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The Independent
02-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Vast majority of US immigrants facing deportation under Trump policies are Christian, report reveals
A new report reveals that up to 80 per cent of immigrants facing deportation from the US under the Trump administration's policies are Christian. This equates to approximately 10 million Christians vulnerable to removal, with an additional seven million US Christian citizens living in households under threat of deportation. The report, backed by prominent Catholic and evangelical organizations, utilizes a combination of data sources. These include religious affiliation percentages within migrant and national populations, alongside an advocacy group's analysis of US census data concerning migrants. While the report highlights the plight of Christian immigrants, its sponsors emphasize a broader concern for all individuals facing deportation. "Though we're deeply concerned about fellow Christians, we're not exclusively concerned with immigrants who happen to share our faith,"explained Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian organization and co-sponsor of the report. Soerens, in a video statement, underscored the Christian belief in the inherent dignity of all people, regardless of religion or nationality. He noted, however, that many US Christians may be unaware of the significant number of potential deportees who share their faith. Other groups that helped produce the report include the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. While the report doesn't advocate any political positions, it mainly seeks to raise awareness of the issue among Christians, and some of its sponsoring groups have individually advocated for reforms that would give some categories of immigrants a path to legal status. Immigrants at risk of deportation range from those who crossed the border illegally to those who may have some sort of legal status that could be revoked. For example, the Trump administration has taken steps to end temporary protected status, held by many from Venezuela and Haiti, as well as humanitarian parole that had been granted for others from those troubled countries as well as Cuba and Nicaragua. President Donald Trump enjoyed wide support from certain Christian blocs in all three of his campaigns. In 2024, he was supported by about eight in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, about six in 10 white Catholics and just over half of Latino evangelicals, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters. While the report doesn't directly refer to that support, it says it seeks to raise awareness of the potential impact of Trump's immigration crackdown. Even the fear of deportation could cause people to avoid going to public places — such as worship services. In an era when a growing number of people in the U.S. don't have a religious affiliation, many immigrants who are Christian have helped reenergize churches and spur their growth, said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. 'They're coming from parts of the world where the church is actually thriving,' Kim said. 'Not only are they bringing that thriving faith and contributing to America, they're also contributing to the vibrancy of the church in America.' Mass deportation would amount to a government-fostered 'church decline strategy,' Kim said. Kim said his organization has long advocated for reforms that would distinguish between those convicted of violent crimes and 'the much larger share of immigrants who are contributing to our communities and to our churches, and who are serious and eager' to stay in the country. Many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. The recent report said Catholics in particular represent more than half of all those vulnerable to deportation in the United States, noted Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference. The deportations would likely separate family members, Seitz said. 'We know the impact of tearing apart the family unity and also the tremendous threats that are faced by people who are summarily deported to their home countries, which they fled in the first place because of the tremendous threats they were living under there,' said Seitz, who heads the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. They face danger from government oppression and organized crime in their home countries, Seitz said. 'People are going to die if this deportation effort continues at the level it is,' he said. The report's methodology included calculating the percentages of Catholics, evangelicals and other Christian groups in the countries from which immigrants originated, based on self-reported affiliations. The report then applied those percentages to immigrant populations within various categories of immigrants. While such methods include numerous assumptions, many regions of origin for major immigrants and refugee groups, including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine, have large Christian populations.
