by John Ellis
In 1954, the CIA initiated and supported a coup to remove Jacobo Arbenz from the office of President of Guatemala, an office to which he had been democratically elected in 1951. President Arbenz’s crime? He was in the process of nationalizing large tracts of rich farmland. Here’s the backstory:
Going all the way back to the Spanish conquest and colonization of Guatemala in the 16th century, the indigenous Mayans were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands. This stolen land, with its rich, fertile soil, was then given to wealthy Spaniards who created large, highly profitable farms. Over the decades and centuries, these farms that had been developed on stolen land were transferred to the descendants of the original Spanish colonists or purchased by wealthy Europeans. The Mayans, forced into the unforgiving rain forests and mountains, eked out an existence from land lacking rich soil.
Recognizing the unjustness of the situation, President Arbenz enacted agrarian reforms. Keep in mind, he wasn’t nationalizing the tracts of land developed by the large international agriculture companies that controlled the land by the mid-20th century (namely the United Fruit Company now known as Chiquita). Attempting to right a grievous wrong, President Arbenz was going to give the land yet to be cultivated back to the indigenous people of Guatemala to enable them to be lifted out of poverty.[1]
Well, this displeased the United Fruit Company. With their deep pockets, Chiquita … sorry … the United Fruit Company lobbied the United States of America to put a stop to President Arbenz. And the USA was happy to oblige since Arbenz wasn’t anti-communist enough (that, and our government has a history of prioritizing corporate greed over ethics). So, the democratically elected president was removed, and the CIA trained dictator Carlos Castilla Armas was installed in his place. This kicked off decades of violence and instability in the country. As long as the dictator was sufficiently anti-communist, the official American position was one of support, no matter the atrocities perpetuated on the Guatemalans, usually on the Mayans.[2]
But what does this have to do with Republican Party? Well, and setting aside Ronald Reagan’s support for the genocidal military regime in power in Guatemala in the early 80s (what’s a “few” tortured and murdered Mayans matter so long as they were sacrificed to the cause of the Cold War? God bless America, am I right?), the CIA backed coup of President Arbenz in 1954 is only one story in an entire library of sordid tales about the United States government initiating violence and unrest throughout Central and South America (and the entire world, for that matter – see footnote #1 for another example). The violence, poverty, and oppression being suffered by millions of image bearers in Central and South America can be directly traced to the involvement of the United States of America. When it serves our interests, the US has zero qualms about initiating chaos, instability, poverty, and even violence that falls on the innocent. Here is my point: the conditions that compel desperate men and women to attempt to enter the United States via our southern border are conditions caused, at least in part, by the very country they’re fleeing to. It’s important that you keep that fact in mind while reading what I have to say about the Republican Party.
On July 18, 2023, the Houston Chronicle published a report by Benjamin Wermund exposing the inhumane tactics exercised by the Texas border patrol. Those tactics include pushing women, children, and even nursing babies back into the Rio Grande. The Houston Chronicle was made aware of the situation after obtaining an email from Border Patrol trooper Nicholas Wingate to Sgt. Colin Kolupski. In his email, Wingate begins by stating his belief in the importance of the “need to secure the border against bad people.” But he goes on to report on a situation that he finds morally troubling, telling Sgt. Kolupski, “[W]e were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexica. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning.”
I have little doubt that trooper Wingate and I disagree with much about immigration, but I’m thankful for he and his fellow troopers’ courage to disobey an unjust order. The problem runs much deeper, though, than what some will claim is an isolated incident detailed in Wingate’s email. Stories like the one reported by Wingate have been piling up along the border. Atrocities have been documented for years by media outlets like the Houston Chronicle.
