It’s hard to believe 14 months into Donald Trump’s Reign of Terror 2.0 anyone still believes the administration’s rhetoric around its immigration enforcement practices.
I’m a female pastor in a progressive Baptist church in Texas. It isn’t as if I’m running around with the MAGA faithful who are deep in their Trump Derangement Syndrome. Yet I continue to encounter people who truly — in their hearts — believe the people being taken by ICE and CPB are “the worst of the worst,” “criminals,” “rapists” and “murderers.”
They believe these things because the most powerful man in the world proclaims them to be true and because their media ecosystem amplifies those messages.
Many of these folks I know to be kind, thoughtful people. The fact that they continue to believe the disinformation being distributed by this administration is not because they are bad people.
“The fact that they continue to believe the disinformation being distributed by this administration is not because they are bad people.”
It’s important to distinguish between disinformation (information intended to deliberately mislead) and misinformation (information that is unintentionally incorrect). There is plenty of both going around these days. However, my focus here is on addressing disinformation: the deliberate, misleading propaganda our government is putting out on the topic of immigration.
There are some people in this country who never will change their perspective on what is happening no matter the evidence presented to them. This article isn’t for them.
Instead, this article is for those who are beginning to question what’s happening. It’s for those who have watched videos of masked men smash car windows of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike and thought, “That doesn’t seem right.” It’s for those who suddenly realize the neighbor they love, the restaurant owner they have known for years or their own family member has been disappeared by this administration. It’s for those whose conscience has been silently screaming in shock and terror but who don’t know what to do.
Perhaps you are one of these people. If so, I’m here to tell you a few things.
If you voted for Trump but didn’t vote for this, I am here for you and extend you grace and a listening ear. If you didn’t vote for Trump but have been ambivalent about what’s happening, I am also here for you. And if you, like me, have been part of the resistance and are still desperately trying to persuade those around you to believe their own eyes and consciences, I’m here to tell you you aren’t in this alone.
I spend a lot of time in the immigration space in Dallas and beyond; on the ground and writing about it for Baptist News Global. This is my best attempt to distill what I believe is most important for every U.S. citizen to know on the topic into a short list.
First, there are multiple ways someone can be in this country legally, and the administration is ignoring immigration law and the Constitution to say otherwise.
A great resource on this topic is American Immigration Council. But essentially, someone can be “undocumented” in the sense that they are not a U.S. citizen and still be in this country legally.
The following are just a few of the legally defined pathways by which immigrants can be in this country:
- Someone can be here as part of any number of visa programs (permanent, student, work, etc.).
- Someone can be here as a Green Card holder — a legal permanent resident.
- Someone can be here as a refugee.
- Someone can be here as an asylum seeker.
- Someone can be here because things were so bad in their home country that anyone from their country has been granted Temporary Protected Status, which also comes with work authorization.
- Someone can be here through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, meaning they were brought to the country as a child and have registered to legally work and remain in the country.
- Someone can have overextended any of the above but be granted safe harbor through a program called Deferred Enforced Departure because the conditions in their home country are so bad it would be unconscionable to send them back.
- Someone can have overextended other options and be granted what is legally called Humanitarian Parole to, for example, care for a U.S. citizen relative with a terminal illness.
Yes, there are people in this country who do not fall into any of the above categories, but that number is miniscule compared with the number of people who are here through one of the above pathways. Yet, the Trump administration has erased the distinction between those who fall into one of the legally defined pathways and those who do not.
“The Trump administration has erased the distinction between those who fall into one of the legally defined pathways and those who do not.”
The majority of detentions in this country are of individuals who are in one of the above pathways. You know, “doing things the right way” and “following the rules” laid out by our government.
Second, independent organizations including the right-leaning Cato Institute confirm the government is not primarily detaining individuals with criminal records.
Over and again, city after city, the data show the U.S. government is not detaining people with criminal convictions. A November report from the Libertarian Cato Institute determined that, nationwide, 5% of the people detained have been convicted of violent crimes and 73% have no criminal convictions whatsoever.
