“My boys all look like me. And I want my children to grow up in a country where they’re not minorities,” William Wolfe said out loud in a video now posted online. “I want my boys to grow up in a country where they don’t look like they’re the foreigners here.”
Wolfe, who heads the Center for Baptist Leadership, gave a presentation titled, “The Church’s Response to Mass Immigration,” for the True Texas Project at its “Year of the Patriot Conference,” held at The Woodlands Bible Church in The Woodlands, Texas, a suburb of Houston.
This nonprofit says its mission is: “In the spirit of the original Texians who valiantly defended their families, their lands, and their liberties, True Texas Project exists to educate and motivate citizen engagement in all levels of government.”
“I want my children to grow up in a country where they’re not minorities.”
Of its principles, the group declares: “We believe in Constitutional government, national sovereignty, fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, and rule of law … all under the umbrella of faith and family values.”
When the video of Wolfe’s blatantly racist statement was shared on social media by “Right Wing Watch” and went viral, Wolfe predictably doubled down. “I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING,” he wrote in all caps. “What I articulate here is normal, good and common sense. Everyone feels the same way in their own home countries.”
Then echoing the words of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, he added, “America is for Americans.”
William Wolfe
Apparently, “Americans” are supposed to be white. Surely that’s a surprise to Native Americans.
Are the only true Americans those who look like Wolfe and his boys? It’s a fair question, given Wolfe’s words and given the Trump administration’s constant social media posts of artwork depicting an idealized America made up of people who exclusively look like Wolfe and his boys.
The original post by Right Wing Watch claimed, “Christian nationalist former Trump administration official William Wolfe says that millions of immigrants must be deported in order to ensure that his children ‘grow up in a country where they’re not minorities.’” According to Wolfe, the Right Wing Watch characterization of his quote was “misleading.” He didn’t clarify how their characterization was misleading. Instead, he simply shared a link to the talk in its entirety.
Wolfe, by the way, earned a master’s degree at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a former intern to seminary President Al Mohler. Wolfe and the Center for Baptist Leadership are well-known advocates for extreme complementarianism in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Living in an embodied world
When we consider Wolfe’s statements in light of his larger presentation and ongoing work, his rhetoric echoes themes long present in white supremacist movements, including the KKK.
“His rhetoric echoes themes long present in white supremacist movements, including the KKK.”
“As Christians, we often emphasize and prioritize, rightly in many ways, things like missions and evangelism and discipleship and church planting and spiritual endeavors,” he said. “But we are not just spiritual beings. We live in an embodied world and a physical world.”
In Wolfe’s world, his boys all look like him. But what Wolfe doesn’t seem to care about is that this isn’t the case for all families in the United States, even for all white families.
While my dad’s side of the family is from England, my mom’s side of the family is from Lebanon and Syria. So two of my brothers are white and blond, while the other two are darker skinned. All my official documents say I’m white. But for many years after 9/11, I was constantly pulled into the more specialized security lines. And people jokingly called me a terrorist.
When I worked on construction sites, Hispanic people often approached me speaking Spanish. Of course, that didn’t offend me. They assumed based on the color of my skin that I was a Spanish-speaker like them.
My point is simply that my skin color communicated a reality my official documents did not. I’m labeled a white man, but I experience life as the “other.” And my two blond brothers have no idea what this is like, despite the fact we’re all related by blood.
It would be nice if white conservatives like Wolfe, and indeed even my white conservative family members, would recognize this reality of living in an embodied world where those with darker skin are looked down on with suspicion and seen as “other.” But unfortunately, white conservatives like Wolfe seem to be more concerned with experiencing life unsullied by us.
William Wolfe in the Oval Office with Donald Trump in January.
The dumping ground of the world
“The United States cannot be the dumping ground of the world,” Wolfe proclaimed, seemingly equating immigrants to trash and our melting pot to a landfill — echoing talking points of President Donald Trump.
“The United States cannot be the dumping ground of the world.”
He cited the GOP platform’s call for “the largest deportation operation in American history” and suggested Trump’s mass deportations are “the only way we get out of this mess.”
What “mess” is he referring to?
It can be hard to pin down at times because Wolfe loves to speak in sweeping generalities. For example, he asks, “What has mass immigration wrought in our country and on the West if not chaos? It has brought us chaos and death and destruction. It has stolen our nation from us, our children’s future.”
What exactly does he mean? Wolfe shares a few specifics.
