I watched President Trump’s State of the Union last night with a mix of relief and frustration. Relief, because finally someone at the podium unapologetically defended our nation’s right to secure its borders as a matter of moral duty and love for our own citizens. Frustration, because for years I’ve seen a very different sermon preached from within my own evangelical community—syrupy homilies about “loving our neighbor” that’s been twisted into a slogan for open borders.

It’s the kind of feel-good rhetoric that sounds Christian on the surface but, deep down, feels like a con. The disconnect hits me hard. How did loving thy neighbor turn into selling out thy nation under the banner of evangelical faith?

Let’s be real—Christian compassion is a core virtue. Scripture commands us to love our neighbors and care for the stranger. But what happens when that holy compassion is hijacked and weaponized as propaganda?

Over the years I’ve watched certain church leaders and religious activists cherry-pick the Bible to push an open-borders agenda, essentially telling us that to be a “good Christian,” we must support mass illegal immigration, no questions asked. They drape their arguments in Bible verses and pious platitudes, but conveniently ignore the real-world fallout of lawlessness.

As one immigration scholar bluntly put it, these religious leaders “invoke the ‘love of neighbor’ to justify their unconditional support for illegal aliens”—yet their love “appears to largely exclude American citizens, including American children, who are victimized by illegal aliens”.

Ouch. That cuts to the bone, doesn’t it?

Our supposed shepherds talk endlessly about “compassion,” but it seems some neighbors don’t count—namely, the Americans next door who bear the brunt of illegal immigration’s costs.

Time after time, I’ve analyzed policy data and heartbreaking stories of families of Americans killed by violent illegal repeat-offenders, communities wracked by drug trafficking, blue-collar workers seeing jobs and wages undermined. I can’t help but ask, “where’s the love for these neighbors?”

It’s as if in the rush to appear compassionate, evangelical leaders developed a selective blindness. They shed tears (and expect us to shed tears) for those sneaking in unlawfully, but turn a blind eye to the innocents hurt by that lawlessness. That isn’t Christ-like compassion. That’s a one-sided narrative, charity with an agenda. True biblical love is honest and just—it doesn’t lie about consequences or play favorites with who deserves protection.

It didn’t happen by accident. There’s been a concerted effort to reshape evangelical attitudes on immigration from the top down. In my research over the years, I’ve discovered an eyebrow-raising alliance between prominent evangelical institutions cozying up with open-borders secular activists (and their mega-donors) to sell the church on mass amnesty.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, indeed. Case in point—the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), a coalition formed in 2012 with glossy evangelical branding, pushing for “comprehensive immigration reform” (read: amnesty for millions). At first it sounded grassroots and holy—who wouldn’t be moved by campaigns named after Bible verses, like their “I Was a Stranger” initiative, urging Christians to welcome these migrants?

But dig deeper and it turns out this EIT operation was about as grassroots as Astroturf. In fact, it “does not even legally exist as an independent entity at all, but functions as an arm of the George Soros-funded National Immigration Forum, which bankrolled a $250,000 ad campaign urging evangelicals to back mass legalization. That’s sounds crazy, but Soros’s money waltzed its way into the pews, clothed in pious language and sentimental music.

The marriage of convenience between evangelical leaders and Soros’s open-borders machine is well documented. The National Immigration Forum, flush with millions from Soros’s Open Society and the left-wing Ford Foundation, helped orchestrate EIT’s media blitz.

Even Sojourners, a liberal-leaning Christian magazine led by Jim Wallis (a prominent EIT backer), received hefty Soros funding. All roads lead to the same deep pockets. Now, I’m not saying every pastor or Christian who favored compassionate immigration policies was knowingly bought off by a billionaire atheist with a political agenda. But the facts show a concerted PR campaign was engineered, heavily funded by one group, infamous for bankrolling open borders causes.

The goal was to create the illusion of a mass evangelical support for amnesty and sway lawmakers accordingly. In other words, to hijack the moral authority of the church for a political end.

Many everyday evangelicals in the pews had no clue this was happening. Why? Because these efforts were top-down. The EIT boasted an impressive roster of evangelical CEOs, mega-church pastors, seminary heads, and nonprofit bosses—from World Relief to the National Association of Evangelicals—lending their names to the cause. The rhetoric was all about faith and family and kindness.

