The Theological Anthropology of ICE’s “Priority Enforcement” Program, Pt. 2

By: Gregory Williams

Note: This article originally appeared at Political Theology'
​GregoryWilliams

Part, 1

AMARYAH SHAYE JONES-ARMSTRONG: WHITENESS/CREDIT AS A DEFORMED THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
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The telos of border imperialism as described by Walia and served by policies like the Priority Enforcement program is manifestly blasphemous on any number of levels.  The most obvious, and the most commonly identified by theologians is that it denies the presence of Christ in the persons of exploited, oppressed, colonized, and working people.  On Good Friday 2013, in the middle of the campaign for Jose Maria Islas, over 200 of us gathered on the New Haven Green for a rally against Secure Communities under the banner Deportation Crucifies. The claim was simple: racist state violence is crucifying violence against the body of Christ, whose very flesh is the people.  Christ identifies with every person in a deportation process, every person whose wages are stolen because they are undocumented, every person who is racially profiled by the police, every person under arrest or in detention, and, in so doing, reveals Barack Obama (and any other deporter-in-chief) to be a modern day Pontius Pilate.

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