An investigation is being conducted into the incident reported by trooper Wingate. How far up the chain of command the order originated remains to be seen. What is known, though, is that Texas has ordered border patrol agents to refuse migrants water, even in extreme heat. Shade has been removed, making an already miserable experience even worse. A buoy wall has been erected in the middle of the Rio Grande, creating ecological problems alongside the moral issue of placing an obstacle in the way of exhausted migrants, including young children, attempting to swim across the river. Row upon row of razor wire has been installed on the banks of the river, in which at least one pregnant woman became ensnared. She later suffered a miscarriage due to her injuries. Horror stories on the border abound. But this is one thing that pisses me off: many white evangelicals reading this will say things in their mind (if not out loud) while reading this that suggest, if not make it explicit, that it’s the migrants’ fault for attempting to enter this country. That anti-Christian perspective embraces the GOP’s anti-life and anti-family policies and positions.
What drives families to risk the dangerous northern journey and to swim the Rio Grande with young children? What drives a young pregnant woman into a field of razor wire? Desperation and the belief that on the other side of that razor wire lies opportunity to live without fear of oppression and death.
I am a father of three. While I can’t fully comprehend what it’s like raising children in extreme poverty and oppression with the threat of human trafficking and violence hanging over it all, I comprehend enough to be able to empathize with the desire to bring my children to a land that’s marketed as one of opportunity and safety. Migrant families are choosing life. And it’s a choice that requires much sacrifice and pain. The alternative is so terrible, that fields of razor wire designed to prevent women and children from accessing the possibility of life are no match for the fear of remaining in a life of horrendous oppression.
Migrants are faced with an impossible choice that those of us sitting in the comfort of our American Dream existence have no right to judge. While it should be obvious, Jesus’ Parable of the Good Samaritan should provide the model for our response. Shamefully, the Republican Party has chosen the exact opposite response than that of the Good Samaritan. In doing so, they continue to reveal that they are anti-life and anti-family.
You see, the human rights abuses and ethical horrors unfolding along the United States’ southern border is par for the course within Republican immigration policy and procedures. We need to look no further than Donald Trump’s reign of terror over desperate migrants to see this. In summation, the reporter Jacob Soboroff soberly reminds us, “The Trump administration’s deliberate and systematic separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents was, according to humanitarian groups and child welfare experts, an unparalleled abuse of the human rights of children. The American Academy of Pediatrics says the practice will leave thousands of kids traumatized for life.”[3] A few pages later in the “Author’s Preface,” Soboroff chillingly relates that while on assignment he didn’t realize, “I’d bear witness to the reality that our country, under the direction of President Donald Trump, was ripping parents and children apart.”[4]
What exactly is Jacob Soboroff talking about? I mean, it’s hard to have missed the news reports about the Trump administration’s family separation plans along the border, but most of us, even if feeling uncomfortable over what we were hearing, probably let the stories go in one ear and out the other.
After his initial visit, by invitation of the Trump administration, to the old Wal-Mart building converted into a holding cell containing over 1,400 boys ranging in age from 10 to 17, Soboroff emerged into the daylight, looked into the camera, and said on national TV, “I have been inside a federal prison before. I’ve been inside several county jails. This place is called a shelter but, uh, effectively these kids are incarcerated.” Soboroff’s initial surprise reporting turned into a months long investigation that unveiled the loathsome details of the despicably sinful practice of ripping families apart that had been perpetuated by the Trump administration.
This article continues below the video. I encourage you to watch Soboroff’s initial report after his first time visiting a “shelter” housing boys intentionally separated from their parents.
The “catch and release” program utilized under President Obama was one of the first immigration policies that the Trump administration took aim at. To undermine it, the idea was floated and then adopted that the children of migrants should be separated from their parents and those children classified as “unaccompanied.” The objective was that word would reach potential migrant families in Central and South America that kids were being taken from their parents. It was assumed that the fear of their children being taken from them would work as a deterrent to attempted migration to the United States. That someone even thought about using kids in such a terribly traumatic way should be enough to roil the anger of all humans. That fact that it was implemented is beyond despicable. Shamefully yet not surprisingly, I’ve heard the argument that it’s the fault of the parents that their children were taken from them. “I mean,” the argument whines, “they knew what would happen.”