Meanwhile, the average churchgoing Christian was sitting there thinking, “Um, sure, I want to love immigrants, but I also think the law matters.”

In fact, polling consistently showed that rank-and-file evangelicals were (and remain) far more skeptical of open-borders policies than their elite “spokesmen” admit. Despite claims of a “sea change” in the pews, evangelicals as a whole still poll significantly higher in favor of better border security first, before any path to citizenship, compared to the typical voter. So much for the idea that Bible Belt conservatives suddenly woke up one day and decided to join hands with the amnesty lobby.

The reality is, a clique of influential evangelical elites broke ranks with their congregations, promoting an immigration agenda that most of their own flock didn’t sign off on. They got out ahead of their skis—or perhaps, out over the flock—coaxed by a mix of misplaced idealism, political calculation, and yes, the promise of partnership with powerful (and well-funded) allies on the left.

Many of us can’t help but feel betrayed by this. It’s a harsh word, but what else do you call it when shepherds lead their sheep toward policies that may harm the very community they’re charged to protect?

I’ve had my own personal experience with this. These leaders invoked Christian duty to justify a position that aligns uncannily well with secular progressive goals—and they did so without forthrightly addressing the downsides or the trade-offs. Rarely did their sermons and statements mention the biblical importance of the rule of law, or the concept of “prudential judgment” (i.e., using wisdom to apply moral principles in policy).

Instead, it was all emotion, no balance—emotional blackmail aimed at guilt-tripping churchgoers into backing amnesty.

Think I’m exaggerating? While these Christian leaders were loudly urging “welcome the stranger” and embracing an effectively open-borders stance, they were partnering (wittingly or not) with forces that see immigration purely as a numbers game—new voters, cheap labor, or a tool to undermine political opponents. The collusion of elites in this saga spans the spectrum from the multicultural Left to the libertarian-corporate Right, a strange alliance eager for mass immigration without assimilation for their own ends.

Meanwhile, the moral argument was foisted almost exclusively on the Church—telling us it’s our Christian duty to support what is essentially a radical social experiment. This is deception by omission, if not outright. They smuggled in a political agenda under cover of scripture and compassion, without being honest about who was behind it or the havoc it could wreak. And now we’re living with the consequences.

Flash forward to today’s border situation—a humanitarian and security nightmare that no amount of pious sloganeering can hide. The truth has a way of breaking through the kumbaya chorus. Look around, we have the worst border crisis in modern American history, with hundreds of thousands of illegals pouring in, overwhelming our systems.

We have cartels profiting off porous borders, turning human beings into commodities in their smuggling operations. We have hard-working Americans (including legal immigrants) dealing with the fallout. Strained schools and hospitals, communities reeling from drug trafficking and gang violence, competition for jobs and housing driving the working class into desperation.

This is the real world result of the “everyone is welcome, no questions asked” ethos that open-borders evangelists indirectly cheered on.

President Trump, whatever you think of him, laid out the simple reality in plain language at the State of the Union.

“I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Trump declared, as not a single leftist stood up to support that sentiment. That single moment flipped the entire narrative on its head. All those sanctimonious lectures about compassion from open-borders advocates crumble when faced with the actual cruelty unleashed by an unsecured border.

Cruelty towards whom? Well, towards everyone. American communities and also the very migrants seduced by false hopes.

For years, I’d felt gaslit by church voices telling me I lacked Christian love because I worried about illegal immigration. But here are the cold, hard facts, spoken aloud. It’s not compassion to entice people into breaking the law and undertaking perilous journeys where women are raped and abused (indeed, 1 in 3 women heading north to our border are sexually assaulted along the way).

It’s not compassion to let smugglers use children as pawns—essentially renting kids to help unrelated adults sneak in, a repulsive abuse that our lax policies enabled. It’s not compassion to allow unassmilated illegals to take over entire cities and defraud the American taxpayer for tens of millions of dollars.

And it’s sure as heck not compassion to allow lethal drugs to pour across a nearly open border, fueling an epidemic that’s killing tens of thousands of Americans each year.

