Nearly 9 in 10 Voted for Trump. Then the Deportation Machine Came for Two of Their Pastors.
They were not hiding in a stash house.
They were not running through the brush.
They were not accused of selling drugs, stealing cars, or threatening the United States.
Pastors Nepthali Zozaya Saucedo and Cinthia Sarai Cardona Otero were at an airport, leaving their three children for the first time as they traveled to a marriage retreat sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Then the deportation machine grabbed them. (RNS)
The married couple serve at Comunidad Cristiana Emanuel, an Assemblies of God church in Edinburg. Zozaya has reportedly served the congregation for more than a decade.
Their supporters say they possessed valid religious-worker visas and had applications for permanent residency awaiting a decision. The Department of Homeland Security says their visas expired in 2022 and calls them illegal immigrants.
That question will eventually be decided by an immigration judge.
But that is not the most disturbing part of this story.
The pastors say immigration agents repeatedly pressured them to sign papers agreeing to leave the United States voluntarily. Cardona says they were told they could remain jailed for as long as six months, be separated from each other, be deported to different countries and remain separated from their 7-year-old son and nearly 3-year-old twins. (RNS)
After the threat involving their children, they signed.
They later revoked the signatures.
DHS says the accusation is “categorically false” and insists that the administration is using lawful methods to carry out what it calls the largest deportation operation in American history. (RNS)
Let an immigration judge decide whether the pastors had legal status.
But let the rest of us ask a much simpler question:
What exactly is voluntary about signing a paper after the government threatens to take away your children?
A robber can point a pistol at your head and ask you to “voluntarily” hand over your wallet.
That does not make it a donation.
Cardona also says she was questioned at 2 a.m., cursed at and mocked by an agent who invoked the Bible before allegedly telling her that Christians believe they can put God above the law. She says an agent later acknowledged finding documents belonging to the couple that had been misfiled. Exactly what those documents proved remains unexplained. (RNS)
The couple has now been released under supervision. They must report by telephone every month and appear at the immigration office in Harlingen in six months while their case proceeds. (RNS)
They are home.
But they are not free of the machine.
And that brings us to the part many American evangelicals may not want to discuss.
Religion News Service reported that nearly nine out of ten Assemblies of God members voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Trump promised the largest deportation operation in American history, and millions of Christians helped return him to power so he could carry it out. (RNS)
Perhaps many believed the machine would only come for criminals.
Perhaps they believed it would only come for strangers crossing the river.
Perhaps they believed that speaking English, working hard, raising American children, preaching the Gospel and obeying the process would place someone safely outside its reach.
But machines do not have consciences.
They do not recognize the pastor who blessed them on Sunday.
They do not remember who voted for the man who switched them on.
They do not stop at the church door.
Once the government builds an enormous system whose success is measured by how many human beings it can arrest, detain, and remove, every immigrant becomes another number needed to meet the promise.
The pastors’ case also revealed something else. Latino evangelical organizations that rarely stand together united behind the couple. Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar, Republican Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz and Democrat Bobby Pulido all reportedly supported efforts on their behalf. (RNS)
It is good that powerful people spoke.
But what about the immigrant who is not a pastor?
What about the woman who does not have three national evangelical organizations making telephone calls?
What about the father whose detention never becomes a news story?
What about the person who signs the “voluntary” paper because no congresswoman, pastor, or reporter knows his name?
That is the real test of justice.
Justice is not what the government does after an embarrassing arrest reaches the newspapers.
Justice is what it does to the frightened person trapped alone in a room at 2 a.m.
Texas religious leaders are already demanding visible identification, body cameras, independent investigations and meaningful consequences when immigration agents violate policy or law. They argue that border enforcement does not require unchecked power or the destruction of human dignity. (The Texas Tribune)
They are right.
A badge does not turn coercion into consent.
A government form does not turn fear into a voluntary decision.
And the words “illegal immigrant” do not erase a person’s children, marriage, faith or right to be heard by a judge.
These two pastors survived their first encounter with the deportation machine because their church, their denomination and elected officials made enough noise to force people to look.
Now the churches that helped put Trump back in the White House face their own uncomfortable question:
Will they oppose cruelty only when the machine comes for one of their pastors?
Because the machine does not care how loudly you sang, how faithfully you served, or whom you thought it was built to punish.
Once it is hungry, it only needs another family.
