SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
asylum seekers
The Jingoist States of America: Our Cruel Mistreatment of Asylum Seekers
At such a moment in history, a movement that connects the dots between our many struggles is certainly the way forward. The plight of refugees—and how we treat them as a society—is a story that connects us all.
Apr 20, 2026
In late March, I sat in the gallery of the Supreme Court for the first time in my life. Throughout my 30 years of grassroots anti-poverty work, I’ve joined countless protests and vigils outside the Court. In 2018, I was even arrested and held in detention for praying on its palatial steps. Now, I was seated with a clear view of the nine justices of the nation’s highest court. I was there as a guest of immigrant rights lawyers, as their team made oral arguments in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the most significant case on the right to asylum in decades.
In February, the Kairos Center (the organization I direct) authored an interfaith amicus brief on that very case, alongside 31 denominations and organizations representing faith traditions practiced by billions worldwide. Those groups, including the Alliance of Baptists, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Hindus for Human Rights, the Latino Christian National Network, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reconstructing Judaism, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, joined together to declare that our societal obligation to provide for persecuted outsiders is a universally shared moral principle.
Although the case has largely flown under the public radar, there is indeed a lot at stake. Filed on behalf of asylum seekers, Noem v. Al Otro Lado focuses on the legality of a 2018 Trump border policy blocking access to the U.S. asylum process for people arriving at the border with Mexico. Immigrant rights advocates argue that such a turnback policy, under which immigration officers physically stop people seeking safety at official border crossings from setting foot on U.S. soil, flouts decades of settled federal immigration law and our society’s most deeply held legal and moral values.
For more than a century, the government has been required to undertake a legal process of inspection when people seek asylum at official ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border (as they must inspect all noncitizens seeking admission to the United States). That requirement is supposed to ensure that this country doesn’t send vulnerable people back into danger without first allowing them to seek protection. A wide range of immigration lawyers and legal experts argue that the first Trump administration’s turnback policy, euphemistically called “metering,” directly undermined the government’s responsibility to process such asylum claims. As a result, vulnerable children, families, and adults were regularly forced to remain indefinitely stranded in perilous conditions in Mexico.
Although the turnback policy has not been in effect since 2021, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unlawful, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to review the case. Should the government win (which is all too possible given the hyperpartisan nature of the current Court), the consequences are sure to be grave and far-reaching. The Department of Homeland Security would have the legal backing to turn away untold thousands of desperate people at the border, potentially clearing the way for even more expansive border closures, while further intensifying the jingoistic nationalism that defines the Trump administration. Alongside other landmark cases this term, like Trump v. Barboza, in which the government seeks to undo the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the results of Noem v. Al Otro Lado are likely to reveal the lengths to which the Supreme Court is willing to backstop the president’s assault on democracy, including accelerated attacks on the rights of vulnerable populations.
The day I was there, the existential stakes of that case and the larger societal crisis in which it was unfolding did not seem to concern the court’s conservative justices. I had the words of George Washington (written in 1788 to the radical Dutch republican Francis Van der Kemp) in my mind as I sat in the gallery: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe & agreeable asylum to the virtuous & persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong.”
Unfortunately, having heard the statements and reactions of some of the judges, I fear that the majority of the Supreme Court may no longer agree with that foundational vision for this country.
Courtroom Friezes and Draconian Law
The first thing that struck me on entering the Supreme Court gallery were the stone friezes on the walls of the room. Designed by Adolf Weinman more than a century ago, those large marble reliefs, featuring what he called the “great lawgivers of history,” tower over the space. Among them are prominent religious figures like Moses (holding a scroll of the Ten Commandments), King Solomon, Confucius, and a rendition of the Prophet Muhammad (that is entirely unrecognizable). The friezes also include Roman Emperor Octavian (otherwise known as Caesar Augustus, Jesus’s great nemesis), French King Louis IX (leader of the seventh and eighth crusades), and Draco (a Greek jurist whose legacy lurks in the word “draconian” because of the extreme measures he took to punish minor offenses).