“When I went to the DMV to get my driver’s license in North Carolina, I was the only person in line that day speaking English,” he lamented. “And I just think that’s a problem. I’m sorry. I’m a Christian. I’m a Bible-believing Christian.”
He didn’t explain how being a Bible-believing Christian is relevant to getting hot and bothered by hearing other languages spoken at the DMV.
Another example of the “mess” he cited is anywhere ICE is targeting.
“If you look at a map right now of where most of the ICE action is, it maps onto the biggest blue cities in America. Why? Because the left is lawless.” Again, a common Trump talking point.
But consider these numbers of actual unauthorized immigrants based on the findings of Pew Research:
- Texas — 2.1 million
- Florida — 1.6 million
- Illinois — 550,000
- North Carolina — 425,000
- Minnesota — 130,000
- Oregon — 120,000
- Maine — 10,000
If Trump really wanted to increase the number of deportations, he’d focus on Texas and Florida, since those states are run by cooperative Republican politicians who also would like to get rid of people who don’t look like Wolfe and his boys. It seems more likely Trump goes after places where the local politicians oppose his agenda, his own twisted definition of what it means to be “lawless.”
Clearly, Trump is using his immigration sweep to target areas where majorities of people won’t vote for him.
That’s why so much of the “mess” Wolfe mentioned has to do with false claims about voting. Wolfe explained: “They want illegal aliens to vote because they want to cancel out your vote because you are not on board with their agenda of turning the United States of America into a dystopian, gay, race, communist hellscape.”
Again, there is scant evidence of undocumented immigrants voting. In fact, there is scant evidence of illegal voting at all — even though Trump and his allies insist this is an epidemic.
Romans 13 — rule of law vs. anarchy
Systems of sacralized hierarchy eventually get around to demanding everyone submit to them or be sent into exile.
As is typical of conservative white men when the Republicans are in charge, Wolfe bases his case on Romans 13. His thesis is this: “Christians should support mass deportations because Romans 13:1-7 teaches us that governing authorities are instituted by God to punish wrongdoing and lawbreakers and promote the good, making the enforcement of immigration laws, including the removal of those who have unlawfully entered and remain in violation of those laws, a just exercise of the God-ordained authority to maintain order, protect American citizens and uphold rule of law rather than bless anarchy.”
He says Romans 13 didn’t apply during COVID and the Biden administration because those laws were unjust, unlike Trump’s.
“When we see progressive Christians being anti-ICE, being anti-mass deportations, being anti-immigration enforcement, pro-open borders, they are in disobedience to God because they are refusing to submit to the governing authority in our country, the duly elected president, Donald Trump, on the agenda that was out in public for everyone to vote for and he won on it.”
“They are in disobedience to God because they are refusing to submit to the governing authority in our country, the duly elected president, Donald Trump.”
Then he summarizes his thesis with three main points:
- “God sets up governments to enforce justice.”
- “Christians are called to submit to and obey and honor the governing authorities.”
- “Christians should support mass deportations and oppose mass immigration because we should honor God’s good order, not man’s anarchy.”
Again, Wolfe views biblical submission to governing authorities as applying only when leaders he likes are in charge.
Considering the Trump administration to be an example of God’s good order is pretty rich, given the administration itself is run by insurrectionists, sexual predators and felons. And it doesn’t seem to dawn on him that ICE has been behaving lawlessly or that the Left has been calling for order amid ICE’s lawless violence.
As BNG reported in January, Wolfe called ICE “the heroes,” named Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who killed Renee Good, an “All-American hero,” and blamed the Left for “overflowing with weaponized empathy particularly for Renee Good.”
When Alex Pretti was murdered, Wolfe called him “foolish,” said, “I don’t care,” and added that Minnesota Democrats “need to feel the full weight of a firm hand of discipline from Daddy Trump.”
He also hosted Joe Rigney and Andy Naselli on his podcast to defend Naselli’s prayer during a Sunday morning worship service that God would use ICE to break the teeth of Minnesotans.
He offers no reflection at all on the chaos and mess the Trump administration caused by hiring a bunch of inexperienced thugs and allowing them to run around with masks and then violently beat and murder people in broad daylight with full immunity and no investigation.
If anything, the Left has been calling for the government to enforce justice, while the right has been fueling anarchy.
‘The evangelical lone bulwark’
In Wolfe’s warped world, the ones who understand justice the most are Southern Baptists.
