ICE Has Us in Their Crosshairs

The Portland Spokesman Sent My Church a Cool Letter

When our church was working on housing for houseless folks in Portland, our church received (and I personally received) a lot of letters signed
“your neighbor,”
“sincerely, disappointed,”
and “the community.”

There’s a certain word that I always want to use for people who won’t sign letters with their own name, but as a general rule I try not to use that word.

I tell that story because my co-pastor received this letter last week:

Let’s break this down, shall we?

The Citizens of Portland¹ have banded together to inform our church about the lawlessness that “illegal aliens” have caused our city.

And apparently the Citizens of Portland have been given the authority to decide who will be provided warrants.

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“We may lose our tax exempt status” and “we might have to close.”

Oh noooooooo……Churches can’t possibly function without a building. What ever will we do?

It’s not like we recently had an entire freaking year to learn that functioning as a church is more than possible without a building in which to meet.

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The most surreal part of this letter is the final line:

“We hope you will respect the laws of the United States as much as you do the laws of God.”

Wild to send that to a CHURCH.

“We hope you people of faith will follow the government as much as God.”

“We hope you will consider people illegal, rather than loved by God.”

“We hope you will forget about the entirety of the Old Testament into the New - the whole ‘foreigners, aliens, widows, and orphans’ thing that comes up over and over and over.
Overrated, that part. Ignore it, because MAGA.”

I’m stunned. Few things leave me at a loss for words, but the first time I read that line my jaw dropped.

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I’ve talked a lot about my own faith struggles in this substack. Those haven’t gone away. They probably never will.

I still believe in God, at least currently.

But let me be perfectly clear: God or not, I’ll do whatever I can to protect vulnerable people from being split from their families or forcefully pulled from their homes/city.

I certainly won’t put up with vulnerable people being consistently referred to as “illegals.”

And if someone rats me out to ICE (not an impossibility), I’m going to continue to do what I can to protect people that need protecting.

If that means facing arrest, then fine.

I can still write to y’all from jail. It just might require sending a letter to someone else who can type it out for all of you :)

And to my co-pastor: I want to receive the next one. I need some new art for my office wall.

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What I’m listening to:

New(ish) Jonas Brothers. Big fan.

1. I don’t know who gave this person the authority to be our spokesman, but I guess he speaks for all of us now. *shrugs*