As I stared at those figures, I reflected on the message they convey about the complex civilizational lineages from which the Supreme Court and our legal system derive their authority. In our amicus brief, we reflected on those varied lineages as they pertain to the right to seek asylum:
“Our asylum laws are the modern embodiment of a deeply rooted religious, cultural, and historical heritage that has consistently affirmed society’s obligation to provide refuge for those seeking safety. Asylum reaches back to some of the earliest moments of recorded human history. It was practiced throughout the ancient civilizations that forged the foundation of Western society. This tradition can also be found in the form of church sanctuary asylum, a mainstay of European culture for over a millennium.
“Our very nation began as a haven for persecuted political and religious minorities. This tradition is present throughout our history, from the practices of Native Americans to the Underground Railroad to modern times. Congress adopted our current asylum laws in significant part due to the efforts of faith-based groups seeking to uphold deeply held societal, moral, and cultural principles.”
Despite such deeply held and ancient principles, I couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom as I scanned the faces on the friezes and those of the justices. I thought of the awesome and awful power of Rome, depicted throughout the gallery, and its draconian reign of “peace” (or what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently termed “delivering peace through strength”). And I recalled the worsening anti-democratic and pro-oligarchic turn our own Supreme Court has taken in the Trump era.
Just consider the rulings from the past few years: the Court has essentially given immunity to the executive branch (although the Court is supposed to be a critical part of a federal system of checks and balances), criminalized homelessness (although the U.S. claims to be a nation of opportunity and prosperity for all), and degraded voting rights (cutting off the legs of our democracy).
Before oral arguments began in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, I was under no illusion that the Supreme Court delivers equality, freedom, and justice for all. And yet, on an issue as basic and legally sound as the right to seek asylum, I was still shocked by the flippancy of the court’s conservative judges. For hours, they rocked in their chairs, physically broadcasting their disinterest in the case. Rather than take seriously more than 100 years of legal precedent and hundreds more of long-established societal practice, they seemed to enjoy getting into hyper-specific and cherrypicked semantic and rhetorical arguments with Kelsi Brown Cochran, our lawyer.
In preparation for that day, I had brushed up on the history of U.S. asylum law. An important story in that history is the S.S. St. Louis, a ship that in 1939 was carrying 930 refugees from Hamburg, Germany, fleeing the Nazi regime, who were first denied entry to Cuba and then to the United States, only to be returned to Europe, where many of them were taken to the Nazi death camps.
Reflecting on that story at a pre-hearing press conference, Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, border rights project director at Al Otro Lado, a plaintiff in the case, offered this explanation:
“The right to seek asylum is not a policy preference or a loophole — it is a legal right and a moral commitment forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Seeking asylum is not like taking a number at a deli counter and waiting for your turn. You cannot ask someone fleeing rape, torture, or death threats to wait in danger indefinitely because a government has decided their lives are inconvenient. We filed this case because the United States has an obligation to follow its own laws — laws duly enacted by Congress. The question before the Court is whether those laws can be set aside by executive action, or whether they remain binding at the border, as written.”
In their apparent willingness to flout precedent and condemn modern-day asylees to harm or even death, the conservative justices unselfconsciously aligned themselves with American nativism and European fascism of the 1930s. If, in their final decision, they uphold Trump’s turnback policy, they will be affirming that, were the S.S. St Louis to sail again today, the ship would still be denied entry and its passengers asylum.
The Moral Crisis Is Not “Border Surges” But the Closing of the Border
The morning of those oral arguments, the Kairos Center and other faith organizations held an interfaith prayer vigil on the steps of the Supreme Court to call attention to the case. Reverend Michael Neuroth, director of the United Church of Christ’s Washington D.C. office, put the matter vividly: “Welcoming and protecting the stranger is not a minor tenet of our faith but is a foundational moral obligation in each of our traditions. Dismantling the right to asylum is morally wrong, strategically short-sighted, and increases insecurity here in our nation. We must be a nation of compassion, a place of refuge to those in need.”
The vigil was organized in the heart of the “holy season” amid Ramadan, Passover, and Easter. As billions of people globally engage in rituals of remembrance, repentance, deliverance, and liberation, our prayers and petitions focused not only on the legal precedent for the right to seek asylum, but on the moral imperative to do so. For Christians, protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’s first and most powerful teachings. It’s also among the highest moral commands of the Torah. As the prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “Do no wrong to the foreigner and do not shed innocent blood.” Asylum and societal hospitality are well-recognized rights within Islamic law and theology, a fundamental Hindu and Buddhist tenet, and part of Native American spiritual teachings.
