ICE targets Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution

[Bootstrap]

So just to make sure I understand you clearly, are you saying that even when the State targets Christians, the Church has no moral witness about what it’s doing? These Iranian Christians were here legally. They had pending asylum cases because they were escaping religious persecution in Iran. ICE has arbitrarily cancelled their legal status and deported them. Are you saying that the Church has nothing to say about any of this?

to say the state is targeting Christians in the case of illegal immigrants is a misnomer. The state is not targeting them because they are Christians, but because they are here illegally or there has been a glitch in their seeking citizenship process.

I agree. Partly.

But after the government worked to protect Christians who were facing persecution, inviting them to come here, they are deporting these same people. They are only "here illegally" because the government changed their status recently. And that's really rough on them.

[ohio jones]

Why the filibuster? Why not discuss the article itself, taking whatever views you want, but actually spending time to check facts and discuss what the article says instead of making up whatever? What bothers you about actually discussing the article?

The "news" source you picked ...

Am I missing something? The Christianity Today article referenced in the OP was picked by Jazman, not Bootstrap.

[Bootstrap]

Why the filibuster? Why not discuss the article itself, taking whatever views you want, but actually spending time to check facts and discuss what the article says instead of making up whatever? What bothers you about actually discussing the article?

The "news" source you picked ...

Am I missing something? The Christianity Today article referenced in the OP was picked by Jazman, not Bootstrap.

And I don't usually think of Christianity Today as a "news source", it is primarily a Christian site.

[ohio jones]

I agree partly, as well. The government didn't invite them in, if anything Biden did that. (Or whoever was running the country when he was in office). Now Trump is attempting to clean up the mess, that was created by Biden's four years in office. And in doing that Trump's ICE agents are being overzealous at times (my opinion). I believe there are many people here illegally who aren't criminals, who work hard, and are decent people. But unfortunately, the bad ones ruined it for everyone. That is a concept that has been around since Bible times.

Mostly they are people who were here legally. But for whom the Trump Administration has chosen to flip a switch and make illegal by rescinding their legal status without cause.

Biden flipped the switch one way, now Trump switched it the other way.

This thread is not in Politics, but soon will be if it continues down this path.

[ohio jones]

It really always was.

If your frame of reference is political, yes. If your frame of reference is the Kingdom of God rather than the kingdoms of this world, concern for "Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution" can be the focus of discussion without being inherently political.

[Bootstrap]

Here's a bit more background:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/iran ... anama.html

Ghasemzadeh and her brother Shahin crossed into the U.S. illegally from Mexico in late December 2024, seeking asylum. They were detained for five days in San Diego and then separated. She was deported to Panama, while Shahin was transferred to a detention facility in Houston, where he remains awaiting his immigration hearing.

The Christianity Today article is not about Ghasemzadeh and her brother Shahin, who were deported before this all happened. These are not the same people. The Christianity Today article is about a husband and wife who came here legally, and it is more recent.

Here's a persecution.org article on Ghasemzadeh and her brother Shahin:

International Christian Concern (ICC), nonprofits, government agencies such as the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and Christians globally have been following their case, praying and advocating for them since The New York Times broke their story in February.

The Iranian believers will face extreme persecution if returned to Iran. ICC sent an emergency petition on Ghasemzadeh’s behalf, signed by 1,302 people, to 10 refugee-friendly Western countries, including Germany, Spain, France, and Italy.

I don't understand why Shahin needs to be imprisoned.

[temporal1]

It’s impossible to know frm the OP article what’s going on, there are so many reported lies, exaggerations, even hoaxes,
time often brings more details to sort things out. A few of these have been discussed on forum.

It seems safe to conclude, Christians are not specially exempted from policies.

Frankly, in the past, courts did favor and respect Christians. That has changed.

At one point there was a forum member in England (she was a child advocate in their court system) - she sadly described how being Christian there was held against defendents. A sad 180 from earlier times. England and Europe are sufferng in many ways.
Their problems can serve as warnings.

[ohio jones]

A number of posts, primarily those not seemingly related to "Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution" but dealing with immigration more generally, have been split to a companion thread in Politics.

[Szdfan]

So just to make sure I understand you clearly, are you saying that even when the State targets Christians, the Church has no moral witness about what it’s doing? These Iranian Christians were here legally. They had pending asylum cases because they were escaping religious persecution in Iran. ICE has arbitrarily cancelled their legal status and deported them. Are you saying that the Church has nothing to say about any of this?

to say the state is targeting Christians in the case of illegal immigrants is a misnomer. The state is not targeting them because they are Christians, but because they are here illegally or there has been a glitch in their seeking citizenship process.

I agree. Partly.
But after the government worked to protect Christians who were facing persecution, inviting them to come here, they are deporting these same people. They are only "here illegally" because the government changed their status recently. And that's really rough on them.

Mostly they are people who were here legally. But for whom the Trump Administration has chosen to flip a switch and make illegal by rescinding their legal status without cause.
But I agree, it isn't about the fact that they are Christian. He is doing the same for non-Christian refugees as well.

I want to clarify that I don't believe that the US government is deporting Christian refugees because they are Christians, they are deporting Christian refugees because the are refugees. And I'm not just concerned about the government is treating Christian refugees; I'm concerned about how it's treating ALL refugees.

The reason why I asked specifically about Christian refugees is because 1) this is the topic of this thread and 2) I've always been taught that there existed a special kind of unity between Christians. US Christians cared about the persecution that Christians were experiencing in other countries, not because we didn't care about other people, but because they were our fellow believers in Christ.

So the one of the reasons why I asked specifically about Christian refugees is because I wanted to test out whether this unity is still holds. Not in this conversation. Where Paul says that in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, MAGA Christianity says, "There is America and everyone else and America comes first."

Part of the tragedy at this moment is that the reason why the modern refugee system was created after WWII was because the refusal of many countries to accept refugees fleeing Hitler. The most infamous case was the M.S. St. Louis, a German ocean liner, which was denied entry when it attempted to dock in Cuba, the US and Canada with Jewish refugees. The ship returned to Germany and most of the refugees on board were murdered in the Holocaust. The refugee system is being dismantled because the same attitudes that demand that refugees go somewhere else has returned.

It grieves me when the response to human suffering is detachment and bureaucratic indifference. Truly, "the banality of evil."

[JohnH]

Unlike the M S St Louis, it appears the “refugees” involved were able to make it to Mexico and could have applied for asylum there. If no other country in the entire world were willing to accept them / be safe for them, I would be more open to the idea of accepting them in America.

Since America doesn’t share a land border with Iran, I am more skeptical of claims we somehow need to be sympathetic just because they are Christians and would rather perceive as fellow Christians they should be open to following sensible laws.

Overall, I am a bit exhausted with the entire fundraising and political apparatus that surrounds the “persecuted Christians” narrative, and in particular Voice of the Martyrs. I also have grave concerns a lot of these organizations have ties to Western governments and are involved in intelligence activity. That’s not a good witness at all to other countries.