Kevin Briggins recently published a piece titled “Minneapolis, ICE, and the Christian Response” that attempts to offer Christians a balanced framework for thinking about the recent unrest in Minneapolis. I don’t think it succeeds. The piece frames itself as balanced, but the scrutiny only flows in one direction. Briggins examines ICE opponents’ rhetoric in detail, attributes their concerns to emotional manipulation, and barely acknowledges that ICE itself might bear any responsibility for what’s happened.
I’ve written recently about why this kind of false neutrality is a moral failure. Calls for “balance” in the face of obvious injustice aren’t wisdom; they’re complicity dressed up in respectable clothing. Briggins’s piece is a case study.
The deaths go unexamined
Consider Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Briggins mentions them as evidence that “tragedy” emerged from “volatile protests” and “chaotic confrontations,” but he never states plainly that ICE agents killed both of them. Videos of the incidents have circulated widely and appear to contradict the administration’s account of events. If you’re interested in truth over manipulation, that’s where the examination should start.
A double standard on inflammatory rhetoric
The double standard on inflammatory rhetoric is just as glaring. Briggins condemns Mayor Frey and Governor Walz for language that “pours gasoline on the fire” and “legitimizes resistance.” Fair enough. But where is the corresponding critique of an administration that has spent years describing immigrants as “animals,” “invaders,” and criminals by category? If words from local officials bear responsibility for violence, so do words from the president and his administration.
Christians especially should care about this. We cannot spend a decade dehumanizing a population and then wonder why enforcement against them turns brutal.
A straw man
The framing also creates a straw man. As far as I can tell, the people protesting in Minneapolis aren’t disputing whether the United States can have immigration laws. They’re objecting to how ICE agents have been conducting themselves: wearing masks and refusing to display badges, entering homes without judicial warrants, detaining citizens and legal residents with apparent indifference to their status, using tear gas on crowds that posed no violent threat.
By describing these concerns as “emotional manipulation” and “sympathy weaponized,” Briggins dismisses them without engaging them. Any reasonable person agrees countries can enforce their borders, so if you’re upset, you must be unreasonable or deceived. But that’s not an argument, it’s a rhetorical move that forecloses the actual debate.
Legality and justice
On legality: even granting that current USA immigration law is just (a larger question worth its own discussion), the issue is whether ICE is following it consistently. Constitutional protections, due process requirements, and warrant procedures exist to constrain enforcement. Concern about whether agents are respecting those constraints isn’t lawlessness. It’s the rule of law working as intended.
Romans 13 doesn’t settle this
The appeal to Romans 13 needs scrutiny too. Paul’s instruction to submit to governing authorities doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The same biblical tradition includes prophets who condemned rulers for injustice, apostles who declared they must obey God rather than men, and Jesus himself, executed by the lawful authorities of his day.
Briggins alludes to the broader biblical witness, but he doesn’t really wrestle with it when it comes to ICE. Instead, Romans 13 is the main lens through which he views immigration enforcement.
But if we invoke Romans 13 to counsel compliance, we should also grapple with what Scripture says about authorities who abuse their power. And we should also take well-documented abuses by ICE seriously, instead of dismissing concerns as mere emotional manipulation.
I’ve addressed some of this at length in “Romans 13 Is Not a Blank Check for Cruelty” and in my longer essay on what happens when Romans 13 meets Matthew 25. The short version: Christians cannot use Paul’s instruction about governing authorities as permission to ignore Jesus’ identification with the stranger. Our response to immigrants is our response to Christ.