How “loving” is a policy regime that effectively permits fentanyl flooding into our neighborhoods, or lets MS-13 gangsters slip back in after deportation to terrorize towns? How is it merciful Christian love to shrug off the plight of Angel Moms and Dads—families whose loved ones were murdered by criminals who had no right to be in this country in the first place? These are uncomfortable questions, but the church should grapple with them, not gloss over them.

The reality is that mass illegal immigration without assimilation doesn’t just magically yield a multicultural utopia where everyone sings “Kumbaya.” No—unregulated, unvetted mass migration rips away at the social fabric. When outsiders aren’t encouraged (or even expected) to assimilate into a shared civic culture, parallel societies form, laden with tension. Communities become fractured along language or cultural lines, and trust—that vital ingredient for any society—erodes.

John Davidson, in an article at The Federalist, warned that “mass immigration without assimilation is a recipe for national suicide”, a sure path to losing the country we know and love. That’s not xenophobia, that’s historical reality. Just look at Europe, where decades of importing people en masse without integration have led to ghettos, conflict, and the transformation of cities beyond recognition.

Britain, for instance, is cited as being “on the verge of becoming something completely different than it ever was” due to such unchecked influx of Muslims without integration. America must not follow blindly down that path. We can welcome legal immigrants and indeed we should—but we must also insist on the Americanization part of the equation. That’s not a sin. That’s survival of our national community.

Yet the open-borders narrative coming from some evangelical quarters utterly failed to address this. Even Heaven has a gate and a vetting process, for crying out loud. But apparently the U.S. border should not? It’s irrational and unbiblical to ignore the principle of ordered liberty—that a nation is like a home, with doors to open and close as appropriate.

Perhaps most galling in this saga is how the open-borders crusade—tacitly or overtly supported by these religious voices—led to the vilification of those who protect us. In the past year, there’s been a disturbing trend of targeted attacks against immigration enforcement. ICE and Border Patrol agents have been smeared as villains, called everything from racists to Nazis, and even physically targeted by unhinged protestors.

Did any of the evangelical open-borders champions speak out against this calumny? A handful at most, but certainly not in any way that acknwoledges their complicity that got us to this point. At least, not that I recall. In fact, many actually joined in the pile-on.

Influential Christian publications and organizations on the left have amplified the “Abolish ICE” rhetoric with sanctimonious fervor. Sojourners—the same outfit cozy with Soros’s funding—ran an opinion piece flat-out calling for ICE and the Border Patrol to be abolished, accusing them of “committing atrocities and state violence”. The writer demanded we “stop funding” these agencies, even abolish the entire Department of Homeland Security, and “close the camps” with zero regard for the chaos that would ensue.

They couched it in religious terms, as if dismantling our nation’s defenses is a holy obligation. According to this extreme view, enforcing any immigration law is tantamount to sin, and the only faithful response is open the floodgates and then set up “truth and reconciliation” commissions to atone for ever having enforced our borders in the first place.

This is theology turned upside-down. Romans 13 in the Bible affirms governing authorities have a role to punish wrongdoers—that would include those who break just laws. But the open-borders zealots skip that part of scripture. To them, ICE agents are the embodiment of evil, and illegal immigrants can do no wrong—an absurd, un-Christian inversion of moral reasoning.

What’s disturbing is seeing young, idealistic professing Christians fall for this demonization campaign. It’s easy to chant “abolish ICE” from the safety of a suburban seminary or an Twitter account, but down on the border, the reality isn’t so glib. I’ve read stories and watched interviews of actual Border Patrol agents. Many are Latino, many are family men, and nearly all of them will tell you how heartbreaking it is to rescue trafficked children or to find the corpse of a migrant who died in the desert because smugglers abandoned them.

These officers are literally saving lives while also protecting you and me, enforcing laws Congress enacted. And for that, they have been labeled monsters by activists—including religious activists who should know better. We went from “love your neighbor” to “hate on your neighbor who works for ICE” in a few short years. And that, my friends, is what a successful propaganda campaign can do—turn virtue into vice and vice into virtue in the public mind.

