My heart, like many of yours, is heavy, weighed down by the unrelenting attacks on the foundations of a pluralistic democracy and American values coming out of the Donald Trump administration. The weight has felt even heavier during this time between Passover and Easter, both of which my interfaith family celebrate.
For Jews, Passover began last Saturday night but extends for eight days through this coming Sunday. For Christians, this is the final week of Lent, known as Holy Week, culminating in Easter Sunday. For both, it is an opportunity for introspection, to step back from the normal rhythms of life. It is a time to recommit ourselves to core values like liberation, justice, mercy and redemption. It is a time to reflect on where and who we are as individuals, as a community and as a nation.
Robert P. Jones
This year, nothing represents who we have allowed ourselves to become more than the unlawful abduction and disappearance of Kilmar Abrego Garcia by the United States government. There are others who have laid out the simple facts of this case, which I won’t belabor here (see The New York Times and The Contrarian).
But this much is undisputed: Our government has illegally abducted a man who was legally living in Maryland for more than a decade and married to a U.S. citizen, and who never had been charged with any crime. Our government deported him to a notorious “terrorism confinement center” prison in El Salvador based on an admitted “administrative error” and without due process (this is precisely why we have due process). Our government is paying the El Salvadoran government $6 million to imprison him and hundreds of others, three-fourths of whom have no apparent criminal records.
Even after being ordered by a federal judge to bring Kilmar home — an order which was upheld last week in a 9-0 decision by the Supreme Court — President Trump and our government preposterously pretend they have no power and hardheartedly feel no moral compulsion to correct this grievous mistake. And our government, in a democracy, is us.
Yesterday, I watched the heartbreaking plea that Kilmar’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, made outside the federal court in Greenbelt, Md., approximately 10 miles from my home. As I am marking Passover and Easter this week (I can’t quite bring myself to say “celebrating”), I am meditating on her grief and her plea for justice for Kilmar and her family.
I am planning to watch her statement again twice during Holy Week.
First, I’m watching today, which is Maundy Thursday on the Christian calendar, a time marked by Communion and other ceremonies like foot washing, which reinforce our awareness of our common humanity and the ties that bind our frail human lives.
Second, I’ll watch again on Easter morning, as we are celebrating the themes of resurrection, new life and hope. I invite you to join me in incorporating these viewings as a religious practice, watching intently and reading slowly her pleas.
Statement by Jennifer Vasquez Sura:
I am Kilmer’s wife. He is a father, a son, a brother and a proud member of CASA and SMART Union member who has dedicated himself to make our family the American Dream reality. That dream was shattered on March 12, when he was abducted and disappeared by the United States government in front of our 5-year-old child.
Today is 34 days after his disappearance, and I stand before you filled with spirit that refuses to bring down. I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive.
“Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn’t forgotten about you.”
Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong. God hasn’t forgotten about you. Our children are asking: When will you come home? And I pray for the day I tell them the time and date that you’ll return.
As we continue through Holy Week, my heart aches for my husband, who should have been here leading our Easter prayers. Instead, I find myself pleading with the Trump administration and the Bukele administration to stop playing political games with the life of Kilmar.
Our family is torn apart during this scary time. and our children miss their dad so much. Despite the challenges we continue to face with the U.S. and the Salvadorian government, I hope that the strength of faith and the resilience within us will keep us standing after all the punches we continue to receive.
Our ability to fight back against these governments are testimonies to the spirit of fight and restraint that God has given us. We will continue standing strong, and we will never give up on you, Kilmar.
Even though my heart is heavy, I find hope and strength in those around me. … I pray that the same community strength that has lifted me flows through those judges, supporting her to bend the powers toward justice.
Kilmar needs to come home. And it’s time we see how justice will be fulfilled. Enough is enough. My family can’t be robbed from another day without seeing Kilmar. This administration has already taken so much from my children, from Kilmar’s mother, brother, sisters, and me.
There is a simple theological word to describe the disregard for the value of human life, abandonment of moral principles and contempt for the rule of law we are seeing from the Trump administration: Evil. This is not a word I use lightly.
Most sickeningly, Trump and his accomplices are reveling in these evil acts — all during Holy Week. Trump invited El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele to a sham White House press conference where they each shrugged their shoulders, smugly pretending to be helpless in righting this grievous wrong. Earlier in the week, Trump released a message for Holy Week, in which he reiterated his administration’s “promise to defend the Christian faith” and included these words:
As we focus on Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, we look to his love, humility, and obedience — even in life’s most difficult and uncertain moments. This week, we pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our beloved nation. We pray that America will remain a beacon of faith, hope and freedom for the entire world, and we pray to achieve a future that reflects the truth, beauty and goodness of Christ’s eternal kingdom in heaven.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during the daily press briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 8.. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who often gives briefings with a diamond-studded gleaming gold cross hanging around her neck, bore false witness against Kilmar at a press conference by claiming, with no evidence, he was a gang member and human trafficker. As the White House press corps pressed her on this unsubstantiated claim, she callously replied, “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room, you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year.”
This was the same press conference in which she proudly announced that Trump’s newly established White House Faith Office “has put together an extraordinary weeklong celebration currently under way for Holy Week ahead of Easter Sunday.”
It should go without saying — but the state of particularly white Christianity being what it is, I’ll just state it plainly: Imprisoning an innocent man based on lies, and then deliberately refusing to remediate that harm, is not behavior that is reconcilable with the teachings of Jesus. It is in fact more reminiscent of the behavior of the mob that demanded his crucifixion.
This parallel is not lost on most African American Christians. As theologian James Cone reminds us in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, for Black Christians, the crucifixion is deeply connected to “the experience of innocent suffering and the unjust use of power.”
I am hoping that, for me and for all of us, meditating on the plea by Jennifer Vasquez Sura helps us get in touch with our shared humanity, to grasp and feel the reality of the great harm and violence now being perpetrated in our names (and which, surely sooner than later, will also be coming for any of us who criticize this regime). I pray it helps kindle a righteous anger that helps move us from paralysis and complacency to the work of resisting evil and building a society that respects life, works for the fair treatment of all, and values the rule of law.
Robert P. Jones serves as president and founder of PRRI and is the author of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future and White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, which won a 2021 American Book Award.
This column originally appeared on Robert P. Jones’s substack #WhiteTooLong.
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