Meet the pastors who support the ICE raids

(RNS) — Pastors and other clergy have made headlines over the past year for their roles in protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns in places such as Chicago and Minneapolis.

They’ve been hit by pepper balls and tear gas during protests; sued to gain access to ICE facilities and to block ICE raids on houses of worship; and called on their flocks to welcome immigrants, not fear them. Earlier this year, hundreds of clergy flocked to Minneapolis for a two-day training on how to resist ICE.

Jim Garlow is not one of them.

“It’s not wrong for a government to have borders and to enforce its borders,” said Garlow, the former longtime pastor of Skyline Church near San Diego and founder of Well Versed, a ministry to conservative politicians such as U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Garlow is part of a group of evangelical clergy who, invoking Scripture and morality, support the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Some say they back deportation only for those with criminal records. Others say they want anyone in the country without permanent legal status removed and want churches and pastors to encourage immigrants to self-deport.

What unites them is the belief that immigration enforcement and Christian compassion are not in conflict and that the progressive protesters citing the Bible are doing so selectively. 

Pastor Jim Garlow speaks at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Va., in 2024. (Video screen grab) TOP PHOTO: Evangelicals like Rev. Jim Garlow, second from left, are among the staunchest supporters of Trump’s immigration policies (Official White House Photo)

That view will likely be debated during the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention meeting, set for Tuesday and Wednesday (June 9 and 10) in Orlando, Florida. A proposed resolution for the meeting approves of “lawful immigration enforcement” and affirms that “Christian compassion and hospitality do not negate lawful order or excuse indifference to public justice and social peace.”

Unlike previous statements on immigration from the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the new resolution makes no mention of a path to legal status for those in the country without it.

Last year, the SBC’s public policy entity withdrew from the Evangelical Immigration Table, which supports immigration reform, in part because the issue had become too divisive. (That SBC entity, known as the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, had helped found the EIT back in 2013.)

Dean Inserra, pastor of the Tallahassee-based City Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, told RNS in an interview that while the Bible commands Christians to treat everyone with respect, there are still limits.

“Christians get in trouble when they say all people are made in the image of God, so that means that there’s a free-for-all and we should have open borders,” Inserra said. “Well, the same Bible where you claim that we should care for the immigrant, which the Bible does say, is the same Bible that has borders and nations and walls.”

He sees no contradiction between saying all people are made in God’s image and deserve respect and care and saying that laws should be enforced. He also believes that the Trump administration should focus primarily on deporting those with criminal convictions.

“I mean, it’s a no-brainer to me,” he said.

Willy Rice, senior pastor of Calvary Church in Clearwater, Fla., speaks from the floor during the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, June 11, 2025. (RNS Photo/Tim Heitman)

Willy Rice, one of two pastors vying for the office of SBC president this year, also supports the Trump administration’s policies. Rice said he respects immigrants, especially their perseverance, and appreciates the struggles that they overcome in relocating from their home countries to the United States.

But he also said that he believes in the rule of law and that countries need to have secure borders and an orderly immigration process. The hard part, he said, is figuring out what to do with folks living in the country without legal status. Removing them is going to be painful and complicated.

“Everybody knows that when you engage in deportation, there are going to be difficult, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching cases,” he said. “I know that the laws should be enforced. I hope they’re applied justly and fairly.”

Like other pastors interviewed by RNS, Rice said much of the blame for the current tensions over immigration should fall on past administrations for failing to secure the border. That’s allowed the number of people in the country without full legal status to grow. A Pew Research report from last year found that the number of “unauthorized immigrants” — including those whose status is impermanent or precarious — grew from 10.2 million in 2019 to 14 million in 2023.

Federal immigration officers deploy pepper spray at protesters after a shooting, Jan. 24, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

For progressive pastors, ICE’s crackdown in Minneapolis earlier this year, which resulted in the killing of two Americans, galvanized opposition to ICE and the Trump agenda. Evangelical pastors like Rice say the situation in Minneapolis was chaotic, but they place more blame on protesters than on ICE.

“What they don’t show you are the people stalking ICE, mocking them, getting in the way, trying to interfere with the just enforcement of law,” he said.

He was particularly concerned about an anti-ICE protest at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, that disrupted a worship service. That church is part of the SBC, and one of its lay leaders works for ICE. The protesters and two journalists covering the protest have been charged with violating federal law.

“You can have debates, you can have a difference of opinion, but you don’t get to burst into a public worship service,” Rice told RNS in an interview.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating a group of protesters in Minnesota who disrupted a service at Cities Church, where a local official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement serves as a pastor. (Video screen grab, courtesy of the Center for Baptist Leadership)

It’s not clear how many or how deeply pastors support the Trump immigration crackdown.

A recent survey from Lifeway Research, an evangelical research firm, found that nearly 1 in 5 Protestant pastors (18%) believes the number of deportations in the U.S. should be increased, while 1 in 4 (24%) believes the government is deporting the right number of people. A March report from Public Religion Research Institute found that while the Trump administration’s approach to immigration is unpopular with most faith groups, evangelicals remain strong supporters.

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As the threat of deportation increases for all immigrants, Catholic bishops as well as immigrant advocates have pushed back and said deportations should be reserved for convicted criminals.

But some of the evangelical pastors who are staunch supporters of the Trump immigration agenda go much further, seeing large-scale immigration as an existential threat to U.S. culture and calling for the mass deportation of anyone in the country without legal status.

