"In less than 200 days, 1.6 MILLION illegal immigrants have left the United States population,” said Secretary Kristi Noem. “This is massive. This means safer streets, taxpayer savings, pressure off of schools and hospital services and better job opportunities for Americans. Thank you, President Trump!” (DHS 14 Aug. 2025)
Actually, I don’t think it means any of that. Just sayin’. What I do think it means is that we have lost something central to American DNA: understanding, compassion, and valuing others. If we don’t have relationships with diverse people in our country, it’s easy to sit by and let the likes of Kristi Noem slander groups of people, like immigrants.
You want to ask yourself if you’ve been able to connect with immigrants or refugees who came seeking safety in our country. I had an experience about ten years ago that changed my perspective because I had a chance to connect.
For a few years at the university, we had an influx of students from Saudi Arabia. Most of the women wore hijabs. But one fall, one of the Saudi women stood out from the rest. She wore a burka, black from head to toe with a veil to cover her face. All you could see were her eyes. It seemed to unsettle the campus, especially since everywhere she went, she was escorted by a man.
On the elevator one day, it was just this woman, the man, a colleague, and me. Trying to be friendly, my colleague asked her a question. The man stepped in to answer. From there, the conversation was directed toward him, and the young woman seemed to disappear. It made me sad.
Conversations ensued about the strict Saudi culture that oppressed their women. The burka was an added barrier. When you can only see her eyes, you miss so much facial expression. You have no idea if she is even friendly.
That spring, I arranged to meet with some of the Saudi women on campus. As a playwright, I was trying to get some general understanding of their culture.* The women were delightful, funny, and sharp. And very open. We talked for several hours. As we talked about the hijab, they were very firm that wearing it was their choice. Eventually, the woman who wore the burka came up in conversation.
“We’ve been trying to tell her to wear something other than black,” one said, “because she’s spooking everyone.” They laughed. But then they told me the rest of her story.
She was young and smart, but she didn’t have a good handle on the language. In fact, she was quite intimidated by our culture. The man who went with her everywhere was her husband. She insisted that he come along with her until she became more confident. So, early on, he escorted her around campus until she felt she could stand on her own.
So many of us had assumed that the man was controlling or that she was being oppressed. That was our entirely uninformed perspective. The truth was that she was just scared and needed his help. Had we known the true story, we might have been better about reaching out. Might not have been so intimidated ourselves. Might not have been so judgmental about a person we didn’t know.
I think about the refugees I have talked to over the years. The harrowing journeys they have made to get here, the life and death circumstances they were escaping, how quickly they must adapt to a new culture and language. And how often we judge them without knowing them.
So when I hear Kristi Noem crowing about … well, just crowing, I’m sad that anyone takes stock in what she says at all. It doesn’t appear that she actually knows any immigrants. It doesn’t appear that the talking heads or their supporters do, either.
If we want to consider ourselves a Christian nation, then I think the better attitude toward immigrants can be summed up by St. Francis: “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek … to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.” All I can say is that, if we want to change things, it starts with relationships.
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*We did write a one-act play based on my conversation with those Saudi women (The Girl in the Red Hijab). Interesting that its central theme was about bullying. We hope we represented them well.
Well, the point was that if we know people, we are less likely to make sweeping judgments about them. For instance, when she said, "This means safer streets," the implication is that they are all criminals, that immigrants drive up the crime rate. That has not been proven to be true (https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/mythical-tie-between-immigration-and-crime).
If she knew any of them, she wouldn't be slandering them as one large group. Consider how we Christians feel when we are painted as hypocrites and bigots. If liberals knew us individually, they wouldn't be able to defend those sweeping judgments. The street runs two ways, doesn't it?
I totally agree that if we know people we are less likely to make sweeping judgements about them. Noem did not say all illegal immigrants are criminals. I don't think it's even implied. Her statement of safer streets is a logical one. Yes, the site you provided and other research concludes US born citizens have higher crime rates than immigrants to the US do. However, if there were no illegal immigrants, if you take them out of the equation completely, logically the crime rate would lower. For example, Larisha Sharell Thompson would not have been murdered if the 6 illegal immigrants that killed her were not in the US. 1 less murder = safer. If Harjinger Singh, an illegal immigrant, was not driving semi in Florida, 3 innocent people would not have died. 3 less homicides = safer. If just these 7 illegal immigrants were not in the US, it is logical to conclude that the US would be a safer place. I could be completely off base here, but it seems logical.
I'm in no way saying we should not have any immigration. Of course the vast majority of immigrants, including illegal immigrants, are wonderful people. But I agree with President Obama: "We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”
Again though my main question in regards to immigration is if deportation of illegal immigrants and border security has been a policy by presidents of both parties for years and years, what changed to make it so terrible a thing all of a sudden?