chesed]” (33:5).
As Tim Keller explains in Generous Justice, mishpat involves just protection and provision for the oppressed and vulnerable, categories of people like widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor. Tzadequah encompasses right relationship with God and neighbor, making justice a thoroughly social project. And chesed is the expression of God’s mercy. Without it, we cannot love as God loves.
The power and peril of being human, endowed with the image of God, is that we can fail the job so disastrously. At the very beginning of time, we were given real responsibility—and real power—to make something of the good world God had made, though we might instead choose to destroy it.
“We are threatened by our gifts,” as Marilynne Robinson perceptively put it in Reading Genesis. She reads the story of the Tower of Babel as an “astonishingly high estimate of human capability.” We are significant moral actors with consequential choices, and despite all the evidence that we will not yield our powers well, God does not diminish them. This divine leniency stands in stark contrast to the comparative literature of other ancient societies. When the humans in their stories did evil, they were disabled.
God preserves, it seems, the promise of righteousness, this capacity for being like God. Robinson entices readers with the beauty of divine righteousness:
It can save a city. It can save Creation. If one could imagine righteousness breaking out in earth’s saddest places, and among the exploiters of violence and poverty, one could anticipate the stable, long-term flourishing of something that deserved to be called life.
That’s what we want for our friends: life. Abundant life.
In December, our team of ESL volunteers hosted a Christian party for our Mauritanian friends. Attendance was initially sparse—then word about the pizza spread, and they came in droves. We taught them “Jingle Bells,” we played Christmas Pictionary, and most importantly, we had an opportunity to tell them the true story of Christmas. Afterward, all were invited to stay for a showing of the Jesus film, and a handful did.
The ends of the earth are here, in my city. As we gathered them recently in our classroom to help them understand their rights and responsibilities, we shared—in their own language—why we’ve committed to help them:
“You are our friends, and we do not want to see you suffer harm.”
“The God of the Bible loves immigrants. Jesus Christ was also an asylum seeker, and he understands your fear and your pain.”
The ends of the earth are here, at my doorstep. I hope they’ll hear the Good News.
Jen Pollock Michel is a podcast host, speaker, and author of five books, including In Good Time: 8 Habits for Reimagining Productivity, Resisting Hurry, and Practicing Peace.
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