The Stranger Among US

My thoughts on Minneapolis and the Immigration Crisis hopefully informed by my Orthodox faith.

The images from Minneapolis are jarring. ICE agents confronting protesters. Violence erupts in the streets. Cities declaring themselves “sanctuaries” that decide that Federal law is none of their business. Political leaders on both sides are manufacturing outrage for their respective bases. And somewhere in the chaos, actual human beings—immigrants, citizens, law enforcement officers—caught in the grinding machinery of our broken discourse.

And because of this, people are dying.

As Orthodox Christians, we’re called to something better than tribal political reflexes. We’re called to see reality clearly and respond with both truth and compassion. That’s harder than choosing a team and cheering.

The Reality We Must Face

Let me say plainly what should be obvious: A nation without enforceable borders is not a nation. This isn’t a political statement; it’s a definitional one. Sovereignty requires the ability to determine who enters your territory and under what conditions. Every nation on earth understands this. The Orthodox Church has always recognized the legitimate authority of governments to maintain order and protect their citizens.

St. Paul tells us in Romans 13 that governing authorities are “God’s servant for your good.” By the way, when St. Paul writes this, he is under the pagan Roman Empire!

Part of that service is protecting citizens from harm. When an undocumented immigrant with a violent criminal history commits rape, murder, or assault, the government’s failure to enforce immigration law isn’t compassion—it’s a betrayal of its fundamental duty. When other countries take advantage of a clearly planned “open border” policy to empty their jails and send these criminals to the US, the government must respond.

I’m disturbed by the selective outrage. An ICE agent uses deadly force in the line of duty, and we see manufactured protests and breathless media coverage. Yet when citizens are victimized by criminals who shouldn’t have been in the country at all, there’s silence. Or worse, we’re told that mentioning the immigration status of violent criminals is somehow bigoted.

Or when law enforcement overreacts to the “paid agitators” working desperately to get them to overreact for the spectacle, we are asked to ignore the overreaction.

As a former police officer, I can tell you we made mistakes, and we are just as flawed as the next person. We tried to overcome this temptation to overreact with training, and that helps, but still, humans make mistakes, sometimes deadly mistakes.

Accountability works both ways.

This isn’t compassion. It’s political theater.

The Compassion We Cannot Abandon

But here’s where it gets harder for those of us who lean politically conservative: we cannot allow our legitimate concerns about border security to blind us to the humanity of every person, regardless of their legal status.

Ever.

“You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” This command appears in various forms over thirty times in the Old Testament—more than almost any other command. The New Testament continues this theme. Our Lord Himself fled with His family to Egypt. The Letter to the Hebrews commands us: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

Orthodox anthropology teaches us that every human being bears the image of God. Every single one. The documented and the undocumented. The citizen and the immigrant. The law-abiding and the criminal. The image of God is not revoked by a visa status or even by criminal behavior.

This means we cannot dehumanize. We cannot speak of immigrants—even illegal immigrants—as an infestation or an invasion. We cannot treat human beings as mere statistics or political talking points. When we encounter the stranger, we encounter Christ Himself: “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.”

We forget this or ignore this at our own peril. Comforting ourselves by saying “law and order” or “The other side is trying to destroy our nation” won’t change the fact that “the other side” is people created in God’s image, too.

We can still insist that actions have consequences without dehumanizing each other. It’s just hard work. But God gives us the grace to do that hard work IF we are humble enough to embrace it.

Why Minneapolis and Not Elsewhere?

The question worth asking is: why has Minneapolis erupted in violence while other cities with similar enforcement actions haven’t? The answer reveals something about how we’ve allowed immigration to become a tribal identity marker rather than a policy question.

Previous administrations—including President Obama’s—deported millions without sparking this level of protest. The enforcement of immigration law itself isn’t new. What’s changed is that we’ve been trained to react tribally rather than think soberly about complex realities.

Minneapolis, like many cities, has become a stage for performing political identity. Protesters aren’t necessarily motivated by compassion for immigrants; they’re often motivated by opposition to their political enemies. And let’s be honest: some of those calling for strict enforcement aren’t motivated by concern for the rule of law; they’re motivated by fear or even hatred of the other.

When you see a sophisticated coordinating effort on encrypted social media to stage this protest here or the use of facial recognition software to identify protestors or law enforcement personnel, you’re dealing with financially backed efforts. Pretending this isn’t so is further proof that this is all about power, and the immigrants are being used for leverage.

Both sides are using human beings as props in their political theater.

All you have to do is see a church service disrupted by “protestors” and “journalists” to see this theater played out.

The Myth We Must Reject

There’s a dangerous myth embedded in some progressive immigration discourse: “the noble savage” reimagined for the 21st century. This is the idea that immigrants are inherently virtuous, that their very status as outsiders makes them morally superior to corrupt Western civilization.

This is not compassion. It’s condescension. And it’s fantasy.

Immigrants are human beings, which means they’re capable of both virtue and vice, just like citizens. Some immigrants are fleeing violence and seeking honest work. Others are exploiting broken systems. Some are model community members. Others are criminals. To pretend otherwise isn’t kindness—it’s a refusal to see immigrants as fully human, capable of moral agency and moral failure.

The Orthodox understanding of the fall tells us that every human heart is a battlefield between virtue and vice. This applies to everyone, regardless of nationality or documentation status. True respect for immigrants means holding them to the same moral standards we hold for everyone else.

