Relgious leaders sue to prevent ICE raids on churches giving immigrants sanctuary, does Trump care? By Hal M. Brown

As a Jew, this made me think of history and my first thought was that today in the United States we are all German Jews circa. Nazi Germany.

Here is comment I wrote to the HUFFPOST article about 27 religious groups suing to protect immigrants from ICE raids at churches.

As a Jew, this made me think of history and my first thought was that today in the United States we are all German Jews circa. Nazi Germany. Then I glance down at some of the comments and am appalled by the ignroacne and hate. As far as the Nazis were concerned Jews were criminals.

I was groggy since I'd just gotten up so I made the typo spelling ignorance "ignroacne "and "glance," needed a comma, and left a word out. It should have read:

As a Jew, this made me think of history and my first thought was that today in the United States we are all German Jews circa. Nazi Germany. Then I glanced down at some of the comments and am appalled by the ignorance and hate. As far as the Nazis were concerned, Jews were criminals.

I considered writing about the HUFFPOST article this morning, but then didn't really have much to say beyond the comment I made. Then I got the email shown below. I decided not to encourage the person who wrote this by responding. Even so, I clicked where it said "Reply to Cecil Patrick" and saw that there were replies to him. I decided that I would share them and add a few thoughts.

Click images to enlarge.

The commenter who prompted these replies had almost 58 thousand "likes" to his other HUFFPOST comments. I couldn't see them because he has this feature blocked.

These replies challenged Cecil Patrick:

Here are a few of the pro-MAGA replies to my comment:

Mark S. obviously doesn’t understad what an analogy is.

This is the excerpt from HUFFPOST from the rabbinical association that is. part of the lawsuit:

“As Jewish leaders, we are mindful of our history as an immigrant people,” Central Conference of American Rabbis executive Hara Person said in a statement about the lawsuit.

“Jews in the United States came as immigrants and so we have always supported and welcomed immigrants,” Person wrote. “The most often repeated command in the Torah is to care for the stranger because we were strangers in the land of Egypt — in this way our scripture and history compels us to work with and help immigrants and refugees.”

There is no mention of Jews taking sanctuary in synagogues or churches in Nazi Germany. While this didn't happen, I assume this is because the issue here involves immigrants and the German Jews weren't immigrants. If they were being given sanctuary in relgious buildings, the Gestapo would have have had a easier job rounding them up.

I am certainly not the first to point out that, except for Native Americans, we are all either descended from immigrants or immirgants ourselves who came here legally. Many of our ancestors were fleeing oppression in their country. All of them came here for a better life. Those Central American immigrants today are the same as them.

So far there has been no reporting I know of that churches are currently housing immigrants. They may be doing this without publicizing it. There is a likelihood that it will be a short matter of time before they do this and the word will get out. The question then is whether or not Trump, realizing that this will make it far easier for him to signficantly increase the number of immigrant arrests, will order ICE agents to raid churches which have offered immigrants sanctuary.

The lawsuit is an attempt to stop this before it happens. It "alleges the Department of Homeland Security’s authorization to make detainments at places of worship violates the First Amendment, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which curtails the federal government’s ability to restrict religious practices." I'm not a lawyer, but since ICE hasn't conducted any raids on churches, at least not yet, the case isn't as strong as it would be if they'd already done so.

Trump likes putting on a good show with the ICE raids. It's like Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and Dr. Phil are his on the ground theatrical producers and directors.

I can't think of a better show for them than a raid on a church would be, especially one in a liberal city.

If the religious leaders win the lawsuit order the raids would be a typical Trump in your face defiance of a court order. If the immigants had already been hustled out of the country there would be nothing anybody could do to help them.

It remains to be seen what the reaction would be from the American relgious community if ICE agents were seen on TV breaking down the doors of churches, arresting ministers, and herding immigrants out the door in chains. I doubt Trump would care since he thrives on being attacked. He could order this in part to provoke blowback. This is the nature of the psychopathic beast that he is.

Update:

Below are some late afernoon comments on the article:

I posted another comment on the HUFFPOST story. I wonder if people are still reading and commenting on it. If they reply to my comment I’ll add what they post to this Substack which, as you can see below, includes a link. Maybe it will lead to a new subscriber to two.

I scrolled through about 200 comments (you can open the comments here) and these are some of the negative ones. About a dozen were taken down by HUFFPOST as policy violations. The negative comments were either hatefully anti-immigrant or ignorant, or both. The comments just to this article show how divided the country is. The postive comments were thoughtful and compassionate.