The proliferation of ICE raids in American cities is as polarizing as the administration behind it, hailed by one side as the necessary corrective to President Biden’s immigration policies and by the other as the beginnings of Gestapo-level fascism.
I lived in Minneapolis, where tensions are now highest, from 2002 to 2005 and was friends with many Somali immigrants. The news coming out of The Cities, both from journalists and friends, has been excruciating to follow. There is a helplessness many of us feel on the other side of our smartphones, distant from the crossroads of East 34th Street and Portland Avenue yet near to the bewilderment and grief that Renee Nicole Good was shot there by an ICE agent and immediately labeled a domestic terrorist by the Trump administration.
What is our way in to even think about such matters as followers of Jesus? What can we do to avoid the dread of powerlessness? How should we think about our immigrant neighbors amidst the swirl of anti-immigrant rhetoric? I believe the answers may come through an ethnic outsider at the center of one of Jesus’ most important teachings.
The parable of the Good Samaritan begins with a man on the side of the road who had been ambushed by robbers, stripped, beaten, and left for dead. Jesus introduces three passersby. As for the priest, “when he saw him he passed by on the other side” (Luke 10:31). The Levite—one who assisted priests and policed the temple—did the same. The eponymous Samaritan, however, “went to him” (Luke 10:34) and began addressing his needs, from the immediate to the long term.
Three characters, two angles. The priest and Levite chose the angle of disregard. Opinions abound about why they might have done this—perhaps touching the body would make them ceremonially unclean, perhaps it was a trap, etc. Whatever the reason, they went in the opposite direction of the man in need. The Samaritan, on the other hand, chose the angle of mercy. He moved toward the man in need.
As I read this parable, I know two things to be true. First, Jesus calls his followers to love like the Good Samaritan did. And second, this does not come naturally to me.
For the first 21 years of my life I lived in not one but two places nicknamed “The Bubble.” In Peachtree City, GA we lived on a lake, drove our golf cart to soccer practice, and went to school and church with people who looked like us. After high school I moved three hours away to Samford University with its gorgeous campus, gated and insulated in the suburbs of Birmingham.
I feel profound gratitude for the comfort and predictability in which I was raised and educated. Yet comfort and predictability can be dangerous. They lie on the opposite side of the road from the man left for dead. Their gravitational pull tilts us away from those in need, resulting in the angle of disregard.
This came to a decision point for me one winter morning as I drove through inner-city Minneapolis. I had been drawn to this tundra from my warm Southern climes by the preaching of John Piper. Among his emphases that stood out from the rest of evangelicalism was his warning against the dangers of safe, suburban life. He practiced what he preached, moving into the inner city where his church was located long before gentrification was a reality or the cool kids gushed over “the city.”
Still, even as I attended his seminary I felt the gravitational pull of comfort and predictability. I was there among future pastors, professors, and seminary presidents learning Greek and Hebrew, tracing the argument of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and digging deep into the relationship between law and gospel. It was glorious. It was why I was in seminary. And it was dangerous. Just as fossil fuels can be processed into hard plastic or gasoline, my studies became a bubble where I could be shielded by the plastic rather than fuel to propel me along the angle of mercy. It turns out that I loved the bubble more than I cared to admit.
The verse that clarified the decision point between the angle of disregard and the angle of mercy was Psalm 41:1—“Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the LORD delivers him.” What struck me about this verse was the intentionality it calls for. The privilege afforded by wealth and status is the freedom not to think of the poor at all. Yet the blessing of God is for the ones who proactively take thought for those in need, those they need not think about. As we pan out to the broader redemptive narrative of Scripture, we realize that this is the very initiative God had toward us, the angle of mercy in the Father’s heart that sent his Son to bring us home through his life, death, and resurrection.
My grappling with these two angles coincided, providentially, with an internship opportunity at an inner-city food ministry. As I started working at Community Emergency Service a few days a week, the proximity to poverty changed me. I heard the reflections of an Ojibwe tribal leader on alcoholism and unprocessed grief among indigenous peoples whose lands had been taken. My wife and I led a weekly Bible study for the women who came in the evening when our food shelf building became a shelter, learning in real time the confluence of homelessness with mental illness, addictions, and rotten luck. And my awareness of the dynamics of addictions increased as I led a weekly Bible study for those in a residential recovery program a few blocks away.
Perhaps most immersive was my awakening to the immigrant experience through the Somali community that we served. Our ministry director, Jeff Noyed, built a relationship with Mohammed, leader of the Benadiri community—a merchant group that had been run out of Mogadishu by the power struggle among warlords. Mohammed taught me basic conversational phrases in Somali, organized which of his community members would get help that week, and directed us to a local source of halal goat meat that we could serve during our Friday distribution of fresh vegetables and frozen meats. Of the dozens of memories during my time with these neighbors, the most poignant is when I mentioned to one lady that I had recently watched Black Hawk Down and learned about General Aidid, the warlord at the center of the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993. She soured. “I hate General Aidid. He killed my husband. That is why we are here.”
I have no pretense that my personal journey that led me from bubble life to friendship with Somali refugees contains some silver bullet that will solve America’s immigration problems. We all deal with the same pragmatic realities: we can’t let everyone in the country and, as internal fighting among Republicans reveals, our economy can’t be strong without an immigrant labor force. Also, at our best we have cared enough about “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” for it to be inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Somewhere between “no one” and “everyone” is the elusive sweet spot of how many immigrants we should allow in the country, a decision that belongs to Congress informed by us, their constituents.
But what is not elusive is the posture that followers of Jesus should have toward our neighbors. The way of Jesus runs along the angle of mercy, and we must beware the forces that would tilt us to the angle of disregard.
An obvious example would be President Trump’s recent reference to Somalis as “garbage,” only one of a disturbing list of xenophobic invective from our president. If you are a follower of Jesus and engage in this kind of dehumanizing language, you need to repent. As James wrote to those who use the same mouth to bless God and curse those made in his image, “Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right!” (James 3:10 NLT)
The more dangerous rhetoric comes not from the president but from his lieutenant whose vision of America the ICE actions are fulfilling, Stephen Miller. While there have been a number of alarming sound bites from Miller recently, what still haunts me is his speech in September 2025 at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service. Soundbites can be misquoted and taken out of context. Prepared speeches are more reflective of our deepest convictions.
Listen to the “us vs. them” language pervasive in Miller’s speech:
“To those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us: what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are envy, you are hatred. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”
The identity of “us” and “them” is unclear. Miller, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Belarus, identifies with Western Civilization writ large. To “them” he says, “You have no idea the dragon you have awakened. You have no idea how determined we will be to save this civilization, to save the West, to save this republic.” He situates “us” in this genealogy: “Our lineage and legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello. Our ancestors built the cities; they produced the architecture; they built the industry.”
What is clear to Miller is that “we” must prevail.
“To our enemies: you have nothing to give, to offer, or share but bitterness. We have beauty, light, goodness. We have determination, vision, and strength. We built the world that we inhabit now, generation by generation, and we will defend this world, we will defend goodness, we will defend light, we will defend virtue. You cannot frighten us, you cannot threaten us, because we are on the side of goodness, we are on the side of God.”*
In short, you are on that side of the road and we are on this side of the road. And we are on the side of God.
Follower of Jesus, this is poison. It is dangerous. It is a gravitational force pulling you along the angle of disregard. God is not on the “us” side of Stephen Miller’s “us vs. them” construct. That is the construct the teacher of the law assumed when he asked the question that catalyzed Jesus’ parable: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)
The genius of Jesus’ teaching is that he made the most “them” person of the day, a Samaritan, the model to emulate. Instead of validating the assumption of “us vs. them” Jesus asks the teacher of the law and the priest and the Levite and Stephen Miller, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” The answer is inescapable: “The one who showed him mercy” (Luke 10:36-37).
For all that I don’t know about optimal immigration policy, here is what I do know: there is no “them” outside the mercy of God. Choose proximity. Be a neighbor. Move along the angle of mercy. And resist the forces of our day that would pull you to the other side of the road.
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