Boston Globe
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Most immigrants at risk of deportation from US are Christian, report finds
'Though we're deeply concerned about fellow Christians, we're not exclusively concerned with immigrants who happen to share our faith,' said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian organization that cosponsored the report. Advertisement 'As Christians, we believe that all people, regardless of their religious tradition or nationality, are made in God's image with inherent dignity,' Soerens said in a video statement. But he added that many Christians in the US may not realize that most of those who could be deported share their faith. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Other groups that helped produce the report include the National Association of Evangelicals, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. While the report doesn't advocate any political positions, it mainly seeks to raise awareness of the issue among Christians, and some of its sponsoring groups have individually advocated for reforms that would give some categories of immigrants a path to legal status. Advertisement Immigrants at risk of deportation range from those who crossed the border illegally to those who may have some sort of legal status that could be revoked. For example, the Trump administration has taken steps to end temporary protected status, held by many from Venezuela and Haiti, as well as humanitarian parole that had been granted for others from those troubled countries as well as Cuba and Nicaragua. President Trump enjoyed wide support from certain Christian blocs in all three of his campaigns. In 2024, he was supported by about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, about 6 in 10 white Catholics and just over half of Latino evangelicals, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters. While the report doesn't directly refer to that support, it says it seeks to raise awareness of the potential impact of Trump's immigration crackdown. Even the fear of deportation could cause people to avoid going to public places — such as worship services. In an era when a growing number of people in the US don't have a religious affiliation, many immigrants who are Christian have helped reenergize churches and spur their growth, said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. 'They're coming from parts of the world where the church is actually thriving,' Kim said. 'Not only are they bringing that thriving faith and contributing to America, they're also contributing to the vibrancy of the church in America.' Mass deportation would amount to a government-fostered 'church decline strategy,' Kim said. Kim said his organization has long advocated for reforms that would distinguish between those convicted of violent crimes and 'the much larger share of immigrants who are contributing to our communities and to our churches, and who are serious and eager' to stay in the country. Advertisement Many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. The recent report said Catholics in particular represent more than half of all those vulnerable to deportation in the United States, noted Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference. The deportations would likely separate family members, Seitz said. 'We know the impact of tearing apart the family unity and also the tremendous threats that are faced by people who are summarily deported to their home countries, which they fled in the first place because of the tremendous threats they were living under there,' said Seitz, who heads the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. They face danger from government oppression and organized crime in their home countries, Seitz said. 'People are going to die if this deportation effort continues at the level it is,' he said. The report's methodology included calculating the percentages of Catholics, evangelicals and other Christian groups in the countries from which immigrants originated, based on self-reported affiliations. The report then applied those percentages to immigrant populations within various categories of immigrants. While such methods include numerous assumptions, many regions of origin for major immigrants and refugee groups, including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine, have large Christian populations.
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Most immigrants at risk of deportation from US are Christian, report finds
As many as four in five immigrants at risk of deportation from the United States are Christian, according to a new report that calls on their fellow believers to consider the impact of the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies. The report says about 10 million Christians are vulnerable to deportation and 7 million U.S. citizens who are Christian live in households where someone is at risk of deportation. The report, under the auspices of major Catholic and evangelical organizations, draws on a range of data, including percentages of religious affiliation in various migrant and national populations and on an advocacy group's analysis of U.S. census data on migrants. 'Though we're deeply concerned about fellow Christians, we're not exclusively concerned with immigrants who happen to share our faith,' said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian organization that cosponsored the report. 'As Christians, we believe that all people, regardless of their religious tradition or nationality, are made in God's image with inherent dignity," Soerens said in a video statement. But he added that many Christians in the U.S. may not realize that most of those who could be deported share their faith. Other groups that helped produce the report include the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. While the report doesn't advocate any political positions, it mainly seeks to raise awareness of the issue among Christians, and some of its sponsoring groups have individually advocated for reforms that would give some categories of immigrants a path to legal status. Immigrants at risk of deportation range from those who crossed the border illegally to those who may have some sort of legal status that could be revoked. For example, the Trump administration has taken steps to end temporary protected status, held by many from Venezuela and Haiti, as well as humanitarian parole that had been granted for others from those troubled countries as well as Cuba and Nicaragua. President Donald Trump enjoyed wide support from certain Christian blocs in all three of his campaigns. In 2024, he was supported by about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, about 6 in 10 white Catholics and just over half of Latino evangelicals, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters. While the report doesn't directly refer to that support, it says it seeks to raise awareness of the potential impact of Trump's immigration crackdown. Even the fear of deportation could cause people to avoid going to public places — such as worship services. In an era when a growing number of people in the U.S. don't have a religious affiliation, many immigrants who are Christian have helped reenergize churches and spur their growth, said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. 