WASHINGTON — As religious leaders and government officials gather this week in Washington, D.C., to discuss religious persecution across the globe, they can’t avoid a related crisis playing out much closer to home.
Conflict at the U.S.-Mexico border and the broader debate over the Trump administration’s immigration policies have repeatedly come up at the State Department's Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom — a three-day conference this week on human rights involving more than 1,000 participants — and other events timed to coincide with the conference.
While Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other organizers praise America's outreach to people in need, some speakers and observers are questioning whether America is still the melting pot it set out to be.
For example, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., told participants in a Monday night prayer service for Christians in the Middle East that their compassion should extend to migrants at the southern border. Recounting her recent visit to Texas, she emphasized the Bible’s call to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

“As we recognize our responsibility to protect Christians around the world, I hope we will look at opportunities to protect Christians in our bordering countries,” she said.
Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who survived a mass shooting at his Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue last fall, described America as a nation of immigrants during his remarks at the ministerial Tuesday morning, noting that he worries people have forgotten this heritage.
“Too many of our citizens do not know the history of their families, the hardships they faced as they immigrated to a new land,” he said. They “blindly turn from those who are not just like them.”
About two miles away from the State Department auditorium where Rabbi Myers spoke, Jewish protesters were rallying at Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, condemning the detainment of migrants in dirty, overcrowded detention centers.
Catholic leaders are planning to hold a similar protest Thursday on Capitol Hill.
These events and comments are part of a blurring of the boundary between debates over immigration and religious freedom. Some people of faith have always argued for compassion for migrants, but now these believers are citing religious freedom laws to defend their activism — including in cases in which volunteers are arrested for giving humanitarian aid to migrants at the border, the Deseret News reported last month.
It's not surprising for a Republican administration to seek to reduce illegal immigration. However, it's notable that they've also drastically reduced refugee admissions and shifted asylum laws.
As the Trump administration seeks to expand religious freedom protections at home and abroad, some are wondering whether tougher immigration laws are at odds with that goal.
State Department officials and other U.S. government leaders likely won’t take up that question at this week’s ministerial, where, so far, they’ve mostly focused on faith-related conflict overseas.
Our approach for Christians in the Middle East and for other people who are being religiously persecuted around the world … is to try and create the conditions inside their own countries so that they can have that religious freedom. – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
The closest Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others have come to addressing the immigration debate is fielding questions about refugees.
“We’re still the most generous, welcoming nation anywhere in the world,” Pompeo told the Christian Broadcasting Network on Tuesday, during an appearance to promote the ministerial.
Matthew Soerens, the co-author of “Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate,” challenged that claim on Twitter, noting that Canada now accepts more refugees than the U.S. does. In fiscal year 2019, the Trump administration says it will accept up to 30,000 refugees, down from 45,000 the year before.
He added that new asylum policies will likely further reduce the number of survivors of religious persecution able to legally resettle in the U.S.
In response to critiques like this, Pompeo and others have highlighted the Trump administration’s efforts to help refugees resettle or remain in their home countries instead of starting a new life here.
“Our approach for Christians in the Middle East and for other people who are being religiously persecuted around the world … is to try and create the conditions inside their own countries so that they can have that religious freedom,” Pompeo told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Mark Green, who leads the U.S. Agency for International Development, told ministerial participants Tuesday that the federal government has already provided $340 million to rebuild northern Iraq and help faith communities targeted by the Islamic State.
“Thanks to our president and vice president, USAID and others are working to offer some relief and assistance to those who have suffered so very much,” he said.
Some of the victims of religious persecution who spoke at the State Department’s religious freedom meeting have affirmed the value of making it possible for refugees to return home.
However, opening the U.S. to other refugees and asylum-seekers doesn’t have to undermine such work, Soerens and others have argued.
“It’s an outdated talking point that ‘we’re still the most generous, welcoming nation,’” Soerens said. “The question is: Will we ever be again?”
Although House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who routinely criticizes the Trump administration's immigration-related policies — focused her ministerial remarks on religious freedom violations in China, her emphasis on the importance of being morally consistent in our foreign policy had relevance to the ongoing immigration debate, as well.
If we ignore or don't intervene to help people in need in one country, "we have less chance of addressing human rights and religious freedom in other countries," she said.
America’s reputation as a melting pot is something to celebrate and nurture, not turn our back on, Rabbi Myers told ministerial participants on Tuesday.
“Other than Native Americans, everyone in the United States is descended from immigrants if (they’re) not an immigrant currently. That was supposed to be our strength,” he said.