“I think all of them need to go,” said Joe Rigney, an associate pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and author of “The Sin of Empathy.”

Rather than joining protest lines, pastors should be encouraging those in the country without legal status to self-deport, Rigney said. That’s better than waiting for ICE to come and arrest them.

He points to what he calls a “very generous” offer made by the Trump administration to immigrants who will self-deport — a free flight and a cash bonus of $1,000. In late May, the Department of Homeland Security upped the ante— and began advertising what it called a “historic and generous CBP Home Deal” of a flight and a $2,600 cash bonus.

“That’s a very generous, compassionate way of attempting to deal with this problem,” Rigney said.

Pastor Joe Rigney gives a sermon at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, in May 2024. (Video screen grab)

Rigney wants to see a 30-year moratorium on all immigration. He argues that the changes to immigration law in 1965, after what’s known as the Hart-Celler Act passed, were a mistake. That law opened up immigration from Asia and Africa — before then, the law favored immigrants from Europe. This past week, Republican Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee, a fierce opponent of immigration, introduced a bill to repeal most of the 1965 law.

Rigney believes the 1965 law eroded America’s common culture. That and the decline of religion in America — about 30% of Americans claim no religious affiliation — has made it harder to hold disparate groups of Americans together, Rigney told RNS in an interview.

“You end up with what we have now,” he said. “Which is largely a kind of balkanization, where multiple tribes are competing and vying for political and cultural power in the country, because we don’t know what we are.”

He argues that a moratorium on all immigration would give the country time to rebuild “a common culture.” That common culture has to be Christian, in his view, echoing sentiments raised by Doug Wilson, the senior pastor of Christ Church, a church widely seen as Christian nationalist and with ties to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Jesus is the only hope of finding a cultural core,” Rigney said.

To Rigney, mass immigration to the United States is a judgment from God for the decline in religious affiliation in the country. “We’ve turned away from God, and now, with the aid of our political leaders, are being overrun by foreigners. Like, that’s, that’s, this is a judgment.”

He has little faith that people from different cultures can learn to live together. “If you are constantly saying that we’re going to just be from all different cultures, all different religions, all different languages, and just good luck everybody — I just think that’s a recipe for resentment.”

That view likely goes too far for many evangelicals. The proposed new SBC resolution, for example, supports legal immigration and rejects “nativism, racial or ethnic hostility, ethno-nationalism, discrimination, and all ideologies or rhetoric that deny the equal worth and dignity of any people group, regardless of immigration status.”

Inserra, whose great-grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy, said immigrants are good for the country. His relatives emigrated in search of a better life, and he is glad they did.

“I think it’s a non-Christian posture to try to say that people coming to this country for the sole purpose of finding a better life is a threat to our culture,” he said. “I just don’t think that’s Christian or American.”

Esther Valdes Clayton, an immigration lawyer and daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor who emigrated from Mexico, often advises pastors and evangelical churches about immigration. Garlow, for example, said he often recommends her as an expert for speaking to churches.

Clayton disagrees with calls to end all immigration. She said the country needs new immigrants. That’s the demographic reality, as there are not enough American workers.

Esther Valdes Clayton. (Video screen grab)

But there should be more ways for immigrants to enter the country legally, she said.

Clayton believes that illegal immigration hurts immigrants, saying she has frequently seen immigrant clients who have been victims of abuse, often because of their lack of legal status.

“Immigrants feel the brunt of criminal illegal immigration, more than everybody else,” she said. “Their kids are the ones sexually abused. Their kids are the ones living in poverty. So, by and large, most everyone understands that enforcement has to happen.”

She also supports workplace raids on companies that employ those who are in the country illegally. Those companies, she said, exploit Hispanic workers, seeing them as cheap labor. She also says that churches need to stop fighting ICE enforcement, especially when it comes to deporting those with criminal backgrounds.

“We need to stop defending the criminals that live in our communities. They need to go home. They have no right, and there’s no way to legalize them in America,” she said.

She, like Rigney, has concerns about the impact of unfettered immigration on national identity, saying the influx of non-Christians is making the country less Christian. “America, as the last bastion of Christianity, must win this, and we must be able to defend our border,” she said.

But Clayton wants the Trump administration to be more lenient, especially with the families of members of the U.S. military. “They need to stop deporting the parents and spouses of military servicemen and women and veterans,” said Clayton, who has represented military family members in court. “I think every single American wants that to stop. And I do too. That’s easy.”

Garlow, who was a faith adviser to President Donald Trump during his first term, also wants to see the immigration system reformed. In “Re-Versed,” his 2016 book about the Bible and the government, Garlow laid out his vision.

Immigrants who are in the country illegally, he told RNS, should pay “a reasonable fine,” take classes in speaking English and citizenship, be “taught allegiance to America” and then be granted legal status.

He also said the government should apologize “for letting people in and then saying ‘you’re illegal.'”

But in a sign of how the immigration debate has shifted within the evangelical movement, Garlow no longer believes that vision he laid out 10 years ago is realistic. The country, he said, is too polarized for politicians to cooperate on immigration reform.

Now he thinks that immigrants should self-deport if they are in the country illegally but should be able to return through a legal process — especially if they have family in the country or job opportunities. Current immigration law bars those who self-deport for at least three years and as many as 20 years or more, depending on how long they had been in the country without permission. 

“Our country ought to work with them because they have got roots here,” Garlow said.

But self-deporting should come first.

“Is that easy?” he said. “Of course not, but I think the government could treat them in an honorable way.”