Deporting undocumented workers (by the way, anyone who turns the word illegal into a proper noun is inherently racist) in the numbers Trump claims would cost us billions and tank the economy. Most Americans have no idea how much our economy relies on these workers. Anthony Bordain said they were the best kept secret of high cuisine and agriculture and manufacturing are also reliant. I wrote something during the first Trump administration and with the spectre of an even more draconian border policy looming in our near future, I'd like to repeat it.
A Christian monk named Thomas Merton said " Into this world, this demented inn
in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,
Christ comes uninvited.

But because he cannot be at home in it,
because he is out of place in it,
and yet he must be in it,
His place is with the others for whom
there is no room.

His place is with those who do not belong,
who are rejected by power, because
they are regarded as weak,
those who are discredited,
who are denied status of persons,
who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,
Christ is present in this world.

Even though he wrote this 60 years ago he must have been prescient for I feel like he was describing the situation today at our southern border, where desparate people have fled a dystopia mostly of our making (if you would like a list of US military interventions in Central America going all the way back to the Monroe Doctrine it would require another thread. Interventions that had nothing to do with exporting democracy, as if we had any to spare). People who against all odds have made it hundreds of miles to that Golden door, only to have it slammed in their face by an orange -tinted imbecile who whines "There's no more room. We're all filled up." And I would pray that Brother Melton was right, that Christ is indeed present with those people for whom there is no room. I hope he can prepare them a better place in the next world for I fear they will have no compassion, no comfort, no justice in this one. Most Americans claim to be good Christians, including the ones who cheer on the government forces that tear children from their mothers' arms and throw them in cages to sleep on cold stone floors with very little hygene and medical treatment as they sicken and even die in custody. When the Bible says suffer the little children, that does not mean to make the children suffer.
Have these so-called Christians even read their Bibles. How did they miss this passage in Matthew 25: For I was hungry, and you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn’t give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you didn’t invite me into your home. I was naked, and you didn’t give me clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’

“Then they will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?’

“And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’

“And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life.”
Did they not read that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.
So when you pass tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the poor, the sick, the elderly, children, then you have not only forsaken those people, you have also betrayed your God. Would you truly be Christlike? Then drive the moneylenders from the temples of our democracy.
For there have always been two kinds of Christians. In the third century a churchman named Pelegias taught that the church was obligated to care for those downtrodden in our society. He was excommunicated by the Pope. In the 15th century a teenage girl was inspired by God to lead her nations army against a foreign invader. Christian priests burned her alive. In the 16th century Protestants were invited to Paris for a council that would enumerate their rights in a Catholic State. Instead they were attacked in the night by Catholic knights and slaughtered in the tens of thousands, all on St Bartholomew's Day. In my own time an ordained clergyman chose as his ministry nurturing children to cherish themselves and each other. Many of you spent hours of childhood in his neighborhood. At his funeral Christian people showed up with signs saying Queers Will Burn and God Hates Faggots. When Fred Rogers' son went out to them and asked why they were protesting at his father's funeral he was told that since his father did not teach the children to despise homosexuals he was as bad as one himself. Imagine that. Christians condemning a man for not teaching kids to hate.
So if you're a Christian are you like Pelegias or the Pope. Like Jeanne d'Arc or the priests who burned her. Like the French Huguenots or the murderous Catholic knights. Like Mr. Rogers or the Westboro Baptists.
So when You tell me you are a Christian my question to you, the question you must ask yourself is what kind of Christian are you? The kind that loves or the kind that hates.