In our interfaith amicus brief, we wrote: “As the many faiths practiced by this country’s citizens teach, a society that does not protect the least among us is a failed society.” As faith leaders, we had in mind not only the right to seek asylum, but the many ways the Trump administration has deepened and intensified a moral crisis at the heart of our society. We were thinking about the ongoing attacks on immigrant communities — from ICE-led campaigns of terror to family and child detention in places like Dilley, Texas. There was also the stripping of life-saving healthcare and food support from millions of Americans through cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); the criminalization and forced deprivation of LGBTQ+ people; and the prosecution of anillegal war that threatens the lives of so many in Iran and the broader region, as well as the livelihoods of billions of us across this globe.
In Noem v. Al Otro Lado, the Trump administration is attempting to mask its cruelty and despotism through banal legal arguments. By focusing semantically on when protections start for asylum seekers and debating the meaning of the term “arrives in” (as in this country, of course), its lawyers were ignoring the illegality and immorality of border agents blocking asylum seekers from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border and the larger question of whether the United States can any longer be a place of safety and protection for all families “yearning to be free” of violence and persecution.
The government is, of course, hoping that we don’t make the connections between the stripping away of asylum rights, the larger issue of immigrant rights, and the many other ways that it’s targeting “the least among us.” That’s a mistake we can’t make and where the teachings of our many faith traditions have encouragement to offer. In Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and more, love, justice, and peace are not parceled out only for certain people in certain places. Across our religions, all life is sacred, full stop!
No Turning Back for Anyone
Intermixed with the important lawgivers of history in that marble frieze in the Supreme Court gallery are engraved winged personifications of “Peace,” “The Rights of Man,” “History,” “Authority,” “Fame,” and more. Those winged characters form what looked to me like a Greco-Roman “choir of angels,” proclaiming “law and order” at the expense of rights and dignity for us all.
Sitting there, I reflected on just who was not in that room listening to those arguments or forcing the Supreme Court justices to face the very lives impacted by their decision. I thought about all those who will never have access to that courtroom, or justice of any sort for that matter, the millions of people struggling to fight for their communities and a future where everybody is in and nobody is out.
Those people are — or at least should be — our hope. They are the true “choir of angels” who came out for the recent No Kings Day demonstrations and are standing up for the rights and dignity of communities all over the country. They are also the people who are increasingly giving Donald Trump historically low approval ratings. And here’s the truth of these times: this administration has nothing to offer everyday people, other than hardened borders and wars that nobody wants.
At such a moment in history, a movement that connects the dots between our many struggles is certainly the way forward. Therefore, it seems fitting that the coalition that came together to fight this case and protect the rights of asylum seekers calls itself “No Turning Back.” It reminds me of a song by Emma’s Revolution that I’ve sung many times at protests and gatherings. Its key lines are a reminder of what we all need to keep in mind in this deeply disturbing Trumpian moment of ours:
“Gonna keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Never turning back
Never turning back”
Because indeed, there can be no turning back for any of us. Either we get there together or we never get there at all.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's Anti-Immigrant Agenda Turns the Ancient Story of Passover Into a Modern One
On Wednesday night, Jews sat down to the Passover seder and retold the story of how our ancestors, once welcomed into Egypt as refugees, were enslaved by a Pharaoh fearful of losing power. This year, it sounds like the news.
Apr 02, 2026
An authoritarian ruler seeks to consolidate his own power by stirring up fear about an immigrant population.
“These people are not like us,” he declares. “They are a potential fifth column, likely to join with our enemies and destroy us from within!” “We can keep ourselves safe only by controlling and oppressing them.”
On Wednesday night, Jews sat down to the Passover seder and retold the ancient story of how our ancestors, once welcomed into Egypt as refugees from famine, were enslaved by a Pharaoh fearful of losing power, and ultimately liberated through divine and human actions.
The Passover story has been retold in Jewish homes for millennia. This year, the ancient story tragically sounds like today’s news.
