ICE Is Not Responding to a Holy War: They're Creating a Human Rights Crisis
Federal Recruiting Ads Violate Separation of Church and State
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
“The video uses an audio clip from the 2014 movie "Fury" wherein a character played by recent Catholic convert Shia LaBeouf quotes from the Book of Isaiah,” The National Catholic Reporter wrote about the July 7th, 2025 debut of the Department of Homeland Security recruiting video in an article titled: Homeland Security weaponizes Bible verse to justify Trump's immigration tactics.
Not only does a new DHS recruiting ad violate the Constitution by conflating church and state, it violates scripture by implying that President Trump or DHS Secretary Kristi Noem or “Border Czar” Tom Homan are “the voice of the Lord”. Neither ICE nor CBP nor the White House are messengers of God calling you to serve as a soldier in an Evangelical anti-immigrant jihad. They are chaos agents fomenting a human rights crisis in “the greatest country on Earth”.
No one needs to send themselves to fight a holy war.
Because there is no holy war.
There’s just racism.
And America’s historical waves of anti-immigrant racism are key ingredients in the U.S. melting pot.
ICE is deputizing untrained civilians to racially police immigration as though they’re anointed by God to smite enemies. This is flagrantly unconstitutional and self-righteously blasphemous.
The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States begins: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” But the MAGA White House is promoting and oversimplifying a Wild West good vs. evil ethos as an HR recruiting tool. And the Evangelical tough-guy aesthetic of their most recent ad echoes their multimillion-dollar ad campaign of February 2025. The Department of Homeland Security aired melodramatic amber waves of grain ads across print, broadcast, and digital media. They aired different versions domestically and internationally and in different languages.1 The commercials depicted agents jumping into helicopters and on boats to pursue night-vision heat signatures theoretically “infiltrating” the U.S. border.
The overwhelming majority of those dehumanized heat signatures are the bravest people you can imagine trying to escape horrors you could never imagine. They are human beings risking everything for the safety of their families and the possibility of a safer, better life. They are the real heroes.
“President Trump has a clear message: if you are here illegally, we will find you and deport you. You will never return. But if you leave now, you may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American Dream. If you are a criminal alien considering entering America illegally: Don’t even think about it. If you come here and break our laws, we will hunt you down. Criminals are not welcome in the United States," Secretary Noem threatened, after being appointed to her taxpayer-funded role by a criminal with 34 felony convictions.
Previous ads for CBP, cowboys silhouetted on horseback against a warm sun setting on sweeping landscapes look more like casting calls for Yellowstone. “… a desperate and threatened appeal to American identity and white masculinity.”2
MAGA simultaneously appeals to the American masculinity crisis and white Christian supremacy. They bifurcate the world into a facile “us vs. them” where the good guys are the white guys who don’t have to follow the rules and the bad guys are the Brown guys literally dying while trying to navigate a vast and changing ecosystem of arbitrary rules. Never mind that an estimated 80% of migrants are practicing Christians3 who read the same book and worship the same God as the most “Christian” MAGA acolyte. Ultimately, no hypocrisy is off-limits for the MAGA White House Christian nationalism.
If you are a Christian, a follower of Christ, a Heaven-bound child of God, ask yourself which Bible verses are motivating your politics, your beliefs, and your possible career choices.
My fellow Christian, what about Proverbs 32:8-9?
Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.
What about Deuteronomy 27:19?
Cursed be anyone who deprives the immigrant of justice.
In June, 2025, one researcher spent two days at a Department of Homeland Security job fair at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The most applicants stood in line for ICE but CBP, the Coast Guard, Air Marshals, and the Secret Service were also recruiting there.4
“Naturally there were a large number of law enforcement types hanging around the convention—men with military fades, moisture-wicking shirts, and tattoos of the bible and the constitution and eagles and flags distended across their arms. But there were also a handful of women ICE applicants and a lot of men of color. The deportation officer applicant pool was, I felt, shockingly diverse—one might say it looked like America. The whole place looked and felt like America.”
“Customs and Border Patrol, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service were all recruiting at the event, but ICE was the main draw. Far more applicants stood in line to submit their resumes for deportation officer than for any other position on offer in the cavernous room.”5
The prospective employees’ motivations ranged from boredom and frustration at their current dead-end jobs and limited financial security to xenophobic paranoia to exoticizing work-funded travel abroad. My fellow Christian, you are ready and willing to tear families apart and traumatize vulnerable people for such shallow, self-serving earthly returns? Yes, the economy is brutal, but here are better ways to provide for your family.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, ICE raids don’t “lead to” violence, they are violence. Masked men without identification dragging people into unmarked vehicles are not “heated confrontations”. They are authoritarian kidnappings that violate constitutional protections for the rule of law and due process. Every day we’re witnessing assaults and abductions on the street, in surgical offices, in places of worship, and at farms where people are working hard just to make a living. These are not violent criminals. These “illegal criminal aliens” are employees targeted at their workplaces based on their tax records that the IRS has agreed to share with ICE. There is no safe place in fascism.
One of MAGA’s overarching objectives is to manufacture and protect a homogenized white Christian America, to fashion it after a fantasy society that never actually existed. And taxpayer-funded agencies like ICE and CBP are exploiting enduring racisms and romanticizing Christian cowboy delusions to recruit foot soldiers.
My fellow Christians, you can serve the empire, or you can serve your Lord and savior. You cannot serve both. The choice is yours.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/criminal-migrants-new-multimillion-dollar-ad-dhs/story?id=118911856
https://www.vulture.com/article/yellowstone-most-american-show-analysis.html#:~:text=As%20with%20Jimmy%2C%20the%20bunkhouse,meritocratic%20vision%20of%20American%20value
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/05/17/the-religious-affiliation-of-us-immigrants/
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/two-days-talking-to-people-looking-for-jobs-at-ice/
https://www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/two-days-talking-to-people-looking-for-jobs-at-ice/