'They're coming from parts of the world where the church is actually thriving,' Kim said. 'Not only are they bringing that thriving faith and contributing to America, they're also contributing to the vibrancy of the church in America.' Mass deportation would amount to a government-fostered 'church decline strategy,' Kim said. Kim said his organization has long advocated for reforms that would distinguish between those convicted of violent crimes and 'the much larger share of immigrants who are contributing to our communities and to our churches, and who are serious and eager' to stay in the country. Many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. The recent report said Catholics in particular represent more than half of all those vulnerable to deportation in the United States, noted Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference. The deportations would likely separate family members, Seitz said. 'We know the impact of tearing apart the family unity and also the tremendous threats that are faced by people who are summarily deported to their home countries, which they fled in the first place because of the tremendous threats they were living under there,' said Seitz, who heads the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. They face danger from government oppression and organized crime in their home countries, Seitz said. 'People are going to die if this deportation effort continues at the level it is,' he said. The report's methodology included calculating the percentages of Catholics, evangelicals and other Christian groups in the countries from which immigrants originated, based on self-reported affiliations. The report then applied those percentages to immigrant populations within various categories of immigrants. While such methods include numerous assumptions, many regions of origin for major immigrants and refugee groups, including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine, have large Christian populations. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Associated Press
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Most immigrants at risk of deportation from US are Christian, report finds
As many as four in five immigrants at risk of deportation from the United States are Christian, according to a new report that calls on their fellow believers to consider the impact of the Trump administration's aggressive deportation policies. The report says about 10 million Christians are vulnerable to deportation and 7 million U.S. citizens who are Christian live in households where someone is at risk of deportation. The report, under the auspices of major Catholic and evangelical organizations, draws on a range of data, including percentages of religious affiliation in various migrant and national populations and on an advocacy group's analysis of U.S. census data on migrants. 'Though we're deeply concerned about fellow Christians, we're not exclusively concerned with immigrants who happen to share our faith,' said Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical humanitarian organization that cosponsored the report. 'As Christians, we believe that all people, regardless of their religious tradition or nationality, are made in God's image with inherent dignity,' Soerens said in a video statement. But he added that many Christians in the U.S. may not realize that most of those who could be deported share their faith. Other groups that helped produce the report include the National Association of Evangelicals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration and the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. While the report doesn't advocate any political positions, it mainly seeks to raise awareness of the issue among Christians, and some of its sponsoring groups have individually advocated for reforms that would give some categories of immigrants a path to legal status. Immigrants at risk of deportation range from those who crossed the border illegally to those who may have some sort of legal status that could be revoked. For example, the Trump administration has taken steps to end temporary protected status, held by many from Venezuela and Haiti, as well as humanitarian parole that had been granted for others from those troubled countries as well as Cuba and Nicaragua. President Donald Trump enjoyed wide support from certain Christian blocs in all three of his campaigns. In 2024, he was supported by about 8 in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, about 6 in 10 white Catholics and just over half of Latino evangelicals, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters. While the report doesn't directly refer to that support, it says it seeks to raise awareness of the potential impact of Trump's immigration crackdown. Even the fear of deportation could cause people to avoid going to public places — such as worship services. In an era when a growing number of people in the U.S. don't have a religious affiliation, many immigrants who are Christian have helped reenergize churches and spur their growth, said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals. 'They're coming from parts of the world where the church is actually thriving,' Kim said. 'Not only are they bringing that thriving faith and contributing to America, they're also contributing to the vibrancy of the church in America.' Mass deportation would amount to a government-fostered 'church decline strategy,' Kim said. Kim said his organization has long advocated for reforms that would distinguish between those convicted of violent crimes and 'the much larger share of immigrants who are contributing to our communities and to our churches, and who are serious and eager' to stay in the country. Many studies have found immigrants are less drawn to violent crime than native-born citizens. The recent report said Catholics in particular represent more than half of all those vulnerable to deportation in the United States, noted Bishop Mark Seitz, chair of the Committee on Migration of the bishops' conference. The deportations would likely separate family members, Seitz said. 'We know the impact of tearing apart the family unity and also the tremendous threats that are faced by people who are summarily deported to their home countries, which they fled in the first place because of the tremendous threats they were living under there,' said Seitz, who heads the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. They face danger from government oppression and organized crime in their home countries, Seitz said. 'People are going to die if this deportation effort continues at the level it is,' he said. The report's methodology included calculating the percentages of Catholics, evangelicals and other Christian groups in the countries from which immigrants originated, based on self-reported affiliations. The report then applied those percentages to immigrant populations within various categories of immigrants. While such methods include numerous assumptions, many regions of origin for major immigrants and refugee groups, including Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine, have large Christian populations.
