Contrast this:
“America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers.” — White House aide Stephen Miller, describing the current U.S. policy toward certain immigrants
“I was a stranger and you took me in.” — Jesus of Nazareth, describing the terms of the Last Judgment
Now hold that thought.
On June 25, the U. S. Supreme Court released a ruling on Mullin v. Doe, a case challenging the current administration’s plan to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian immigrants. TPS was established in 1990 through bipartisan congressional action, providing temporary residential status to individuals whose countries are in crisis due to war, natural calamities or other adversities.
Bill Leonard
TPS was extended to Haitians after the 2010 earthquake that struck the island and to Syrians after a civil war descended on the country in 2011. In the 6-to-3 ruling, justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett joined Chief Justice Roberts in siding with the Trump administration and declaring the case unreviewable by the lower courts that ruled against it. That decision permits the possible deportation of up to 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians. It also sets a precedent for deporting other TPS-protected immigrants.
The district court that first heard the case agreed with the plaintiffs and delayed the government’s planned revocation of TPS in November 2025. The government then asked the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the lower court’s order, but the appeals court refused to do that in February 2026.
And that’s not all. Slate magazine reported the Supreme Court also “ruled that the president’s numerous racist comments toward Haitians and other African countries weren’t necessarily motivated by race and therefore could not have unlawfully influenced (DHS Secretary Kristi) Noem’s decision to revoke TPS from Haiti in contravention of the 14th Amendment’s protections against racial animus.”
Although the plaintiffs cited numerous racially oriented statements made by Trump, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, contends none of them were “overtly racial.” Alito did not quote the president’s actual words in his ruling. However, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the three dissenting judges, did.
Justice Kagan declared the evidence provided by the plaintiffs “includes statements by the president so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print.” They include:
- Haitians “probably have AIDS.”
- Haiti is a “a shithole country.”
- Haitians are “poisoning the blood” of America.
- Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.”
Kagan concluded: “The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the president’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.”
Americans might ask, “If the reference to the Haitians ‘poisoning the blood’ is not ‘overtly racial,’ then what is? “
In another June 25 immigrant-related ruling, the same six justices agreed with the Trump administration’s request to reinstate a 2016 policy allowing the government to turn back migrants requesting asylum at the border between the United States and Mexico, refusing to allow them to enter the United States to request safety from persecution.
The administration had asked the court to permit the government to revive the policy first used in 2016. Under that so-called turn-back policy, the first Trump administration stopped asylum seekers from setting foot on U.S. soil, where federal law — and historic practice — would have entitled them to try to claim asylum and receive protections. The Biden administration ended Trump’s policy. The current reinstatement of Trump’s restrictive policy no doubt prompted Stephen Miller’s statement, “America’s doors are fully closed to asylum seekers.”
“America’s doors are fully closed to asylum seekers.”
Whether they recognized or would acknowledge the ripple effect of these two rulings, the six justices, five of whom are Roman Catholic and one an Episcopalian, have sounded the death knell of claims that America is some sort of “Christian nation.”
Numerous faith-based agencies responded immediately to the justices’ rulings. Writing for FaithWorks, Baptist minister Cameron Vickrey warned:
We have failed to pass immigration reform through Congress and left immigration policies to the whims of whoever is president, and those whims, prejudices and hatreds have been affirmed by the Supreme Court. The practical consequences of Thursday’s two decisions are disastrous. Removing Temporary Protected Status from Haitians and Syrians and abolishing the practice of seeking asylum says that while we can protect you, we are choosing not to. … It is hard to imagine our country being a place where the right to claim asylum has disappeared with the blessing of those we trust to be wise, impartial, fair and high-minded. There is nothing just about this decision from our Justices.
And then there’s Jesus, who said it like this: “I was a stranger, and you took me in.”
He said that in this context:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
The “sheep,” Jesus says, are judged this way:
I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.
And Jesus sums it up with this zinger: “When you did it for one of the least of these, you did it for me.”
Such biblical texts never have been more relevant given the fact that there’s a huge movement in this country laboring to institutionalize America as a certain kind of “Christian” nation, intended so by God and the Founders. Supporters of that idea deny “separation of church and state,” urge legislators to approve aid to parochial schools, post the Ten Commandments on classroom walls, require Bible studies in public schools, and establish a certain type of Christianity as “the American religion.”
But consider Jesus and the gospel, compared to the current state of American affairs:
- “I was hungry” — Government cuts SNAP funding, impacting multitudes
- “I was thirsty:” — Government cancels environmental regulations impacting water purity
- “I was a stranger” — See the Supreme Court decision previously referenced
- “I was sick” — Government reduces Medicaid rolls, raises Affordable Care Act cost, takes health insurance away from millions
- “I was in prison” — Government builds new detainment facilities
Wouldn’t a truly “Christian” nation take Jesus’ teaching seriously when writing “government policy” for “the least of these?”
Wouldn’t a truly “Christian” nation take Jesus’ teaching seriously when writing “government policy” for “the least of these?”
Lest we forget, Jesus’ declarations in Matthew 25 are echoed in the words of Jewish poet Emma Lazarus engraved within the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Lazarus called Lady Liberty “the Mother of Exiles:”
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Those blessed verses remain in place.
For now.
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce.