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We are not sure what Bible President Trump is reading. But it bears no resemblance to the sacred text we have studied and loved for our entire lives.
Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, he has repeatedly touted his purported “Christian” vision for the nation. After dropping bombs on Iran, he proclaimed, “I want to just thank everybody, and in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you, God…” Weeks earlier, he professed, “My Administration renews its promise to defend the Christian faith in our schools, military, workplaces, hospitals, and halls of government.”
In the meantime, President Trump has launched a relentless, unprecedented crusade against the nation’s immigrants. At his beckoning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have snatched mothers and fathers off the streets—leaving children parentless. They’ve captured students who dared to speak out against the atrocities in Gaza. They’ve weaponized government resources to surveil immigrants and create a constant state of fear.
And then, President Trump decided to deploy the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to stop overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrators who dared stand up for these vulnerable communities.
This is the core of the Trump administration: Praise the name of Jesus, and then villainize, demean, and harm vulnerable immigrant communities. And next—unleash tools of war on the people who protect them.
It’s unfathomable that the president decided to use tools of war to block people of faith and conscience from standing up for immigrants—even though Jesus would have surely marched alongside the protesters.
We are not sure what Bible President Trump is reading. But it bears no resemblance to the sacred text we have studied and loved for our entire lives.
The Bible leaves much to interpretation. But for immigrants, it couldn’t be clearer. Leviticus 19:33-34 explicitly states: "When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”
Deuteronomy 10:18-19 says: “He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 27:19 then states, “Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.”
And then, in the New Testament, Jesus not only stands up for immigrants and strangers, he stands with them. And he instructed his followers to do the same, even in the face of oppressive forces.
And beyond all these explicit examples, the Bible also consistently tells us to care for the vulnerable and love our fellow humans. People deserve compassion, care, and acceptance simply because they are creatures made in God’s image—not based on arbitrary borders.
For centuries, faith leaders have heeded this call. They have long been on the frontlines of efforts to welcome immigrants to the United States.
In the 1800s for example, faith leaders played an instrumental role in connecting immigrants arriving at Ellis Island with food, clothing, and other local resources. Also at that time, the school we lead, Union Theological Seminary, helped start one of the largest settlement houses.
And for decades, houses of worship have served as places of sanctuary for immigrant communities. Today, many people of faith—from all different traditions—are still committed to uplifting immigrants. When far-right leaders from border states started sending busloads of immigrants to other parts of the country, many faith organizations provided resources to support them. And earlier this year at Union Theological Seminary, we hosted about 200 faith leaders for a “Know Your Rights” event and provided them with practical resources to protect migrant communities.
Rather than following the clear guidance from the Bible to support immigrants, President Trump is attempting to claim the moral high ground by painting them as villains.
That’s reprehensible. Immigrants are human, and like all humans, they contribute in innumerable ways. They raise families, they work, and they participate in the community. And immigrants make enormous sacrifices just to gain a semblance of acceptance. For example, undocumented immigrants contribute billions in Social Security taxes each year. But they’ll never see these benefits because they’re not eligible for the program.
It’s unfathomable that the president decided to use tools of war to block people of faith and conscience from standing up for immigrants—even though Jesus would have surely marched alongside the protesters. If the president is willing to go this far, there’s no telling how else he will try to silence Americans’ right to advocate for what’s right.
As President Trump continues to round up immigrants and target those who defend them, he will undoubtedly continue to espouse his Christian values. But don’t be fooled. His actions are the exact opposite of Jesus’ teachings.
"ICE was conducting a raid using disproportionate displays of force against local farmworkers and our agricultural community," said U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, who was denied entry to one farm where he was attempting to provide oversight.
Federal immigration agents were met with a strong show of resistance Thursday when they raided two farms in Southern California—with hundreds of community members protesting the arrests of migrants at the facilities growing cannabis and vegetables.
Los Angeles-based independent journalist Mel Buer reported that hundreds of community members gathered to protest the raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at Glass House Farms' facility in Camarillo, Ventura County, and supporters dropped "hundreds of pounds of water, food, and masks."
Local news outlet KTLA reported that "dozens of farmworkers were detained" in the raids at Glass House Farms' properties in Camarillo and Carpinteria.
Federal law enforcement first arrived in Camarillo at about 11:00 am, and the situation escalated as a crowd of community members gathered.
The federal agents first deployed tear gas into the crowd early Thursday afternoon.
Ventura County District 5 Supervisor Vianey Lopez told KTLA that as the federal agents used force on the protesters, she saw two government vans, each carrying about 15 people, leaving the farm.
"It is an ongoing situation that is very concerning for the safety of those showing up with anger and disappointment at what is happening to hardworking people in our community," Lopez said.
The immigration enforcement agents were joined by National Guard troops in military vehicles later that afternoon in Camarillo, according to The Guardian, as other federal agents carried out a simultaneous raid in Carpinteria, about 50 miles northwest in Santa Barbara County.
Carpinteria City Council members Julia Mayer and Mónica Solórzano were among a large crowd of community members who gathered to protest the raid, and they told the Santa Barbara Independent that federal officers "pushed us as a group into the ground" and threw at least one smoke grenade, causing Solórzano to injure her arm.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), who represents Santa Barbara County and part of Ventura County, released a statement condemning the ICE raid and saying he had been "denied entry and not allowed to pass" when he attempted to "conduct oversight" over the raid targeting his constituents in Carpinteria.
"ICE was conducting a raid using disproportionate displays of force against local farmworkers and our agricultural community," said Carbajal. "There's been a troubling lack of transparency from ICE since the Trump administration started, and I won't stop asking questions on behalf of my constituents."
Carbajal is now one of several Democratic elected officials who have been denied the ability to oversee ICE operations. Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) pleaded not guilty last month to forcibly interfering with federal officers—charges that stemmed from her attempt to conduct congressional oversight at an ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey.
"These militarized ICE raids are not how you keep our communities safe. This kind of chaos only traumatizes families and tears communities apart. They are also a gross misuse of limited resources and a betrayal of the values that define us as Americans," said Carbajal, who noted that the identities of those detained in the raids had not been made clear.
In Camarillo, a resident named Judith Ramos told The Guardian that she had learned from her father, who worked in Glass House Farms' tomato fields, that "immigration was outside his job" on Thursday morning.
Ramos, a 22-year-old certified nurse assistant with two younger siblings, said her father told her "to take care of everything" if he was detained by ICE.
She was sprayed with a chemical substance when she arrived at the farm and joined the crowd of protesters, and told The Guardian that she did not know where her father was.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has clashed with President Donald Trump and filed a lawsuit against the administration last month over its federalization of the California National Guard to respond to protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles, posted a video showing children running from the federal agents.
"Trump calls me 'Newscum,'" said the governor, "but he's the real scum."
If California is a sign of the future, it seems ever clearer that the courts have little appetite for standing in the way of this president.
“I must say,” Donald Trump commented, “I wish we had an occupying force.” It was June 1, 2020. The president, then in his first term in office, was having a phone call with the nation’s governors to discuss the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests taking place nationwide in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. He was urging the governors to call in the National Guard in response to BLM protests in their states. Otherwise, he threatened he would do so himself. “You have to dominate,” he told them, while labeling the protesters “terrorists.” Otherwise, he claimed, “they are going to run over you.”
Later that morning, Trump left the White House and took his infamous walk through Lafayette Park, where members of the Washington National Guard, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and several other agencies, joined by guard units from a number of states, confronted protesters. As I recounted in my book Subtle Tools, “Protesters threw eggs, candy bars, and water bottles, while law enforcement shot rubber bullets, launched pepper balls, and fired tear gas into the crowd.”
Several weeks later, protests in Portland, Oregon, tested the president’s resolve to send in an “occupying force.” Although he didn’t then go as far as to send in the National Guard, as he had threatened in that phone meeting, he did deploy federal agents to counter the protesters without consulting the governor of that state. Seven hundred and seventy-five Department of Homeland Security agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and elsewhere appeared on the streets of Portland, authorized by a presidential edict to protect federal buildings. As if to intentionally blur the borderline between military and civilian authorities, the federal agents arrived dressed in black military-looking uniforms without identifying insignia and drove unmarked vehicles. The administration justified the deployment by arguing that local law enforcement was unable to effectively control the protests.
Not surprisingly, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler protested, claiming that local law enforcement was perfectly capable of handling the protests without federal aid, and that the presence of federal agents, with their aggressive tactics, including the use of tear gas and rubber bullets, had only provoked the protesters, making the situation much worse.
Sound familiar? Fast forward to today in Los Angeles.
Donald Trump is once again president, and immigration raids across the country are hurrying to meet the White House target of 3,000 arrests per day. This time around, Los Angeles has become the focal point of the resulting battle over federal versus state authority. In early June, responding to an outbreak of protests challenging the administration’s brutal immigration raids, Trump sent 700 active-duty Marines and 4,100 National Guard into that city to counter the protesters. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and California Attorney General Bonta have protested resoundingly, claiming, like their Portland counterparts, that the deployment was unnecessary and counterproductive. Mayor Bass has maintained that the local authorities “had the situation under control,” concluding that “there was no need for the National Guard.” Summing up the consequences of the deployment, Governor Newsom considered them to be “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy. It is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” Attorney General Bonta echoed Newsom by insisting that the troops were instigating violence, not defusing it, and suing the Trump administration (unsuccessfully so far) for illegally taking over a state National Guard.
Where all of this may be headed is anyone’s guess, but Portland’s attempts in 2020 to fight back against the deployment of federal agents, despite the wishes of local authorities, provide some guidance about what to expect, as well as lessons learned when it comes to the role of the courts, of dissent by local and state leaders, and of the path down which American law may be headed in relation to the president’s ability to usurp the power of local authorities.
The Law
The battle over federal versus state authority is rooted in laws pertaining to presidential powers. The Posse Comitatus Act, as former United States Attorney Joyce Vance explains, “prohibits the federal government from using the military inside of the domestic United States for law enforcement, absent truly compelling circumstances.” But there are exceptions. Title 10 of the U.S. Code fleshes them out, authorizing the president to federalize the National Guard and deploy it to a state in rare instances of invasion, rebellion, or the need to “execute [federal] laws.”
In Portland in 2020, President Trump labelled the protesters “terrorists” and threatened to bring in the National Guard if the protests didn’t stop. Yet days later, he pulled back from that threat, telling George Stephanopoulos on ABC News that such a move would have violated the law. “We have to go by the laws,” he said then. “We can’t move in the National Guard. I can call insurrection but there’s no reason to ever do that, even in a Portland case.” He further concluded that “we can’t call in the National Guard unless we’re requested by a governor.”
My, how things have changed!
On June 7th, Trump issued a memorandum declaring his authority to deploy both the National Guard and the armed services. “In light of these incidents and credible threats of continued violence,” the memo authorized the secretary of defense to coordinate with governors to deploy both the National Guard and “any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In other words, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was given unprecedented authority to direct events on the home front, challenging the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions.
Since then, 4,100 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines have arrived in Los Angeles. Their presence has been notably aggressive. Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security agents have swarmed the streets, local employment places, and immigration offices, not wearing identifying insignia (as occurred in Portland). As Nick Turse reported at The Intercept, “Since June 8, there have been 561 arrests related to protests across Los Angeles; 203, for failure to disperse, were made on the night of June 10, after Trump ordered in the National Guard and Marines.” Meanwhile, Trump used the growing conflict to threaten Governor Newsom with arrest.
Justifying his deployments, the president labelled the protesters “insurrectionists,” laying the groundwork for invoking the Insurrection Act, which, as Joyce Vance explains, “allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement, but — and it’s an important caveat — only to restore order.”
For help in pushing back against the deployments, California officials, like their Portland predecessors, have turned to the courts. This time around, however, the Trump administration has revised its reading of what is lawful and, so far, the judiciary seems to be bending the president’s way.
The Courts
On June 9th, Governor Newsom filed suit in federal court, claiming that the deployment of the Guard and the Marines violated the Constitution and exceeded the president’s Title 10 authority. The suit argued that the deployments were unwarranted and the administration had failed to try to coordinate with the governor. California Attorney General Rob Bonta elaborated on the limitations of the law: “Let me be clear: There is no invasion. There is no rebellion. The President is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends. Federalizing the California National Guard is an abuse of the President’s authority under the law — and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.”
In 2020, the Oregon attorney general had filed suit in federal court in response to the actions of the federal agents. As the New York Times reported, “The lawsuit said federal agents were violating the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution by denying the right to peacefully protest, failing to provide due process and conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.” Ultimately, the federal judge dismissed the case, claiming that “the attorney general’s office did not have standing to bring the case because it had not shown that the issue was ‘an interest that is specific to the state itself.’” The Oregon court also shied away from tackling the larger question of what powers the federal government actually had in such situations.
Suits brought by private parties, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of individuals (journalists in particular), who were injured, harassed, or “abducted” by federal agents were more successful. Initially, a judge expanded a temporary restraining order (TRO) from local law enforcement to federal agents, blocking the use of tear gas and projectiles against journalists. As the suit progressed, more weapons in the federal agents’ arsenal, including rubber bullets, were prohibited.
