A poll from the Public Religion Research Institute has gained some notoriety recently for data that seemed to show American Christians “sour[ing]” on President Trump’s immigration policies. While that is certainly one part of the data, I was drawn to a more disturbing set of polls. When pollsters asked Americans whether undocumented immigrants ought to be held in “internment camps” until they can be deported, 41 perce of them said yes.
That’s a startling statistic, but it gets worse for those of us who care about the church. White evangelicals (63 percent), White Catholics (55 percent) , and White mainline Protestants (49 percent) were all more likely than the average American to say yes. It’s not as if all faith-based groups were so callous; Jews, Black mainline Protestants, and Hispanic Catholics and Protestants were all less likely to advocate for internment camps.
We shouldn’t read this poll as support for some future plan of action. The ICE detention facilities that dot our landscape in this country are internment camps. Our neighbors are held there without access to due process and in conditions that are tantamount to torture. In the Broadview ICE Processing Center, which I have worked to shut down, a federal judge compared the living conditions to Auschwitz. We are already using internment camps, no matter what name we use for them.