The nuances and complexities of why it didn’t work very well as a deterrent are vast, but two main things played against that tactic: 1. American immigration policy and laws are notably difficult to understand. I’m guessing that most American citizens who side with Donald Trump and his administration likely would fail a test over this country’s immigration laws. Yet they except non-English speakers living in poverty thousands of miles away to be fluent in American immigration laws. The information being trafficked among migrant communities is filtered through translation and various layers of hearsay. Not to mention that the coyotes have a vested interest in misleading desperate migrants. 2. Added to #1, in our privilege, it’s hard to fathom how the level of fear and desperation suffered by many migrants works on the brain. Faced with only terrible choices, what does a desperate father or mother do? They pick the choice that has at least the possibility of freedom in the USA on the other side of it.
So, five days after taking the oath of office, Donald Trump announced the termination of the “catch and release” program. Family separation quietly became the modus operandi for US immigration policy on our southern border.
Official press releases and public statements, whether via the White House briefing room or during media interviews, about the family separation plan used sanitized language intended to dial down any potential emotional responses that should naturally come when hearing about young children being traumatically ripped from their parents. However, sanitized language was used unless the intent was to stoke fear and anger. During those times, Republican politicians like Donald Trump use scare words like rapist, thug, gangster, and criminal.[5] Tragically, nothing was “sanitized” about what happened, and will happen again if Trump wins in 2024 (he’s already talking about reimplementing the policy of separating migrant children from their parents).
I encourage you to read Jacob Soboroff’s book Separated: Inside an American Tragedy. Doing so, you’ll be confronted with how the Trump administration tricked scared, desperate parents into signing away their parental rights. Denied lawyers and advocates, non-English speakers were slid documents written in English to sign. Soboroff, as well as immigrant advocacy groups, have documented how these frightened parents, already separated from their children, believed that what they were signing would hasten their family’s reunion. Nope. Their nightmare was just beginning.
As Trump’s anti-life and anti-family program got off the ground, the problem emerged that, “The government was separating children and parents and losing track of who they were and where they went.”[6] A logistical horror story was unfolding.
During 2018, “between May 5 and June 9 more than 2,300 children had been taken from their parents … As Commander Jonathan White and statisticians at the Department of Homeland Security projected, there was not enough bed space for all the children coming to ORR.”[7] Making matters worse and confirmed by internal memos and emails within the Trump administration, “Border Patrol agents had not been including detailed information – if any information at all – about the parents of separated children. Often there were no notes at all documenting the fact that the so-called unaccompanied child that HHS was receiving had actually very much been accompanied by his or her parent when they arrived in the United States.”[8] It took years in some instances for separated parents and children to be reunited. My heart breaks for those parents and children who longed to be reunited but were trapped in a system that failed to think ahead and caused their family to be broken for long periods of time (besides also being the system that ripped them apart, to begin with).
In 2021, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security issued the report Zero Tolerance Policy. The report reveals that over the course of the family separation program, more than 3,000 children had been taken from their parents. The report, which is quite damning and can be read by clicking here, also includes the words of Attorney General (at the time) Jeff Sessions who thundered during a speech in San Diego, “I have put in place a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for illegal entry on our Southwest border. If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law.”
Desperate parents doing whatever they can to protect their children from the poverty, oppression, and violence, created in large part by US foreign policy, in their home countries were treated as human traffickers. Children, many younger than 5, were ripped from their parents and locked away in understaffed “shelters” with no initial plan for reunification. Trying to imagine myself and my children in that situation is too awful to even consider.
After pressure from his daughter, Donald Trump signed an executive order during the summer of 2018 stopping the family separation program. While doing so, the ex-president said, “I didn’t like the sight or feeling of families being separated.”
Setting aside that he had routinely denied (lied about) that the separation of families was happening even though he knew it was, what are we to make of Trump’s confession of discomfort? Well, two facts to keep in mind: Soon after ending the family separation program at the urging of his daughter, Trump regretted his decision. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was fired in part because she resisted Trump’s insistence that Homeland Security reinstate the program. Secondly, he’s stated that if elected in 2024, he’ll consider restarting the program that takes migrant children away from their parents. So, do you think Donald Trump cares about migrant children or was bothered in the slightest by families being separated? Of course, not. Donald Trump doesn’t care. He is a habitual liar, and how he lies is dependent on how the winds are blowing for Trump’s benefit.
