Faith leaders, including one Central Florida pastor, are urging the administration to take a more humanitarian and compassionate approach to immigration policy.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela face deportation as of April 24 after the Trump administration terminated their temporary protected status – or TPS – last month.
The designation allows immigrants to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation.
The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition and pastor of The Gathering Place in Orlando, a church with 900 congregants representing 15 nationalities, has joined other national evangelical leaders in sending a letter to the Trump administration urging it to preserve TPS for qualified immigrants.
Salguero said the evangelical leaders were motivated by a biblical view of immigration.
“The gospel has called us to love our neighbor as ourselves and to welcome the stranger,’’ Salguero said. “Jesus said in Matthew 25 ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ So, our perspective is always a gospel-centered one, not a partisan one. We’re pastors. We’re not politicians.’’
Christians have a duty to speak up for immigrants, Salguero said. And while his organization does not support open borders, it does support immigrants who entered the country legally while fleeing violence and oppression in their countries of origin.
“The gospel calls us to serve our immigrant neighbor and to love our immigrant neighbor,’’ Salguero said. “And these men and women who are here on temporary protected status are here legally. They played by the rules. They were properly vetted. There were background checks. Many of them had sponsors. Many of them are working. They had children here who are worshiping in our faith community. And so we were told by this administration that their concerns around immigration were around violent criminals and securing the border. We support that, securing the border, having a safe border and dealing with violent criminals that threaten the safety of our communities. What we don’t understand is why people who are here legally contributing to the welfare of our nation and our state are being targeted to not have temporary protected status.’’
Salguero says the Evangelical Immigration Table, which sent the letter, is a coalition of 3,000 churches, many of which have immigrant congregants on TPS. While the coalition fully supports border security, Salguero says it’s asking the government to show compassion to those here legally because they have been granted TPS, asylum or parole under the country’s immigration laws. So far, the coalition has not received a response from the administration.
“It’s not lost on me that this is Holy Week where we celebrate God’s love for us and Christ’s sacrifice for the other, and I think what we need is an approach that avoids extremes and that solves the problem in a bipartisan fashion, and that we should take a gospel-centered approach to immigration rather than a hyper-partisan approach to immigration,’’ Salguero said. “Look, I’m a pastor. And I do not ask people where they were born when I give communion, to give them the body and the blood of Christ. My task as a Christian is to love my neighbor as myself, while ensuring the safety of our community. And I think we can do both.’’