Similarly, TRAC out of Syracuse University determined as of Feb. 7, 73.6% of the 68,289 people held in ICE detention have no criminal record. Of those held with a “criminal record,” most have only minor convictions such as traffic violations.
Third, around the country, the majority of people being detained have been or are in a legally defined program allowing them to be present in the country.
In places like Dallas, where I live, the majority of people being taken are in one of the legal avenues mentioned in No. 1 above. These include people like Maher Tarabishi, who overstayed a student visa in 1994 but had been granted humanitarian parole to care for his disabled son.
Tarabishi showed up every year for the past 30 years for his annual appointment. In fall 2025, he was detained at his regular check-in. His son, a U.S. citizen who had a degenerative illness and for whom Tarabishi was the sole caregiver, died while Tarabishi was detained.
Similarly, Miguel Angel Garcia-Hernandez was undocumented, came to the U.S. as a child and lived here 20 years. He was married to a U.S. citizen and was in the process of adjusting his status when he was arrested for a suspected DUI by Arlington Police Department.
They turned him over to ICE and, on Sept. 24, 2025, he, along with a number of other individuals, was being transferred when a sniper opened fire at the Dallas ICE field office. He was shot while shielding a teenage detainee from the gunfire and died six days later from his injuries. Less than three months after his death, his widow received notice from the U.S. government that Garcia-Hernandez was eligible for a Green Card.
Fourth, asylum seekers and Green Card holders are most at risk of being detained. You can disagree with our immigration policy, but these groups have been “following the rules” laid out by our government. It’s dishonest to say otherwise.
Since the end of World War II, those seeking asylum in the U.S. only need step foot on U.S. soil to begin the asylum process. The asylum process takes two years from beginning to end. Historically, those seeking asylum are allowed to remain free while their cases make their way through immigration court.
Instead, the Trump administration is detaining asylum seekers in record numbers, holding them in horrific conditions and encouraging them to self-deport back to the countries they fled. In doing so, these asylees are being denied due process — something guaranteed to all people (not only citizens) by the U.S. Constitution.
You can disagree with the law that gives anyone on U.S. soil the right to seek asylum, but to deny asylum seekers due process to see their case through to the end is illegal.
Similarly, Green Card holders — people who often are married to U.S. citizens — are being detained in record numbers. Often, the justification is for minor infractions such as having overstayed a visa in the past. Or, as in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, exercising one’s free-speech rights can be justification for revoking a Green Card.
Fifth, ICE and CPB agents are acting unlawfully and harming noncitizens and citizens alike.
Even if you have no sympathy for our immigrant neighbors being detained, we should all stand in opposition to the unlawful tactics being deployed by ICE and CPB.
For example, in September 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court used its “shadow docket” to quietly lift a lower court’s ruling that prohibited ICE from detaining individuals based solely on the color of their skin.
“It’s now fair game in this country for federal officials to hunt down people of color for no other reason than the color of their skin.”
It’s now fair game in this country for federal officials to hunt down people of color for no other reason than the color of their skin.
And, because the Trump administration has issued arbitrary quotas on the number of people to detain and expel from the country, there is incentive for ICE and CPB to behave unlawfully. Gone are the days of the prohibition against warrantless arrests.
And, as if that’s not enough, the administration has openly declared war on U.S. citizens who oppose its actions by labeling them “domestic terrorists.”
Then they came for me
In recent days it has come to light that Renee Good and Alex Pretti were not the first U.S. citizens gunned down by federal immigration agents.
After the government partially complied with a Freedom of Information Act request, the family of Ruben Martinez has confirmation the 23-year-old was shot and killed by an ICE officer a year ago. More recently, footage released directly contradicts the written report of what happened that night.
Eerily similar to the government’s assertions with Good’s murder, Martinez’s assailant claimed the young man hit him with his car. But the videos tell a different story.
Pastor Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came” — written after the Holocaust — seems especially prescient today. Perhaps U.S. citizens will avoid the fates of the Germans who simply went along with what was happening during World War II.
We can pray that is so.
Mara Richards Bim
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas where she recently was ordained to the gospel ministry. She earned the master of divinity degree and a certificate in spiritual direction from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.