When the president asked for the TRO to be removed, the judge not only refused, but levied a requirement that government agents wear identifying insignia — an effort to introduce a measure of accountability into the conflict on the ground.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals raised the larger issue of federal versus local authority, resoundingly rejecting the legality of the presence of federal agents in Portland, while agreeing with the lower court’s finding of “a disturbing pattern of unwarranted force by federal agents.” That court not only reinstated the TRO against federal agents attacking journalists but underscored the fact that federal agents had gone beyond protecting federal buildings to actively confronting protesters, while widening the “perimeter” in which they could act outside those buildings and so wrongfully overstepping the authorities expressly reserved for local law enforcement.
And at that time, there was also help from within Trump’s circle. In a settlement arranged between Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, federal law enforcement officers were indeed replaced with members of the Oregon state police. As Nik Blosser, Brown’s chief of staff and one of the negotiators, pointed out recently, referring to Vice President Pence, “There was at least someone in the administration that knew that this violence needed to come to an end. I’m not sure who is there to negotiate with now.”
Today, in Los Angeles, the courts are similarly engaged in a suit over the administration’s deployment of federal agents to counter protests. So far, however, the outcome is trending very differently. Earlier in the month, a federal judge issued a TRO against the National Guard in that city. In a 46-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer, the brother of retired Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the government’s characterization of the protests as “a rebellion” and excoriated the president for assuming powers beyond his constitutional and statutory authority. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George” was the way he put it. In addition, Judge Breyer returned the authority to deploy the National Guard to California rather than the federal government.
The administration immediately appealed. As in the Portland case, the appellate court is once again the Ninth Circuit. On June 18th, there was a hearing before a panel of three judges, two of them Trump appointees and one a Biden appointee. Repeatedly, the judges seemed to reject the notion that the law requires the active involvement of the governor in the decision to deploy such troops, appearing to side with the federal government lawyer, who told the judge again and again, “Our position is this is not subject to judicial review.” In other words, the president should have free rein to do as he pleases.
In their ruling, the appellate judges agreed with Trump and not with the state of California, overruling the district court judge and unanimously agreeing that the president had acted lawfully and that his failure to notify the governor before deploying those troops was not grounds for obstructing the president’s order. In other words, he could indeed keep control of the troops in L.A.
In short, the case has taken us another step down the road to the “maximalist” view of executive power. The ruling suggests that last year’s Supreme Court immunity decision, allowing a president to do more or less whatever he wants while in office without fear of retribution, was indeed a game changer. As a reminder, in July 2024, while Trump was running for office a third time, the court ruled that, “under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.” The court then added, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
In the context of recent events in Los Angeles, rather than immunity for criminal activity, it suggests that the Supreme Court might indeed support immunity from legal pushback for acts committed at the state level. And that would, of course, remove yet another of the checks and balances that once underlay the protections against untethered presidential power in the American system of government.
A Genuinely Frightening Moment
How this will play out at the Supreme Court the next time around is anyone’s guess and may turn on the issue of whether that court assesses that there really was a rebellion in Los Angeles — the government’s premise for bringing in federal troops. Nonetheless, this should certainly be considered a frightening moment. After all, that presidential memorandum authorizing the federal deployments to L.A. was in no way limited to California. In fact, there was no geographical specificity to it at all and no specific type of protest named in the memo. It was a blanket authorization for deploying federal troops, based on unspecified acts of violence, disorder, and protests. If California is a sign of the future, it seems ever clearer that the courts have little appetite for standing in the way of this president. In addition, as loyalty to him is the first requisite of government officials, any pushback from within the ranks of his administration seems essentially inconceivable.
So here we are, once again learning that the restraints Americans could rely upon in the past are fast disappearing. And while protests from democratic leaders abound, it’s the courts that, at this moment, hold the power.
It’s tempting to point to the moments in recent times when we should have seen this coming — the growing powers granted to the president in the name of the Global War on Terror, the unchecked ability of the president to repeatedly make acting appointments and fire those in his cabinet who oppose his will, the coopting of members of Congress through threats of primarying them out of office or grants of vast amounts of money should they demonstrate sufficient loyalty to the president.
But as it stands, this is probably not the time to focus on who’s to blame in the past. Instead, it’s time to consider the future and our power to strengthen the fundamentals of our democracy before all is lost. Only if our trust in the law and the courts is restored will we truly be able to turn our thoughts to the mistakes and missed opportunities of what by then would be the painful past.