Boston Globe
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Anthony Dolan, speechwriter who gave Reagan ‘evil empire,' dies at 76
Mr. Dolan was one of the youngest winners of a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. As a reporter for The Advocate in Stamford, Conn., he was 29 when he was awarded the prize in 1978 for local investigative specialized reporting, for a series of exposés of corruption in that city's municipal government and organized crime's infiltration of its police department. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up After serving for eight years as a speechwriter in the Reagan White House, he was a special adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a senior adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the administration of President George W. Bush. He was a White House special assistant during Donald Trump's first term, and in January was recruited as a special assistant by the president's Domestic Policy Council. Advertisement Mr. Dolan began his political career as a teenage volunteer in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. He went on to take jobs in three Republican administrations and was for a time a singer and lyricist of conservative folk songs. (His 'The New York Times Blues' parodies the paper as containing 'all the news that's fit to print, unless, of course, its anti-communist.') In the White House, he was a dogged defender of Reagan's blunt war of words against what Mr. Dolan saw as the ungodly Soviets. He resisted pressure from presidential advisers who, subscribing to realpolitik, wanted him to tone down his verbal assaults — including his hope that 'the march of freedom and democracy' would 'leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history.' 'Evil empire' and 'ash heap,' both derived from earlier iterations ('Star Wars' and Leon Trotsky among them) survived into final drafts thanks to Mr. Dolan. He also oversaw the speech his assistant, Peter Robinson, wrote in which Reagan, at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin in 1987, challenged the Soviet leader: 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.' Advertisement In a video tribute to Mr. Dolan, Robinson recalled a tug of war between 'the true believers vs. the pragmatists — and the true believers were the speechwriters and Ronald Reagan.' Several mentions of 'evil' were deleted from drafts of the 'ash heap' speech that Mr. Dolan wrote for delivery to the British Parliament in 1982. But he persisted in using the word, and he triumphed the following year when, in March, Reagan addressed the National Association of Evangelicals, who were divided between antiwar Quakers and anti-communist conservatives. Reagan urged his audience to "beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all," which, he warned, would be "to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire." 'With some nifty footwork, Dolan finally managed to get Reagan to deliver the speech he wanted,' Simon Lancaster, a British speechwriter, recalled in 'You Are Not Human: How Words Kill' (2018), 'deploying that age-old speechwriter tactic of circulating the draft at the very last minute, so no one has any time to comment.' Natan Sharansky, who was imprisoned at the time, later wrote that he and fellow Soviet dissidents were ecstatic. "Finally," he wrote in The Washington Post in 2000, "the leader of the free world had spoken the truth — a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us." David Gergen, who was Reagan's communications director, wrote in his book 'Eyewitness to Power': 'I hate to admit it, but it's true: History has shown that Tony Dolan was right and I was wrong. That phrase, the evil empire, allowed Reagan to speak truth to totalitarianism.' Advertisement And Vince Haley, the director of Trump's Domestic Policy Council, and several other speechwriters wrote in Real Clear Politics this week, 'Dolan channeled Reagan's moral and intellectual arguments that framed the U.S.S.R. not simply as a competitor but as an aggressive force of evil in the world.' Anthony Rossi Dolan was born on July 7, 1948, in Norwalk, Conn., to Joseph and Margaret (Kelley) Dolan. His father was a store manager. Mr. Dolan was a Roman Catholic who attended Mass daily and a fierce anti-communist. In a eulogy for his sister, Maiselle Shortley, last year, he told a story from when he was 6 years old: "My mother took a course on communism downtown at St. Mary's Church from Louis Budenz, former Soviet operative and editor of The Daily Worker, who had become a Catholic and Fordham professor. She took Budenz's talks to heart about communism's global menace. 'I used to wonder if you kids would even have a country to grow up in,' she would say." Mr. Dolan kept a book that Budenz had inscribed to his mother. Haley said in an interview, "Tony didn't just condemn communism in the speeches he helped craft; he rallied souls to a positive conception of freedom of God with man." After graduating from Fairfield College Preparatory School in Connecticut, where he was class president, Mr. Dolan majored in philosophy and history at Yale University and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1970. He served in the US Army as a specialist 4. Advertisement Mr. Dolan was the deputy press secretary in James L. Buckley's 1970 campaign for the US Senate in New York, worked for F. Clifton White & Associates as a political consultant, and was a reporter for The Advocate from 1974 to 1980. He was a protégé of William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and editor-in-chief of The National Review, who importuned William J. Casey, manager of the Reagan-Bush campaign in 1980, to hire Mr. Dolan as a speechwriter and a research director. He joined the White House staff in March 1981, becoming chief speechwriter and an assistant to the president. He played a role in drafting the administration's crackdown on organized crime and was an adviser to US delegations to UNESCO in 1984 and the United Nations disarmament conference in 1988. Mr. Dolan advised the campaigns of Fred Thompson, Newt Gingrich, and Ted Cruz for the Republican presidential nominations of 2008, 2012, and 2016. He had a communications strategy firm and was an essayist on political affairs. In Washington, he was a frequent customer of Cafe Milano and Martin's Tavern, favorite political hangouts. His closest survivor is a nephew, Robert A. Shortley. In addition to his sister, Maiselle Shortley, a brother, John Terrence Dolan, known as Terry, a founder and chairman of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, died in 1986. Mr. Dolan paid tribute to Reagan long after his presidency ended and well after his death in 2004. In 2023, speaking at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington on the 40th anniversary of the 'evil empire' speech, Mr. Dolan said, 'Freedom had triumphed over tyranny due in large measure to President Ronald Reagan, who summed up his strategy with four simple words: 'We win, they lose.'' Advertisement This article originally appeared in
