This holiday season, as politicians invoke God, Christianity, and “biblical values” to justify power, a different gospel is being preached across America.
It is not the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. It is the gospel according to ICE, a gospel that is not written by atheists, but by believers, and enforced in their name.
Across the country, churches are reimagining Nativity scenes not as serene pastoral moments, but as scenes of fear, surveillance, and state violence. In one church in Evanston, Illinois, baby Jesus lies in a manger wrapped in a silver emergency blanket, his wrists zip-tied, guarded by Roman soldiers wearing vests marked “ICE.”
In another Chicago suburb, a sign beside the manger at another church reads, “Due to ICE activity in our community, the Holy Family is in hiding.” In Massachusetts, the Christ child vanished entirely at one church, replaced by a blunt sign: “ICE was here.”
It is not a season of the Christ child but a Season of Saul. The persecution is real. Brown people like Mary, Joseph ,and Jesus — who Christians believed crossed borders to escape persecution — would in today’s ICE gospel be profiled, detained, and deported.
This is not speculation. It is based on the Trump administration’s own ICE gospel and its policy as laid out in its new National Security Strategy. The administration’s own strategy now frames migration as a threat to be prevented, not a humanitarian reality to be addressed. Immigrants are treated not as neighbors, but as risks, burdens, and intrusions. That language has consequences. It builds cages. It fills tents. It hardens hearts.
And here lies the uncomfortable irony Christians must now confront: Christian voters were not passive observers in 2024. They were decisive actors. Post-election data shows Christians made up 72% of the electorate, giving Donald Trump 56% of their vote — delivering his landslide victory. The shift was especially pronounced among Catholics.
In 2020, Joe Biden won 52% of the Catholic vote while Trump received 47%. In 2024, Trump’s Catholic support jumped to 58%, while Vice President Kamala Harris received 40%. Among white Catholics, Trump’s share climbed to 61%.
Even more striking, Trump won a majority of the Latino Catholic vote — 53%, up from just 28% in 2020, when 71% of Latino Catholics backed Biden.
Never in modern American history has a Christian voting bloc so decisively empowered a system that now functions as the Saul in their midst.
Jesus was explicit: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”
Not processed me.
Not detained me.
Not zip-tied me.
Yet today, many who claim to believe in Christ have embraced a gospel of exclusion, punishment, and fear — one enforced by badges, batons, detention camps, and barbed wire.
It is the gospel according to ICE.
History will not ask who prayed the loudest. It will ask who voted — and what they voted for.
If Jesus were born today — Brown, displaced, undocumented, the gospel according to ICE tells us exactly what would happen next.
This Christmas, the question is no longer whether Jesus would be welcomed. It is whether his own followers would turn him in.
Felicia J. Persaud is the founder and publisher of NewsAmericasNow.com, the only daily syndicated newswire and digital platform dedicated exclusively to Caribbean Diaspora and Black immigrant news across the Americas.
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