Consequences for behaviors aren’t bigotry. It’s wisdom.

High Trust, Low Trust, and the Breakdown of Assimilation

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: not all cultures are equally compatible with each other, not because one is superior but because they operate on different social contracts.

High-trust cultures—like the historic American civic culture—function on the assumption that most people will follow rules even when no one is watching. Low-trust cultures function on the assumption that rules are for suckers and the powerful will exploit everyone else unless forced not to.

Mass immigration from low-trust cultures into high-trust cultures creates friction, not because immigrants are bad people, but because the social contract is different. When you come from a place where the government is corrupt and the police are predatory, you don’t naturally trust American institutions. This is understandable. But it also creates real challenges for social cohesion.

All you have to do is look at how the different political tribes have reacted to blatant corruption in the different programs meant to assist the poor and vulnerable communities, and you will see this cultural difference play out. And how different political machinery uses these communities to either gain or maintain power.

The very counting of undocumented immigrants in the census affects the number of representatives in a state or county and the electoral college numbers as well.

Pretending this is all about “compassion” rings hollow when these factors are taken seriously.

This is where assimilation becomes crucial—and where we’ve catastrophically failed.

Previous generations of immigrants were expected to assimilate into American civic culture while maintaining their ethnic heritage. My own wife’s Greek immigrant ancestors learned English, embraced American civic values, and became part of the social fabric while keeping Greek food, language, and Orthodox faith alive in their homes.

Today, we’ve abandoned assimilation as a goal. In fact, we’ve made it suspect. “Cultural appropriation” concerns and “authentic identity” rhetoric have made the melting pot seem oppressive. So we get parallel communities that never integrate, creating the conditions for both social fragmentation and exploitation by those who profit from division.

The Church has always understood integration. When St. Paul says “there is neither Jew nor Greek,” he’s not erasing cultural identity—he’s establishing a higher unity in Christ that allows different peoples to live together in peace. But that unity requires actual integration into shared life, not just coexistence in the same geography.

The Path Forward: Sobriety and Compassion

So what does an Orthodox response look like in practice?

First, we must speak truth about borders and sovereignty. A nation has the right and duty to control its borders and enforce its immigration laws. Law enforcement officers doing their jobs are not villains, and using necessary force to uphold the law—even when that results in tragedy—is not automatically wrong.

Second, we must insist on compassion for every human person. When we encounter immigrants in our communities, we encounter Christ. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger—regardless of documentation status. Our parishes should be places where everyone is treated with dignity.

Third, we must reject political tribalism. Immigration policy should be based on what actually serves the common good, not what scores points against our political enemies. This means supporting policies that secure borders, provide paths to legal immigration, deal justly with those already here, and require real assimilation into American civic culture.

Fourth, we must hold everyone to the same moral standard. Immigrants who commit serious crimes should be deported. Citizens who exploit immigrant labor should be held accountable. Government officials who ignore enforcement should be held accountable. Protesters who engage in violence should face consequences. Law enforcement officials who violate the constitutional freedoms of protestors must face the consequences.

The rule of law applies to everyone (and I mean everyone, from the President to the Governor to the Mayor to the immigrant to the ICE agent), or it wounds our society.

Fifth, we must rebuild the expectation of assimilation. If you come to America, learn English. Embrace American civic values. Contribute to your community. Maintain your heritage while integrating into the broader society. This isn’t oppression; it’s the price of admission to a functioning multiethnic republic.

Finally, we must insist that our definition of love be comprehensive enough to love even our enemies. Our concept of love must include the victims of crimes, must include the people who disagree with us poliyiocally, must include the “stranger” who lives among us and works hard and loves his family and wants a better life for his children, must include our civil servants who face dangers on our behalf to keep us safe and to defend the rule of law. We must love, and we must stay sober and not fall for the intoxicating rhetoric that turns us against each other!

Living This Truth

The chaos in Minneapolis reveals what happens when we abandon both truth and compassion for political point-scoring. We get violence, division, and human beings treated as expendable props in other people’s dramas.

Our Orthodox Faith offers a better way: a radical commitment to seeing every person as an icon of Christ, while also maintaining the structures of order that allow human flourishing. This isn’t a comfortable middle position that makes everyone happy. It’s a difficult integration of truth and love that will probably make everyone mad at some point.

This Orthodox Way means I never set my scruples or opinions on “automatic pilot” and knee-jerk my tribe’s response without serious consideration and honest reflection.

“My team, right or wrong,” will never be healthy. The only “team” I belong to is Christ.

This is the only way forward that honors both the image of God in every person and the legitimate need for an ordered society.

We need borders. We need enforcement. We need compassion. We need accountability. We need integration. We need to treat immigrants as fully human—capable of virtue and vice, deserving of dignity and accountable to law.

And we need to stop performing our politics and start living our faith. We need to stop treating our politics like it’s our religion and insist we soberly consider the most loving reaction, even when that loving reaction means serious consequences for those who violate the law, no matter who they are.

The stranger among us is Christ Himself. But Christ also said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Both truths matter. Both must be lived.

So, as we enter the Lenten season this year, I am particularly asking the Lord to open my eyes to deeper sobriety and serious love for even those who consider me an “enemy.” I want to be “salt and light” in a society becoming drunk on division and chaos. I want to be balanced, compassionate, and honest.

May God grant us the wisdom to hold them together.