Our country is not only in a constitutional crisis; we are in a biblical crisis.
Our courts and our political system are plagued by the Trump administration’s neglect of due process and its violation of the legal rights of noncitizens in this country. Beyond the important legal questions this raises, there are deeper moral and theological questions that demand our attention.
What our country is doing to Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the many now locked away for life in a gulag in El Salvador, what it is doing to Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil and foreign students whose speech is being suppressed, what it is doing to Afghans who are refugees because they supported the United States and are now being forced to return to the country that promises to kill them—these are grave sins and violations of Scripture. Due process and civil rights are not only guaranteed by our Constitution; they are also a moral and scriptural obligation.
One of the classic formulations in Catholic social thought is “See, Judge, Act.” To see, at a minimum, means attending to the realities around you in your time. But we should not think of seeing as a neutral position; we all see according to a certain lens that shapes what and how we see. For a Christian, the essential lens is always “to put on Christ” (Rom 13:14). In other words, see the world not as the world sees it, but as Christ sees it. And putting on Christ means seeing the world through the lens of Scripture. As St. Jerome teaches, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.”
Much of scriptural teaching is an education in how to see others. How, then, are we to look upon the wide variety of foreigners in our midst? Scripture is clear that “you shall also love the stranger [xenos], for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Dt 10:19). Because the people of Israel were foreigners—mistreated ones at that—God reminded them, they must love the foreigners in their midst. That logic is fundamentally repeated in the New Testament with the Golden Rule, to “do unto others as you would have them do to you” (Mt 7:12).
To love is to will and work for the good of the other. Thus Moses teaches in Leviticus that “the alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself” (19:34). The stranger, the foreigner, the noncitizen is to be treated as a citizen, and to be loved as you love your own.
If citizenship remains a real distinction, the obligation to love the foreigner among us morally binds us to noncitizens as though they were citizens. What does this mean? It means that whatever rights the citizen has also rightly belong to the noncitizen. Thus Moses proclaims, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner” (Dt 27:19). Justice is the giving of what is owed. This demand of justice, and so of love, humanizes the foreigner. Because of this, they are owed the rights that are owed to any human (human rights) and, in many instances, the rights of citizens that flow from this (civil rights).
It is an unjust nation that violates the justice of the stranger. And due process is a matter of justice; freedom of speech is a matter of justice; the right not to be sent to someplace to die or suffer life imprisonment is a matter of justice.
This justice for foreigners does not have to entail every civil right granted to one’s own citizens. There are legitimate privileges that come with citizenship, such as voting. And yet as the Golden Rule indicates, love of the stranger and love of one’s own are profoundly linked. Thus we should not be surprised that, having sent noncitizens to a gulag in El Salvador, President Trump is looking to send citizens there next.
But we must also consider that a just community prioritizes the foreigner. Jesus does not self-identify with the citizen when he teaches, “I was a foreigner, and you welcomed me.” He stands with the foreigner in our midst—because to be foreign is to be in a position of need.
This preferential option for the foreigner means that Christ first identifies not with me but with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Christ first watches over not me but Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil.
There is only one lens with which to see the foreigner in our midst: the lens of love, of justice and of equal treatment under the law. We must see them as ourselves, see them as watched by the Lord, see them as Christ sees them, see them as Christ. There may be times when the foreigner must be punished under the law and deported under the law. But this must always be according to the law as normed by the natural and divine law. This is not what is happening today.
The foreigner is being oppressed, denied their rights, compelled into silence, sent to suffer in a gulag where they can never leave, or returned to war-torn, violent regimes like those of Afghanistan or South Sudan.
We must change the way we see, and thus the ways we judge and act. Christians need to speak out as Bishop Menjivar of the Archdiocese of Washington has spoken out. “You, too, can and should speak out against this terror and infliction of suffering on people,” he wrote. “You can refuse to be involved in oppression and these grievous assaults on human rights and dignity.”
God’s words are clear: Love the stranger, treat them justly and give them due process. Or, God forbid, we shall face a righteous judgement.
