Trump’s mass deportation targets the innocent, defying biblical and American justice

By Patrick McCormick | FāVS News Columnist

God tells Abraham in Genesis 18 that, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me.” 

But, Abraham demands, even if Sodom is full of villainy, “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Far be it from you to do such a thing — to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

As we know, God promises to spare Sodom if there are even 10 innocent souls in a city of tens of thousands. The Lord will not sacrifice 10 innocent people to punish wicked multitudes. “For the sake of the ten, I will not destroy it.”

Biblical justice demands protection of the innocent

Matthew 13’s parable of weeds among the wheat echoes this divine promise when the owner of a weed-infected field (the Lord) keeps the workers from cutting down the weeds (villains) lest the wheat (innocent) are also destroyed. In the Kingdom of God, the innocent will not be punished with the guilty.

These, and other biblical passages instruct that the innocent are not to be swept up in the prosecution of the guilty. The same principle stands behind our Constitution’s presumption of innocence until proven guilty and our judicial guarantee of a due process that may let some criminals go free to ensure the innocent are not wrongfully imprisoned.

But the Trump administration’s plan for the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, targeting over 11 million undocumented immigrants, has already detained tens of thousands of people without criminal convictions or records, stripped thousands of others of legal protections offered by previous administrations and threatened to remove DACA and Birthright protections for millions of children born or raised in this country. 

Donald Trump has slandered undocumented immigrants as a gang of murderers and rapists for a decade, calling them a plague of vermin infecting our national body, and his administration has repeatedly and dishonestly claimed their unparalleled plans for mass deportation target “the worst of the worst.” Like the promise to build a wall paid for by Mexico and the over 30,000 other lies Trump told in his first term, claims about immigrant crime and targeting dangerous criminal immigrants are not to be believed. 

Forget that Trump has been charged with 88 criminal offences, convicted on 34 felony counts, found liable by jury and judge for sexual abuse and defamation, accused by over 25 women of sexual offences from groping to rape and twice impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” And ignore FBI recordings of his “border czar” Tom Homan accepting a $50,000 bag of cash in a sting operation. Just examine the outrageous claims about immigrant crime and rounding up the “worst of the worst.”

Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans

As of this June, 71.7% of ICE’s nearly 60,000 detainees had no criminal convictions. And while 28.3% did have convictions, and another 24.7% had pending criminal charges, ICE only assigned threat levels associated with criminal violence to 8.7% of these detainees, meaning 91.3% of them had no violent convictions or charges.

This is not surprising, given that a 2023 National Bureau of Economic Research study found that immigrants have had lower incarceration rates than native born Americans since the mid 1870s (a decade before Trump’s German grandfather immigrated here). For longer than there have been Trumps in America, immigrants have been committing fewer crimes than the native born. And these rates have further declined since 1960, with current immigrants 60% less likely to be incarcerated than their native-born peers. 

The American Immigration Council reports that while the immigrant share of the U.S. population more than doubled between 1980 and 2022, up from 6.2 to 13.9%, America’s total crime rate dropped by 60.4%, with property and violent crime rate falling by 63.3 and 34.5%. For the past 45 years, many more immigrants has meant much less crime. At the national, state, county and neighborhood levels, documented and undocumented immigrants commit fewer violent or non-violent crimes.

ICE reported last year that 662,566 of the nation’s roughly 22 million noncitizens have criminal convictions or charges. Even if every one of these criminal records belonged to one of our 11 million undocumented neighbors (not possible), only 6% of these immigrants would have criminal convictions or charges. Meanwhile, the FBI reports that 72 million Americans have criminal records, and 29.5% of adults in this country have a criminal conviction or charge, meaning that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at 1/5^th the rate of the general population. 

So, Trump seeks to arrest, detain and deport over 11 million of our neighbors, the overwhelming majority of whom — according to the FBI, ICE, the Constitution and several studies — are innocent of any criminal offences. (Immigration violations are civil offences, for which citizens rarely, if ever, go to jail.) 

But the vast majority of undocumented immigrants are not the only innocent persons being injured by mass deportation. Another 4.71 million innocent citizen children could lose one or both parents in an ICE raid. (Nearly 1,000 times as many children as Trump separated from their families in 2018 before the courts closed him down.) 

Plus, the mental and physical health of tens of millions of documented immigrants have suffered from increased stress and fear generated by mass deportation threats. One statewide Iowa study showed that both documented and undocumented Hispanic women had noticeably more adverse birth outcomes for nine months following a single ICE raid at a Pottsville packing plant. 

Non-Hispanic white women suffered no such harms, because — as the Supreme Court now affirms — just “looking” like an undocumented immigrant is enough to make you a target for masked ICE agents. And to ICE agents, Supreme Court Justices and the Trump administration, America’s 68.2 million Hispanic residents look like undocumented immigrants. 

Finally, reports from all over the country indicate that millions of immigrants are afraid of going to hospitals, medical appointments or the workplace, while countless others fear going abroad lest they be turned away when seeking to come home. On our campuses thousands of student and faculty immigrants fear raising their voices in public discourse, while the White House has sent troops into our cities to silence anti-ICE protestors and instructed the Department of Justice to target everyone protesting mass deportation. 

We should not be surprised that tens of millions of people are frightened by Trump’s mass deportation plan. As Robert Reich has noted, “This was never about targeting criminals. It was always about terrorizing immigrants” — and anyone who cared about or stood with them.

Faith and constitution call us to resist false witness

In Exodus 20:16 God commands that we not “bear false witness against our neighbor,” and in Exodus 23:8 the LORD demands we “have nothing to do with a false charge and do not put the innocent or honest person to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.” 

Donald Trump and his allies have ceaselessly “born false witness” about 11 million of our neighbors, and their plan for the mass deportation of these neighbors is based on countless and flagrant false charges seeking to justify the scapegoating, terrorizing and punishing of tens of millions of innocent and honest people.  

The God of Scriptures demands we resist this slander, violence and injustice. 

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.

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