I think about the chilling effect this has within the Church. How many pastors now shy away from even mentioning immigration or border security lest they be accused of lacking compassion? How many Christians have been bullied into silence, afraid that if they voice concern about illegal immigration, they’ll be branded bad Christians or worse? That’s the toxic fruit of this whole deception. By smearing law enforcement and lionizing law-breaking, the open-borders movement (with its evangelical enablers) created a false moral universe that has intimidated the very people who should be speaking truth. It’s time to puncture this illusion with some righteous reality.

So where do we go from here? As an evangelical Christian, I believe in redemption and repentance. And oh boy, there’s a lot of repenting needed—but not the kind where ICE agents quit their jobs. I’m talking about repentance within the Church for how badly some of our leaders missed the mark.

Evangelicalism, as a movement, needs to reckon with how it allowed itself to be used as a tool for an open-borders political agenda that has hurt both the church’s witness and the nation’s well-being. We were told we were just “loving our neighbors.” In hindsight, that line was used to shut down any debate, to short-circuit any critical thinking.

Any dissent, any attempt to say “Yes, love, but also law” was met with “How un-Christian of you!” It was spiritual blackmail, and it worked on a lot of good-hearted folks who didn’t want to seem unkind. Well, no more. No mas, as my legal immigrant friends might say.

It’s time for a course correction. A higher standard of truth. We can start by reaffirming some biblical common sense. Love is not the same as leniency toward lawlessness. The Bible’s call to hospitality was never intended to abrogate the rule of law or a nation’s right to maintain order.

The Old Testament, often cited about “welcoming the stranger,” also has laws—strict ones—and doesn’t tolerate anarchy. There’s no contradiction in caring for the foreigner and also expecting the foreigner to respect the laws of the land. In fact, that’s exactly the balance healthy societies strike. We must extend compassion wisely, with eyes open to all the consequences.

Sometimes the loving answer is “yes, we’ll help you”—other times it’s “no, this cannot continue, it’s hurting everyone.” A doctor might administer a bitter medicine to heal. A parent might discipline out of love. Similarly, a nation must enforce its boundaries out of love—love for its people’s safety, and even love for would-be migrants (to dissuade them from risking their lives or getting entangled in crime).

Real compassion cares about results, not just rhetoric. And the results of this decades-long open-borders experiment are in. More crime, more death, more division, and a weaker Church testimony because we hitched ourselves to a lie.

We need to tell the truth in our pulpits and pews. We need to call out the “false prophets” of open borders who came to us in sheep’s clothing—quoting scripture sweetly—but inwardly were pushing an agenda at odds with the whole counsel of God.

It’s high time to lovingly but firmly correct those in our midst who led us down this path, whether they were well-intentioned but naive, or willfully complicit. The Church must not be a useful idiot for state or corporate schemes (left or right) that ultimately harm human dignity and justice.

By God’s grace, I do see more Christians waking up to the fact that we were sold a bill of goods. I see more congregations willing to support respect for the law. I see a new generation that’s perhaps a bit less trusting of polished slogans and more willing to ask hard questions. And I believe that if we return to a biblical view of justice and order, God can restore what’s been broken.

We need a Church that loves the neighbor—the immediate neighbor first and foremost—and defends the neighborhood. A Church that welcomes the stranger in need, yes, but not at the cost of betraying the family we already have. In practical terms, that means supporting fair, sane immigration policies—ones that prioritize border security, merit-based and orderly migration, and swift removal of those who exploit our hospitality or endanger others.

It especially means rejecting the emotional manipulation from the Russell Moores and the David Frenches that equates immigration enforcement with evil. It means standing up and saying, “Enough. We will not confuse sentimentality for biblical love anymore.”

Maybe then, and only then, can we start to move forward—as a church and as a nation. The next time someone tries to guilt-trip you with “But Jesus said love your neighbor, so you must support open borders,” do them a favor. Speak the truth in love. Remind them that love without truth is not love at all—it’s enablement. And enabling lawlessness and chaos is neither loving nor godly.

Our neighbors—the American citizens and, yes, even the legal, law-abiding, contributing immigrants—deserve better than that. The Church should be leading the way in real justice and compassion, not lagging behind in confusion.

It’s time to drop the propaganda act and get back to the Gospel truth, even if it means ruffling a few righteous feathers. After all, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Let’s start telling it.