Now, the Supreme Court is considering overturning a core principle that once allowed those fleeing violence and oppression, my own great grandparents included, to find refuge in the United States.
President Donald Trump built his election campaign around stirring up fear of immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, and, over the past year, has ramped up detentions and deportations, canceled temporary protected status for nationals of multiple countries, flooded major American cities with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and flouted US policy and international law by deporting people to third countries.
All these actions have been undertaken with intense cruelty. Families have been divided; mothers tackled in airports, on the streets, and in their homes; and people sent to prisons and to nations where they have no connections.
Now, the Supreme Court is considering overturning a core principle that once allowed those fleeing violence and oppression, my own great grandparents included, to find refuge in the United States.
The justices are deliberating on Noem vs. Al Otro Lado, which will determine the constitutionality of the US government’s policy of physically blocking asylum-seekers from presenting themselves at ports of entry along the Mexican border. Longstanding US law requires the government to allow asylum-seekers to request asylum at ports of entry, and to give these claims a fair hearing.
Instead, the US has been preventing asylum-seekers from even making a claim and instead forcing them back to Mexico, where they are often stranded without shelter, adequate food, or protection from violence.
All of the current Supreme Court justices identify as either Christian, mostly Catholic, or Jewish. We hope they look to our shared scripture as they consider their rulings.
The Torah commands the retelling of the story of slavery and liberation, and also specifies what lessons should be learned from this experience. “You shall not wrong or oppress the ger,” God commands, “for you were gerim in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20). The word ger (plural: gerim) most likely refers to a person who came from somewhere else to live among the Jewish people—in other words, an immigrant or a stranger. Versions of this directive appear 36 times in the Torah.
As God established a lasting covenant with the Jewish people, God also laid out a series of laws aimed at establishing a just society. Central among these are the commandments regarding just treatment of the ger, who “...should be treated equally under the law.” (Numbers 15:15)
God, Godself, cares for immigrants just as God cared for the Jewish people during the period of their slavery in Egypt. “[God] loves the ger, and gives them food and clothing.” (Deuteronomy 10:18) Acting as God acts demands not only protecting immigrants from oppression, but actively caring for their needs.
The Torah also offers a negative example of a society whose cruelty toward immigrants, travelers, and others in need condemns it to destruction. The evil city of Sodom is notorious for its inhospitality toward visitors. “This was the sin of your sister Sodom,” the prophet Ezekiel declares, “She and her daughters had plenty of bread and untroubled tranquility, yet they did not support the poor and the needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49)
The Talmud goes on to tell the story of one brave young woman who regularly sneaks food to a person in need, only to be tortured and killed once she is discovered.
These are the issues at stake in Noem vs. Al Otro Lado. When US officials turn asylum-seekers away at the border, rather than allowing them to plead their case, they are no different from the officials in Sodom who decreed, “Let us abolish the practice of traveling in our land.”
I've personally seen Jewish and other religious communities living out these ancient teachings. At the end of January, nearly 100 rabbis who are members of T’ruah, the organization I lead, half of whom live and work in Minnesota and half from out of state, joined some 600 other clergy to protest ICE in the Twin Cities.
These religious leaders are following the path that God has laid out, refusing to tolerate fearmongering or oppression of immigrants, and insisting on treating all people—whether born in the United States or elsewhere—justly, and according to a single legal code. The justices should do the same.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Vermont Winter Gets ICEier
It’s been coming for months: the first big Vermont confrontation among ICE, the local police, and the community in a state that prides itself on caring for neighbors and individual liberty as well as collective responsibility.
Mar 15, 2026
The little boy with curly red hair clutched his huge stuffed bunny and stayed close to his mother, whose face was tight with anxiety. No wonder. Close by was a crowd of more than 100 protesters, clustered around a small white house with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the back and local police in the front. A line of Vermont state troopers in their green uniforms was across the street on the median. There was a lot of yelling.
I took off my mask and asked the boy if he understood what was going on. He shook his head and put his thumb in his mouth. “The police want to get into the house to take someone away, and the rest of us don’t want them to because it’s not fair,” I said.
“Is he a bad guy?”
“We don’t think so.” The boy was about 3, the same age as the child who was trapped inside the house until his family decided whether it was safer to let him go to friends.
