The Trump administration used immigration enforcement to silence a Muslim community leader for his advocacy, and the Evangelical political coalition that built the enforcement apparatus provided the theological justification.
That is the accusation. Let me show you how it works.
Salah Sarsour, president of Wisconsin’s largest mosque, green card holder since 1993, father of six American citizens, was surrounded on March 30 by at least ten unmarked vehicles and armed agents in civilian clothing while on his way to see his elderly mother. He spent more than 80 days in federal immigration custody — losing more than 30 pounds, denied the daily blood-sugar checks his diabetes required, served food so bad “you don’t know what you’re eating sometimes,” sleeping on a 2-inch mattress in a freezing room shared with dozens of other men, told he could not congregate with other Muslims for Friday prayers or celebrate Eid. Federal judge Sharon Johnson Coleman found he had probably been detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights — a finding that would render his detention unlawful. The administration is continuing to seek his deportation, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally signing a memo declaring Sarsour deportable because “his actions undermine US foreign policy to combat antisemitism around the world.”
Read that phrase again. The Secretary of State of the United States signed a memo saying a mosque president who had lived here for nearly three decades should be expelled from the country because his advocacy for Palestinian rights conflicts with US foreign policy. Rubio did not cite a criminal conviction. He did not cite a finding of fraud. He cited the man’s speech. And the legal framework that made this possible — the intersection of immigration enforcement power and a theologically justified foreign-policy position — was built, funded, and sustained by a specific political coalition with a specific theological foundation: Christian Zionism.
The machinery Sarsour’s case exposes is not incidental to the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign. It is integral. The coalition that provides the administration’s base — the same one that has spent decades constructing a reading of Scripture that makes unconditional support for Israel a divine mandate — produced the political conditions under which a mosque president can be detained for his advocacy and a Secretary of State can sign a memo saying that advocacy is the reason he must go. Sarsour was not arrested because of anything he did in the United States. He has no criminal record here. DHS cited decades-old convictions from an Israeli military court system with a conviction rate exceeding 96%, convictions obtained when he was a teenager during the first intifada, convictions that — according to documents filed with the court — the US government evaluated four times, in 2000, 2008, 2010, and 2019, while determining his eligibility for naturalization, and never acted on until his advocacy became politically inconvenient.
When the coalition demands “religious liberty” for a Christian baker, for an Evangelical university, for a public school’s football team — the word “liberty” does one thing. When the coalition’s enforcement machinery detains a Muslim community leader for exercising the advocacy his faith demands — “liberty” does another. This is the machinery at work: the demand for religious freedom on one side, and the machinery of state power deployed against someone else’s faith on the other. The coalition built the enforcement infrastructure. The coalition provided the theological justification. And when a federal judge called the detention retaliatory, the administration shrugged and kept going.
Sarsour described his time in detention with the precision of someone who had seen this before — the guards, the humiliation, the way they try to break you. He lost more than 30 pounds. He was denied medical care his body needed. He was told he could not pray.
The government’s position, according to its own statements, is that Sarsour was “suspected of funding terror organizations and lying on immigration forms” — claims he denies — and that his decades-old convictions from an Israeli military court with a 96% conviction rate constitute grounds for deportation after the US government already knew about them for over twenty years. Rubio’s memo says the real reason is his speech.
This is what the Evangelical-right’s enforcement machinery produces: a man held for more than 80 days, denied medical care and prayer, stripped of thirty pounds of his body, because the political coalition that runs the machinery decided his advocacy for Palestinian rights was the kind of speech that justifies erasure. The coalition that has spent decades fighting for the “religious liberty” of its own institutions built and sustained the enforcement infrastructure that detained a Muslim leader for exercising his.
And when you open the Bible that coalition claims to revere, what you find is not complicated. Exodus 22:21 — “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” The command is not ambiguous. The foreigner is not a category to be managed. The foreigner is a person to whom the community owes something because the community knows what it was. Leviticus 19:33-34 — “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” The construction matches the second great commandment exactly. Deuteronomy 10:18-19 — God “loves the foreigner,” and “you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” The warrant is God’s own character. The command is grounded in memory.
The Christian Zionist theological apparatus — the infrastructure of pastors, organizations, and donors that provides the administration’s theological foundation — has constructed a hermeneutic that turns these passages into ancient artifacts. Yet the same apparatus treats the same books’ commands on marriage, on justice, on the sanctity of human life as persisting into the present — the hermeneutic is selectively applied, and the selection serves the coalition’s political convenience, not scriptural consistency. The apparatus reads the Bible as a book about spiritual things, about individual salvation, about a future kingdom, and treats the plain-language commands about how you treat the stranger in your gates as cultural artifacts from a dispensation that no longer applies. The apparatus is wrong. The text is not complicated. And when a mosque president is surrounded by armed agents because his advocacy for Palestinian rights conflicts with a foreign policy the apparatus supports, the text does not become more complicated. It becomes more plain.
Matthew 25:31-46 — “I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me… Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The stranger is the one the coalition’s enforcement machinery detained. The imprisoned is the one the coalition’s political system held for more than 80 days. The sick is the one denied the diabetes care his body required. And the apparatus reads this passage every Sunday and does not notice what it says — because noticing would indict the very machinery the apparatus built.
The apparatus will say it is not targeting a man of faith. It is enforcing immigration law. The apparatus will say Sarsour was suspected of funding terror and lying on immigration forms. The apparatus will say he was arrested as a teenager for throwing a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers. The apparatus will ask why anyone would object to the government “combating antisemitism.” The apparatus conflates criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism — a rhetorical trick that lets it claim moral high ground for detaining a man whose only offense was speaking for Palestinian rights. The apparatus always sounds reasonable. Every generation’s apparatus sounds reasonable.
But the apparatus will not address why the government — which evaluated Sarsour’s case four times over two decades and knew about the Israeli convictions for over twenty years — suddenly decided he was deportable when his advocacy became politically inconvenient. The apparatus will not address why Rubio signed a memo citing the man’s speech, not a crime. The apparatus will not address why the government detained a man with no US criminal record for more than 80 days, denied him medical care and prayer, and then kept seeking his deportation after Federal judge Sharon Johnson Coleman found the detention was probably retaliatory.
The apparatus never addresses what it does. It addresses what it says it is doing. And what it says it is doing is always lawful. Every generation’s machinery has a legal architecture. Slavery had its statutes. Segregation had its constitutional amendments. What the Bible names is not the law but the system — the apparatus that uses law to accomplish what justice condemns while quoting God’s name in the system’s own defense.
Sarsour’s attorneys at the ACLU have argued the government fast-tracked his case to make a political point. A former immigration judge working on the case said the government uses immigration court “as a tool for their immigration enforcement policies.” The pattern echoes across similar detentions — the same coalition, the same machinery, the same theological justification, the same political system. Sarsour is due in court in Chicago this week for the first substantive hearing in his case.
The text has not changed. The apparatus has been telling its adherents for decades that these passages mean something other than what they say — that “stranger” does not mean stranger, that “the least of these” does not mean the least of these, that the Bible’s commands about how you treat the foreigner in your gates apply to some categories of foreigner and not others, depending on the political needs of the coalition. But the text does not bend to the coalition’s needs. It never has. The prophets said that. Jesus said that.
If the plain language still means what it says — and I believe it does — then this is what it says: a coalition that claims the name of Christ built the machinery that detained a mosque president, stripped thirty pounds off his body, denied him medical care and prayer, and is still trying to deport him — and that coalition did it while quoting the Bible on Sunday mornings as if those passages did not exist.
The apparatus calls that religious liberty. The text calls it something else.