Back in April, the White House published a Presidential message commemorating Holy Week. It was one of the most surprising and exciting government proclamations I’d ever read. It bore Donald Trump’s name, but if someone told me the statement had been written by the Vatican or the USCCB, I would have believed them: Elegantly written, gracious and hopeful in tone, theologically astute, and unmistakably Catholic, I can’t deny feeling inspired when I read it. Even knowing that these releases are pretty much always ghostwritten, it still exceeded my wildest expectations for how beautifully, cogently, and substantively the government would ever articulate Christian values.

Talk is cheap

But as I basked in this excitement and validation, my mind turned to Kilmar Abrego Garcia. For those of you who don’t follow the news, Abrego Garcia is a migrant who was illegally deported to El Salvador, where he was placed in a horrific supermax prison that has been the subject of many a lurid Netflix documentary. Recently more details have emerged about the ordeal he endured before he was returned to the United States. The Hill reports:

Abrego Garcia said he experienced “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture” while imprisoned in CECOT. He lost more than 30 pounds during the two weeks he spent there.

CECOT is known to crowd inmates in cells well beyond their capacity, with bunk beds stacked three levels high with no mattresses, and in Abrego Garcia’s case, just two toilets shared by approximately 80 men. Lights are kept on at all times, and “there are no windows, fans, or air conditioning, despite the region’s warm and humid climate.”

The prisoners must stay in their cells for all but 30 minutes a day and are not allowed any contact with the outside world.

I had seen firsthand the terror and suffering Abrego Garcia’s treatment had inflicted on the local Hispanic community. Even many with legal status now lived in fear that the government would not honor its promises. Imagine living with the thought that a single “administrative error” could send you or a loved one here:

It would be bad enough to send a convicted criminal to this prison. This is not how a civilized country treats human beings, certainly not one that promised “to never waver in […] upholding the dignity of life.” But not only was Abrego Garcia treated horribly, he was also flagrantly denied due process. Our majority conservative Supreme Court said as much in their statement on the matter, where they upheld a court order for Abrego Garcia to be returned to the United States:

Instead of hastening to correct its egregious error, the Government dismissed it as an “oversight. […] The Government now requests an order from this Court permitting it to leave Abrego Garcia, a husband and father without a criminal record, in a Salvadoran prison for no reason recognized by the law. The only argument the Government offers in support of its request, that United States courts cannot grant relief once a deportee crosses the border, is plainly wrong. […] The Government’s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.

[…] the proper remedy is to provide Abrego Garcia with all the process to which he would have been entitled had he not been unlawfully removed to El Salvador. That means the Government must comply with its obligation to provide Abrego Garcia with “due process of law,” including notice and an opportunity to be heard, in any future proceedings

Trump initially paid no heed to this rebuke from the highest court in the land. The day after he put his name to a ghost writer waxing poetically about the gospel, he went on national television to defiantly grandstand against and deflect from this order with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Seeing such impenitence and hardness of heart contrasted with the anointed rhetoric of his proclamation, my mind went to Jesus’ words echoing the prophet Isaiah:

“…this nation worships me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Matthew 15:8)

George Floyd Déjà vu

The national discussion of this matter showed equal levels of dishonesty. Like Trump, nobody defended Abrego Garcia’s deportation because it could not be defended. Rather, they deflected and grandstood about his criminal history. When it emerged that Abrego Garcia has been credibly accused of gang affiliation, domestic violence, and human trafficking, a torrent of smug “I told you so”s was unleashed on social media. Asst. Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin sneeringly accused the media of peddling a “sob story.”

This all gave me an unmistakable sense of déjà vu from the George Floyd protests in 2020. I vividly remember losing my cool during a conversation (as many of us were wont to do in that wretched year) with someone about George Floyd’s killing. Still shaken from the disturbing reports of Floyd begging for his life as he succumbed to asphyxiation, my blood began to boil as this person went on and on about Floyd’s drug use and criminal record.

I could hardly believe what I was listening to: this person just watched what we both agreed was footage of someone being brutally murdered, and his reaction was seething anger at how the victim’s good qualities were being overemphasized!1 According to him, Floyd got what he deserved. Maybe Derek Chauvin got a little carried away, but this wouldn’t have happened to a good person.

The same thinking is on display with regard to Abrego Garcia: people are answering questions about whether he was treated with justice by talking about whether not he is a good person.

The bad faith of this approach should be clear for all to see. Yes, Floyd and Abrego Garcia have been widely celebrated and memorialized, perhaps more than they deserve. But the argument has never been that they were saints. What happened to them would have been wrong even if it happened to Adolf Hitler. Every person has inherent dignity and a God-given, unalienable right to life no matter who they are or what they’ve done.

The Rattlesnake Test

Trump’s words and actions in this matter show that at best, he believes that the ends justify the means. He believes that some people do not deserve to be treated with dignity, and that if we could just get rid of the ‘bad people,’ our nation’s problems would go away.

Make no mistake: when left unchecked, this thinking leads to mass murder. I don’t think it’s totally unchecked in America – I am holding out hope that this will end similarly to the Japanese internment during World War II. But we are troublingly following a pattern that has repeated itself over and over throughout history, and the escalating trajectory of the government’s actions show no signs of ebbing:

• A marginalized minority group is scapegoated (e.g. for increased crime, a military setback, a bad economy, a diluted national identity etc.)
• The group is harassed, discriminated against, and subject to escalating hostile rhetoric
• Members of the group are rounded up

Many people support Trump and his actions. In fact, it may even be what most people think. But that isn’t Christianity. As Christians we are called not to think as the world thinks, but to put on the mind of Christ. We are called to a supernatural worldview. In Romans Paul writes:

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect (Romans 12:2)

The ‘who cares, he got what he deserved’ mentality fails what Catholic commentator Tony Ginoccio calls the Rattlesnake Test:

Here’s how The Rattlesnake Test works: if you make a decision or do something, and if you cite your Christian faith as the reason that you […] made that decision or did what you did, an outside observer should be able to look at your decision and rationale and say “ah, okay, I see, this person’s Christian faith led them to decide something differently than they would have decided if they had just been acting on animal instinct.”

He continues:

An outside observer shouldn’t look at you and say “okay, that just kind of seems like the thing he was going to do anyways. Actually, it doesn’t even seem like that, it seems like the same thing he would have done even if he wasn’t a rational human being but rather a rattlesnake or similar animal incapable of higher-level thinking.” Because if they can say that, then what the hell was the point of even being Christian in the first place?

Once again, the attitude that so many have taken toward Abrego Garcia might make sense to some people. But there’s just nothing detectably Christian about it. There’s no evidence that it was formed by and considers itself accountable to a higher set of principles. It certainly doesn’t square with Catholic teaching on objective morality.

However wicked Abrego Garcia might be (note that the accusations against him have yet to be proven), that does not justify breaking the law to deny him due process and subject him to dehumanizing suffering. God is the only one who gets to decide what someone deserves, and he is the only one who gets to administer that.

“…for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” (Romans 12:19)

Conclusion

Reiterating Pope Paul VI’s teaching and the Church’s unchanging position on objective morality, John Paul II wrote the following in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor:

[…] it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it (cf. Rom 3:8) — in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general“.

God is the only way that we will find security and justice. Shortcuts which go against his divine law and which contravene human dignity always end in disaster. Let us heed and prayerfully reflect on the myriad stern warnings that scripture issues against injustice.

Originally published at John Brundage’s Substack.

Photo by John Brundage