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How MAGA learned to love Christian persecution
Their "faith" has become a weapon of white nationalism.
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It’s a familiar cri de coeur howled by conservative talking heads and Republican politicians: Christians in America are under siege.
Although every American president, nearly every Supreme Court justice, and the vast majority of members of Congress, governors, and state legislators are Christian, conservative Christians bemoan their supposed dwindling political power. They falsely claim Christians are persecuted for merely expressing their faith. In the absence of real persecution, some Christians and their media allies simply invent transgressions, like the absurd myth that Americans can no longer wish people “Merry Christmas.”
Today’s white Christian nationalists, who along with Trump scream about persecution, are part of a long tradition.
“For more than a century, white evangelicals in the United States have cultivated a myth that Christians are under siege by a hostile secular culture,” explains Ruth Braunstein of the Religion News Service. “This ‘persecution complex’ has been stoked for decades by white evangelical leaders, conspiracy theorists, right-wing media stars and, most recently, Donald Trump, who tells his white evangelical flock that without his protection the secular left will destroy them.”
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And yet there is an ongoing, vivid, and sometimes lethal case of Christian persecution, one for which roughly one-sixth of those Christians under siege are evangelical protestants. Anyone who wants a closer glimpse of this horrific and systemic persecution can do so easily: Just turn on your TV and watch whatever agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) are up to.
That’s right: Although ICE and CBP also round up people from Somalia or other African countries, and many Asian immigrants, their primary target group is Latinos.
ICE’s Latino victims
Despite the media’s overwhelming focus on ICE’s January murders of two white Minnesotans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, most people killed by ICE or who died in detention centers since Donald Trump took office in January 2025 have Latino surnames or came here from Latin American countries.
Since the start of Trump’s second term ICE or CBP so far have shot nine people, seven men and two women. A man and woman shot in Portland were not identified. Of the remaining seven whose identities are known, three have what appear to be Latino surnames: Marimar Martinez, a female who survived, and two men who died, Silvio Villegas Gonzalez and Isais Sanchez Barboza. (A federal judge ruled earlier this month that Martinez can release text messages she received from the border patrol agent who shot her.)
The share of those who have died in ICE detention centers who are Latino is much higher. Based on a cursory review of their surnames and countries of origin, a solid majority of the 32 persons who died in ICE detention centers last year are also Latinos. (The remaining victims immigrated from a variety of countries including China, Haiti, and Vietnam.)
The vast majority of Latinos are, of course, Christians.