I keep thinking about the little boy frightened of the crowd and the noise. About those three people in the house from 8:30 am until 5:30 pm, then in a vehicle, now in detention. About their farewell to a 3-year-old child.
The red-haired boy’s mother said they couldn’t get through the protest, so I walked them around it, in the blocked-off street.
It’s been coming for months: the first big Vermont confrontation among ICE, the local police, and the community in a state that prides itself on caring for neighbors and individual liberty as well as collective responsibility. By the time the day was done, ICE broke into the house with the help of Vermont State Police, then arrested and removed three people, including two asylum-seeking sisters (ages 20 and 31) from Ecuador, according to Migrant Justice.
Thursday morning, the US attorney admitted that none of them was the person named in the warrant which ICE finally obtained after showing up without one. No mention was made of any criminal charges against the people who were removed from their home. Less than a dozen protesters were also detained, some violently: those who attempted to prevent ICE from entering the home or keep official vehicles from leaving. At the end of the evening, tear gas dispersed the remaining protesters and the final vehicle sped away.
The day began when ICE tried to trap a vehicle in which the driver attempted to escape, damaging several other cars in the process. Eventually the driver fled on foot, leaving the car behind. Only then were local police notified that ICE would attempt an arrest at a nearby address associated with the car. Police and protesters were both on the scene early. ICE officers said they had a warrant but were unable to produce one. Police first said that people had a right to protest but couldn’t on private property—but then the property manager arrived, asked to be shown a warrant, and said he was not asking the police to remove people.
Song broke out, led by Rabbi Grace Oedel. Someone brought a guitar. Soon hands linked around the house. A nearby business put up a tent, and snacks and supplies poured in. A local store sent pizza. Half a dozen ICE agents (some masked, mostly not) were hanging out in the backyard, waiting for the warrant. Most protesters were peaceful, but a few were angry and confrontational, taunting and insulting officers. Several people tried to cool the loud voices out to no avail, until a soft-spoken woman talked directly to an officer, and two angry young men backed off. The local police were in a very difficult position and overall showed restraint in the early part of the day. But after they called in the Vermont State Police, the tone of the situation changed. The warrant was on its way, and the die was cast.
The parking lot of a nearby mall suddenly swarmed with State Police vehicles, not only to transport them, but also what used to be called paddy wagons. Reporters later said that about 60 law enforcement personnel were involved at the height of the situation, including some in “tactical gear.” Soon, local and state police cars filled the street in front of the house, as well as unmarked ICE vehicles.
About 5:30 pm local time, after state troopers cleared a path from the ICE vehicle to the front door of the house, I watched what I’ve seen so many times on the news. An implacable man with a stony face stood in the doorway, after it was broken down. A line of helmets led up to that door. Lots of screaming, including my own, lots of whistles. Then a brown face in the doorway, a short man’s, full of fear. I was so upset that I didn’t even see the two women who were taken afterward. The crowd surged in front of the vehicles to keep them from leaving, shouting, “No están solos” (They are not alone). When the cars tried to back out, people blocked them again. Only the use of force cleared the path, and in the process a number of people were roughed up, sprayed with pepper spray, or pushed to the ground or against the cars. Some were arrested.
Thursday morning, in Vermont fashion, our Republican Gov. Phil Scott has attempted to issue a balanced statement and primarily blames the feds: “The actions of federal law enforcement, from outside the state yesterday, further demonstrates a lack of training, coordination, leadership, and outdated tactics which put both peaceful protesters and Vermont law enforcement in a difficult situation.”
The local South Burlington Police Chief William Breault also criticized the ICE approach, saying, “To attempt an arrest of a subject in a moving vehicle on Dorset Street in the area of a high school and middle school at 7:45 in the morning when the school is getting in was not probably the most appropriate.” In fact, MSN’s report of a press conference by the three local police departments says, “Police say they tried to convince federal agents to avoid the high-tension arrest.”
I keep thinking about the little boy frightened of the crowd and the noise. About those three people in the house from 8:30 am until 5:30 pm, then in a vehicle, now in detention. About their farewell to a 3-year-old child. About what the two asylum-seekers may have suffered before they came here looking for safety. For what we used to call the American Dream.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular