How #Maine churches are reckoning with fear of #ImmigrationRaids

by Sean Scott, August 24, 2025

Excerpt: "Selma, an asylum seeker from Angola, moved to Texas at the start of the pandemic and then to Maine in January 2022. She fears persecution if she returns because of a family member’s involvement in a #HumanRights group.

" 'As a Christian, I was praying, and then God just gave me direction, which was Maine,' she said.

"She joined a nondenominational Christian church in Portland right away, and she and her two children have been regular attendees ever since. After President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, her 12-year-old daughter asked if it was still safe to go to school.

"As immigration enforcement efforts have increased dramatically this year, many migrants have also reckoned with whether it’s safe to go to places of worship, whether they’re congregants or faith leaders like one Westbrook pastor detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month.

"In one of his first acts in office, Trump rescinded a policy that essentially barred #ICEAgents from making arrests at sensitive locations like #churches, #hospitals and #schools. A coalition sued the Department of Homeland Security over the policy in February, arguing it violated #ReligiousFreedom. A judge declined to block the policy, citing a lack of evidence that churches were 'singled out as special targets' for immigration enforcement.

"Faith leaders are preparing for the possibility of enforcement regardless, and several other lawsuits have been filed on similar grounds, including one in late July with a New England plaintiff.

"#MichelTshimankinda, a Westbrook man who founded a church in South Portland, has been in ICE detention in New Hampshire since Aug. 14, according to the Portland Press Herald. He wasn’t arrested on church property, but his detention has shaken his family and congregation."

Read more:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maine-churches-reckoning-fear-immigration-100000727.html

#ICESucks#ICEKidnapping#MaineNews#DHS#Gestapo#FascismInTheUSA#Racism#Fascism#Authoritarianism#TrumpIsARacist

How #Maine churches are reckoning with fear of #ImmigrationRaids

by Sean Scott, August 24, 2025

Excerpt: "Selma, an asylum seeker from Angola, moved to Texas at the start of the pandemic and then to Maine in January 2022. She fears persecution if she returns because of a family member’s involvement in a #HumanRights group.

" 'As a Christian, I was praying, and then God just gave me direction, which was Maine,' she said.

"She joined a nondenominational Christian church in Portland right away, and she and her two children have been regular attendees ever since. After President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, her 12-year-old daughter asked if it was still safe to go to school.

"As immigration enforcement efforts have increased dramatically this year, many migrants have also reckoned with whether it’s safe to go to places of worship, whether they’re congregants or faith leaders like one Westbrook pastor detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this month.

"In one of his first acts in office, Trump rescinded a policy that essentially barred #ICEAgents from making arrests at sensitive locations like #churches, #hospitals and #schools. A coalition sued the Department of Homeland Security over the policy in February, arguing it violated #ReligiousFreedom. A judge declined to block the policy, citing a lack of evidence that churches were 'singled out as special targets' for immigration enforcement.

"Faith leaders are preparing for the possibility of enforcement regardless, and several other lawsuits have been filed on similar grounds, including one in late July with a New England plaintiff.

"#MichelTshimankinda, a Westbrook man who founded a church in South Portland, has been in ICE detention in New Hampshire since Aug. 14, according to the Portland Press Herald. He wasn’t arrested on church property, but his detention has shaken his family and congregation."

Read more:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maine-churches-reckoning-fear-immigration-100000727.html

#ICESucks#ICEKidnapping#MaineNews#DHS#Gestapo#FascismInTheUSA#Racism#Fascism#Authoritarianism#TrumpIsARacist

"They have demonized and brutalized immigrants from certain countries. Now they are attempting to take over cities with large Black populations in the name of law and order.

This will result in a very small group of wealthy people—mostly white, mostly male, mostly Christian nationalist—imposing minority rule on the majority who disagree with their leadership and policies."

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#WhiteSupremacy #immigrants
/3

"For Wilson, Hegseth represents a unique chance to spread his extreme ideology. Some at his church oppose female suffrage; his denomination is against women in combat, homosexuality, abortion, and pushes for an extremely traditional interpretation of family structure."

~ Josh Kovensky and Emine Yücel

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#WhiteSupremacy #immigrants#WhiteChristianNationalism
/6

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/where-things-stand-pete-and-the-preacher-man

"Wilson is only one of the crackpot Men of God affiliated with Vance and Hegseth who openly proclaim that marital rape is impossible. … 'The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,' Wilson has written in one of his books. 'A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts…True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.'"