Immigration policy is complex and contains wide room for disagreement. But the current warzone-like tactics on our border designed to produce physical hardship and even physical harm on image bearers desperately seeking life are clear violations of Kingdom ethics. Even worse is the family separation policy that was enforced under the Trump administration and that is likely to be reinstated if the current GOP frontrunner for the presidential nomination is sworn into office on January 20, 2025. The demonizing and criminalizing by Republicans, including Republican voters, of oppressed people driven from their homes in search of safety for their families is also a direct violation of Kingdom ethics.
In my early twenties, I was finally able to articulate my rejection of God, being helped along by the rhetoric and actions of Republican Christians (white evangelicals). As an unbeliever, I had read the Bible more than most professing Christians. Not to mention, I had been schooled in the Bible and its teachings my entire life. To be clear, I should’ve drawn a different conclusion. But in my willful rebellion, I concluded that the Bible wasn’t to be trusted because almost every Christian I knew demonstrated by their words and actions that they didn’t believe it was trustworthy either.
A main ethical theme of the Bible is justice. One of the ways this is worked out throughout the divinely inspired book is in God’s expectations and commands that His people demonstrate who He is through their actions towards others, specifically those who are marginalized and oppressed. I was surrounded by Christians who said people living in poverty only had themselves to blame. The refrain that immigrants, especially immigrants of color, pose a threat to our way of life was sounded my entire childhood (and a refrain I’ve continued to hear throughout my adulthood). Cain’s excuse “I am not my brother’s keeper” was the apparent motto of the Republican Christians around me when it came to people living in poverty in this country and immigrants fleeing oppression. Like I said, though, I knew that the Bible they claimed to believe and obey preached a different perspective.
For example, as a burgeoning atheist, I knew that God’s Old Covenant people weren’t allowed to charge interest and that all loans and debts of fellow Israelites were erased every seven years. In Deuteronomy 15:1 Moses commanded, “At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.” A few verses later, the prophet added, “If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them (verse 7).” Moses then warns about doing the calculations if a fellow Israelite asks for a loan right before the seven years are up and then withholding that loan because the debt will be cancelled shortly, meaning it will likely never be repaid (at least in full). In verse 9, Moses calls it a “wicked thought” while also revealing that “you will be found guilty of sin.”
Some will argue – and I know this because I’ve heard this argument – that the stricture against charging interest didn’t apply to non-Israelites and their debts weren’t erased every seven years. True. But Kingdom ethics under the New Covenant are universalized because it’s revealed that true Israelites are born of faith and not the flesh.
We see this universalization clearly in the Sermon on the Mount. In his masterful book The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, Jonathan Pennington points out that, “Jesus is offering a vision for a way of being in the world that will result in true flourishing, precisely in the context of forward-looking faith in God eventually setting the world to rights.”[9] For the purposes of the present discussion, this “setting the world to rights” looks like “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you (Matthew 5:42).”
While this promised flourishing is finally and fully eschatological, Christians are called to be witnesses to who God is and what His Kingdom looks like via our words and actions in regards to everyone. How do I know this is universalized? Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan.
I’m not going to rehash the parable’s plot, assuming that everyone reading this is already familiar with it. What I do want to highlight is this: In the words of the theologian Robert H. Stein, “The Samaritan provides an appropriate example of how one should use material goods. His oil, wine, money, and mount were all used wisely (cf. 6:32-36), for he gave expecting nothing in return.”[10]
Arguments for restrictive immigration policies often center on the need to be “wise stewards” of our resources. Republicans, including many white evangelicals, will argue that migrants are a strain on our economy[11] and that we need to use our resources for our own people. This not only stands in direct contradiction to Jesus’ definition of who our neighbor (our people) is, but it’s the opposite mindset of the Good Samaritan who wisely used his resources on a “stranger” with no expectation of ever being repaid.