“Southern Baptists are the evangelical lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.”
“Southern Baptists are the evangelical lone bulwark against moral insanity in America,” he asserted.
He said the Center for Baptist Leadership intends to equip churches to “get back out into the public square, into the political arena and fight for a better future for America.”
Their fight includes convincing churches to organize letter-writing campaigns to hold the Trump administration accountable for maximizing deportations. “We voted for this and we deserve to get it,” he demanded.
To Wolfe, the enemy is anyone who won’t submit to the bulwark of the conservatives in the SBC: “The Left has sought to infiltrate us, to weaken us, to lead us to compromise both theologically and politically and culturally.”
By “the Left,” he means Catholics and progressive Christians. Regarding Catholicism, he said: “This pope has doubled down on the emotionally laden rhetoric about refugees and immigrants versus, I would say, the appropriate language of saving our country through deportations.”
According to Wolfe, progressive Christians “have hollowed out our religion and they are wearing it as a skin suit to defend radical, progressive agendas.”
Remigration, denaturalization and the KKK
“The only answer to mass migration is mass deportation,” Wolfe claimed. “The only suitable answer to mass migration is remigration. Denaturalize, deport. And remigration.”
Given Southern Baptists’ problematic history with racism, those are notable words to use.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss discusses remigration in her 2019 book, The Extreme Gone Mainstream: Commercialization and Far Right Youth Culture in Germany: “Before the concentration camps and gas chambers … there was a solution to remigrate Jews to Madagascar.”
Miller-Idriss defines remigration as, “this idea that you should send people ‘who don’t belong in this country’ to another place.” She says according to the far-right Great Replacement Theory, “Any particular state that has a white majority population that wants to retain it — or restore it — you would have to get rid of people of color. … And you either do that violently … or by remigrating them.”
Similarly, denaturalization scholar Patrick Weil demonstrates how “more than 22,000 Americans had their citizenship revoked during the 20th century, which is more than in any other democracy. Most of these took place during the first half of the century and targeted people based on their political affiliations, race and even gender.”
A U.S. Justice Department memorandum from June 2025 asserts, “The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings.”
And according to Camile Kaminski Lewis in Klandamentalism: Bob Jones at the Intersection of Revivalism, Politics, and White Supremacy, Ku Klux Klan donation letters prioritized “the limitation of foreign immigration” and “closer relationship of pure Americanism.”
If Wolfe loves his nonwhite neighbors as he loves himself, why would he express concern that his white sons don’t “look like foreigners” and then invoke multiple, historically white supremacist terms?
Redefining love
To Wolfe, however, the answer is rather easy. Pursuing remigration, denaturalization and deportation by utilizing the language of white supremacists is actually love.
He says the Trump administration is “in many ways loving these illegal aliens by offering them the opportunity to do what’s right, to go home.”
“Jesus would deport illegal aliens because Jesus is not an anarchist.”
Because ICE is being so loving to immigrants, in his mind, we should ask for more.
“Immigration enforcement is a just law,” he argued. “So we as the church, as Christians, should rightfully submit to it, encourage it and even ask for more. Quite frankly, I wish the deportation numbers were higher than they are. They’re not as high as they need to be. We need to see at least 1 million deportations here in 2026.”
And apparently, Wolfe isn’t a fiscal conservative when it comes to the cost: “There’s no number that I would oppose spending on getting the immigrants out of here.”
Despite the fact the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” approved $170 billion over four years, turning ICE into the most-funded law enforcement agency, Wolfe laughs, “Man, that’s rookie numbers. We need to pump those numbers up. Whatever it takes to spend, get ’em out of here.”
When love is defined as ensuring others’ submission to your conservative white Southern Baptist hierarchy, the exaltation of violent people takes priority. And for Wolfe, this ultimately gets projected onto Jesus himself.
With Wolfe’s Jesus, humility is a thing of the past. “When Christ comes back, he’s going to be coming back as a martial victor with a sword coming out of his mouth. Jesus would deport illegal aliens because Jesus is not an anarchist. Jesus is the ultimate law giver,” he said.
“WWJD. Who would Jesus Deport?” Wolfe joked to the sound of laughter and applause while presumably thinking about everyone who doesn’t look like him and his sons. “The answer is everybody!”
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a bachelor of arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and is the author of a forthcoming book, Weapons of Worship: How the Songs of Evangelicalism Form the Soundtrack of Extremism. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
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