~ Nina Burleigh

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy
/8

https://www.americanfreakshow.news/p/rock-ribbed-ladies

"For Wilson, Hegseth represents a unique chance to spread his extreme ideology. Some at his church oppose female suffrage; his denomination is against women in combat, homosexuality, abortion, and pushes for an extremely traditional interpretation of family structure."

~ Josh Kovensky and Emine Yücel

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#WhiteSupremacy #immigrants#WhiteChristianNationalism
/6

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-stand/where-things-stand-pete-and-the-preacher-man

"And once that theology is embedded in law, it affects everyone — not just the people in the pews.

That’s why it matters who and what we platform in our churches."

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#WhiteSupremacy #immigrants
/5

"In the end, Wilson, this political regime, and its supporters want the United States to look a lot like the antebellum South. ...

What we see in Douglas Wilson’s theology today will become someone’s policy tomorrow.

If a church teaches hierarchy, exclusion, and authoritarian control, it will eventually shape a politics that enforces those same values."

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#WhiteSupremacy #immigrants
/4

"They have demonized and brutalized immigrants from certain countries. Now they are attempting to take over cities with large Black populations in the name of law and order.

This will result in a very small group of wealthy people—mostly white, mostly male, mostly Christian nationalist—imposing minority rule on the majority who disagree with their leadership and policies."

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#WhiteSupremacy #immigrants
/3

Tisby writes,

"If we had paid attention to [Douglas] Wilson and the spread of his ideology, we could have foreseen the Trump regime coming.

What happens in politics is downstream of what happens in the church. …

They want to strip women of bodily autonomy. They have recently challenged marriage equality. They are under orders to gerrymander districts to guarantee Republican wins."

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#MaleEntitlement#MaleDomination
/2

Dr. Jemar Tisby, a Black scholar of religion, has important things to say about Douglas Wilson, the right-wing Reformed minister whose patriarchal ideas (women should not be allowed to vote, gay people should be criminalized) Pete Hegseth is now shopping around. Jemar has himself been personally targeted by Wilson.

#DouglasWilson#Hegseth #churches #patriarchy #misogyny #homophobia#Trump#MaleEntitlement#MaleDomination
/1

https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/how-douglas-wilsons-ideology-became

In the Blue Room of the White House, once the cameras recording the Easter prayer service cut off, the conversation at #Trump’s dinner table turned to one of the biggest political goals for #conservative#Christian activists — eliminating a #law that banned #churches, & other #TaxExempt charitable groups, from endorsing #political candidates.

#TaxLaw#Christianity#Evangelism#NewApostolicReformation#NAR#ChurchAndState#TaxExempt

How #Conservative#Christians Cracked a 70-Year-Old #Law

The #IRS recently said that #churches could endorse #political candidates from the pulpit, a break from a longstanding interpretation of American #nonprofit law.

#law#TaxLaw#Trump#Christianity#Evangelism#NewApostolicReformation#NAR#ChurchAndState#TaxExempt
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/us/johnson-amendment-church-free-speech.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

"In California the bishop of San Bernardino, Alberto Rojas, yesterday lifted the obligation for Catholics to attend Sunday Mass [because of concerns that ICE now snatches people in churches or on church grounds]. In the nearby Diocese of Orange, priests are now celebrating Mass in people’s homes in order to protect them from ICE."

~ Jonathan V. Last

#Trump#ICE #immigrants #churches#Catholic
/3

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-parasites-and-the-good-immigrants-trump-deportations

"We are now a country which is driving religious practice underground. Ask yourself where you have seen this sort of thing before."

#Trump#ICE #immigrants #churches#Catholic
/4

"In California the bishop of San Bernardino, Alberto Rojas, yesterday lifted the obligation for Catholics to attend Sunday Mass [because of concerns that ICE now snatches people in churches or on church grounds]. In the nearby Diocese of Orange, priests are now celebrating Mass in people’s homes in order to protect them from ICE."

~ Jonathan V. Last

#Trump#ICE #immigrants #churches#Catholic
/3

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-parasites-and-the-good-immigrants-trump-deportations