US Supreme Court rulings challenge church

Key Points:

• At the end of its term, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for more rapid deportations to “third countries” and limited how lower-court judges can respond to a challenge to birthright citizenship and other Trump policies.
• Both actions disappoint United Methodist leaders who urge fellow church members to speak out for biblical teachings and continue to care for immigrants.
• A church historian points out that this is not the first time the people called Methodists have found themselves at odds with U.S. laws while trying to live out their faith.

Recent U.S. Supreme Court orders have left United Methodist leaders troubled but no less committed to the denomination’s longtime emphasis on caring for immigrants.

The high court closed out its term by making it easier for the Trump administration to deport people to “third countries,” where they risk torture, and making it harder for lower-court judges to stop President Trump’s salvo against birthright citizenship.

Those orders come after the court in May allowed the Trump administration to end protected status for thousands of Venezuelans and revoke parole that authorized another half million people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to stay in the U.S. Essentially, these actions clear the way for the government to declare people’s status illegal en masse — with no accusation of wrongdoing — even as their cases move forward in the courts.

Taken together, these rulings give a green light to mass-deportation plans while raising doubts about due-process protections.

“These decisions raise deep concern for us as people of faith,” said Bishop Tracy S. Malone, president of the Council of Bishops. “As United Methodists, we are called to see every person — regardless of status or origin — as a child of God.”

Malone, who also leads the Indiana Conference, said the orders threaten immigrants’ basic rights.

From a Christian perspective, she added, the rulings also stand “contrary to the Gospel’s call to welcome the stranger, defend the vulnerable and honor the dignity of every human being.”

Rising dread

Retired Bishop Minerva Carcaño, who chairs the bishops’ Immigration Task Force, said both church members and the communities churches serve are living with growing fear.

For the most part, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are rounding up people who are not criminals. Agents — often masked and refusing to identify themselves — are seizing people at worksites, convenience stores, farms and courthouses.

Merely being in the U.S. without documentation is not a crime but a civil offense. The people being arrested often have been working to gain legal status while raising families, working needed jobs and paying taxes.

“Our immigrant brothers and sisters are day by day being attacked emotionally and even physically in the light of day for all to see,” Carcaño said. “Often without due process, they are being separated from their families without their families knowing where they have been taken and even sent to prisons in other countries where they cannot be helped by anyone. This violates U.S. laws and is unjust and inhumane.”

The United Methodist Church has long taught — based on multiple Scripture passages including Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35 — that church members are called to welcome migrants, refugees and immigrants. The United Methodist Social Principles, adopted by last year’s General Conference, reaffirm the church’s call to “recognize, embrace and affirm all persons, regardless of country of origin, as members of the family of God.”

United Methodists have been working to live out that teaching in their churches — where no one asks people about their documentation — and in ministries such as the Immigration Law and Justice Network, which works with low-income people to meet the requirements for legal status.

United Methodists also are standing up for immigrants on the national stage.

Church leaders’ actions include:

• Joining in an ongoing interfaith lawsuit filed by Christian and Jewish groups to stop immigration enforcement inside houses of worship.
• Helping to organize peaceful protests against ICE raids and federal legislation that would more than triple the budget for ICE detentions while making deep cuts to Medicaid and food benefits.

The church’s stance has drawn attention. In June, the Council of Bishops and other church ministries were among 215 groups that received letters from a U.S. congressional committee probing their work with immigrants. Neither the bishops nor the United Methodist Board of Church and Society receive federal funding.

Now is not the time to back away from church advocacy, said Carcaño and other church leaders.  

“People of faith and good will can help immigrant neighbors by speaking out from the pulpit and publicly about the deep harm that is being carried out against immigrants,” she said, “remembering above all, what Jesus teaches us about caring for the migrant.”

In the meantime, Carcaño is working with United Methodist agency staff and leaders of the denomination’s national plans for racial-ethnic ministries to respond to the recent court actions.

What the Supreme Court ruled

What the Supreme Court did in late June could radically change U.S. understandings of due process for years to come.

In a brief unsigned ruling on June 23, the Supreme Court permitted the Trump administration to deport immigrants to countries not identified in their removal orders without ensuring they won’t be tortured. Among those potential countries is South Sudan, where the U.S. State Department warns U.S. citizens not to travel.  

Four days later, the court majority ruled in Trump v. CASA, Inc., which limits the scope of lower-court judges injunctions against Trump’s actions, including his executive order denying automatic citizenship to babies born in the U.S. to mothers either temporarily or illegally here. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in both rulings.

The June 27 ruling does not deal with the merits of Trump’s executive order and opens the door to a class-action suit, which has already been filed.

However, the ruling specifies that Trump's executive order can take effect 30 days after its release. That raises the possibility that Trump’s order — seen by many as a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14^th Amendment — may end up applying in some parts of the country.

The 14th Amendment’s first sentence states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The amendment, adopted in 1868, itself overturns one of the Supreme Court’s most ignominious decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that the Black descendants of enslaved people could not be citizens. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1898 in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark that birthright citizenship applies to the children of all immigrants.

Carcaño is troubled that the Supreme Court did not use its authority to expand the scope of its cases to go ahead and uphold its 1898 precedent. 

“It is deeply concerning that even the U.S. Supreme Court is unable or unwilling to protect this country’s Constitution, including its amendments established for the sake of justice for all people,” she said.

While the Supreme Court might not protect people’s rights, she said, the church should try to protect people and their families as possible.

United Methodists, she said, can extend “a web of protection for migrants” by accompanying them to court and working with migrant parents to determine who will care for their children should they be deported.

“We should provide safe space for migrants in our churches and in our homes,” Carcaño added.

“We should pray for our migrant brothers and sisters without ceasing, while examining how our actions or inaction may be causing them suffering.”

A history of dissent

This is not the first time Methodists have found themselves at odds with U.S. laws, said the Rev. William B. Lawrence, a scholar of American church history and author of “When the Church Woke.” He is also a former United Methodist theological dean and former president of the denomination’s top court.

“Virginia Methodists in the 1780s issued a clear statement in opposition to slavery,” he said, with slave ownership preventing church membership. “That was reaffirmed multiple times, including at the General Conference of 1800.”

He added that immigration helped build both the United States and The United Methodist Church. In fact, the Declaration of Independence — whose adoption Americans celebrate each Fourth of July — lists the king’s prevention of migration and obstruction of naturalization of foreigners among its reasons for cutting ties with Britain.

Lawrence said that openness shaped the predecessors of The United Methodist Church, which had conferences shaped around different immigrant populations until the early 20^th century.

He urges United Methodist bishops and conference leaders to find a way to rediscover the denomination’s connectional life and invite discussion of immigration at every congregation.

The Rev. Jacob Dharmaraj, an immigrant himself and veteran leader of multiple United Methodist ministries, said the question United Methodists should discuss is this: “Do I see the image of God in the one who is not made in my image?”

“We are often silent bystanders and passive onlookers when violence against the vulnerable and migrants are perpetrated in the name of religion, faith and even Scriptures by claiming ourselves to be true Christians,” he said.

That needs to change, he said. Instead, he urges church leaders to ask parents to make a simple covenant: “I will not raise my child to kill your child; I will not raise my child to hate your child; I will not undermine the image of God I see in your child.”

Carcaño agreed.

“This is not the time for the Church to hide nor to focus on protecting its institutional self,” she said, “lest it lose all credibility as it proclaims that it is a community grounded in the love of God.”

Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.