Going back to my twenties, I also knew that the book of Amos warned of God’s judgement because of the treatment of the poor and oppressed. Amos 2:6-7 make clear that, “This is what the LORD says: ‘For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.”
My word, the oppression migrants from Central America are suffering can be traced back to actions by this country. Not only does Republican immigration policy “trample on the heads of the poor” it denies complicity in the oppression. Republican immigration policy “den[ies] justice to the oppressed.” The book of Amos could’ve been written about the United States of America.
By no means has this been an exhaustive listing of the Bible’s comments and commands regarding the treatment of the poor and those oppressed. Doing so would require its own book. Neither I have exhausted the sins contained in Republican immigration policy. I believe that I’ve provided enough evidence to support my point that God’s eternal wrath is hovering over those who preach, embrace, and implement Republican immigration policy. Likewise, and mimicking the Republican Christians of my youth, white evangelicals demonstrate through their words and actions that they are more concerned with preserving a specific way of life in the here and now than living out clearly communicated Kingdom ethics. This is clearly seen in the wholehearted embrace of the Republican Party’s immigration policies.
What’s happened and continues to happen on our southern border is sinful rebellion against our God who desires justice and demands lavish generosity to the poor. Among God’s ethics is the expectation of preserving life. Withholding goods and services that can preserve life is anti-life. The Ten Commandments aren’t written with a Western desire to preserve our rights. They’re written with God’s intent to impress on us our duties to others. Withholding food and shelter to those who need them is a violation of the 8th commandment and may turn into a violation of the 6th commandment. This is why the Torah commanded farmers not to reap the entirety of their fields. The farmers didn’t have a right to their private property, even if it was their capital, including labor, that produced the grain. According to God, they had a duty to preserve the lives of those living in poverty. Failing to do so would’ve been stealing and potentially murder.
Without question, the Republican Party is neither pro-life nor pro-family, and followers of King Jesus should take that into consideration the next time they’re in the voting booth.
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] I’m only guessing here, but I wonder if Arbenz was attempting to thread a needle. The year before, at the behest of England who was asking on part of English oil companies, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran because Mohammed Mosaddegh was going to nationalize Iran’s oil fields that had been stolen by the English during colonization. Maybe Arbenz figured that if he just nationalized the land that had yet to be cultivated, the CIA wouldn’t be brought into the service of corporate interests. If that was his thought, and again, I’m only guessing, he thought wrong. Also, in case the question comes up in a game of trivia, the 1953 coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mosaddegh was the first time (that we know of) that the CIA actively undermined a democratically elected government. It definitely wouldn’t be their last time. Considering the CIA wasn’t founded until 1947, they got around to the business of nation destruction pretty quickly.
[2] If you’re interested in learning more about some of those atrocities, I recommend Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope by Beatriz Manz.
[3] Jacob Soboroff, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy (New York: Custom House, 2020), xiii.
[4] Soboroff, Separated, xv.
[5] At 9:50 am on June 18, 2028, now ex-President Donald Trump released the statement, “Children are being used by some of the worst criminals on earth as a means to enter our country. Has anyone been looking at the Crime taking place south of the border. It is historic, with some countries the most dangerous places in the world. Not going to happen in the U.S.” See the deceit? With zero evidence – in fact, the data and evidence confirm the exact opposite – Trump turned desperate parents fleeing the violence and crime into the criminals they were fleeing.
[6] Soboroff, Separated, 49.
[7] Soboroff, Separated, 248.
[8] Soboroff, Separated, 277-278.
[9] Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 62-63.
[10] Robert H. Stein, Luke TNAC ed. David Dockery (Nashville, TN: B&H, 1992), 320.
[11] An odd thing for capitalists to say since the economy isn’t considered a zero-sum game in that system. Furthermore, capitalism views humans as resources. But, whatever.
Practically Known Theology 
The CIA has been up to no good ever since its inception. The USA needs to stop meddling in the affairs of other nations.
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