Like tens of millions of my fellow Americans, I have been extremely frustrated by our broken immigration system and the grave damage it has inflicted on our country from coast to coast. The damage reached tidal wave proportions under the Biden Administration’s scandalous refusal to enforce our nation’s immigration laws.
The nation desperately needed a complete reversal of the Biden Administration’s willful flouting of the nation’s immigration laws. This is one major reason President Trump won the 2024 presidential election in such convincing fashion.
And we must not forget the overwhelming suffering and degradation that throngs of would-be immigrants have suffered (especially women and children) as they have been tempted to enter the country illegally because of the lack of enforcement of our immigration laws.
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However, in their understandable zeal to correct an intolerable situation, our federal law enforcement officials must not overlook the genuine, lawful reasons that some people seek to come to America.
I am fearful that as our immigration authorities are overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of illegal immigrants they are trying to apprehend and deport, they may very well overlook those people who we should accept in keeping with the best principles of our nation.
As a nation, we have normally granted asylum to people facing violent religious persecution in their home countries.
I was made aware of this by an article in The New York Times, “This Christian Convert Fled Iran, and Ran into Trump’s Deportation Policy” by Farnaz Fassihi and Hamad Aleaziz. This article told the story of Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a young woman who converted to Christianity from her native Islam while in her early 20s.
Unfortunately, while Christians born into Christian families are free to worship, under Iran’s Shariah laws, converting from Islam to Christianity “is considered blasphemy, punishable by death,” according to the NYT.
After some of the members of her Christian Bible-study group were arrested, she left for America, seeking refuge from persecution, perhaps death, for her religious faith.
Ms. Ghasemzadeh and her brother, a fellow convert to Christianity, left Iran in December and made their way to the American border through Abu Dhabi, South Korea, and Mexico City, and Tijuana. They each paid a smuggler $3000 to help them cross the border.
Within minutes they were apprehended by U.S. border agents. In spite of Ms. Ghasemzadeh’s telling agents that she was a “Christian convert from Iran seeking asylum,” she was detained, “shackled, and put on a military plane to Panama,” NYT reported. It turns out there were nine other Iranian Christian converts on the plane “who remarkably shared a similar story.”
After about a week under guard at a hotel, they were all transported by bus to a jungle detention camp. This is an injustice which must be rectified. Furthermore, we as Americans of faith should do everything we can to make sure the Trump Administration is doing everything that is possible to make certain there are no more Ms. Ghasemzadehs who are similarly mistreated in the future. As a Christian and as an American, I hope you will be notifying your elected representatives about how outraged you are by this terrible miscarriage of justice and that we are expecting them to take the issue up with the relevant government authorities.
When it comes to immigration enforcement, one size does not fit all. As Christians we have a responsibility to speak up for our Christian brothers and sisters and everyone else who is seeking relief from persecution for religious belief and insist that our government respect their genuine requests for asylum.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
