President Donald Trump is shutting down legal ways for persecuted people to come to the U.S. and deporting people from vulnerable populations, including Iranian Christians and Afghan women, to an uncertain future. It’s forcing Republicans to consider what America’s role should be in taking in persecuted Christians and religious minorities — or whether the country should have one at all.
“Persecuted Christians need to understand that the rule of law is pretty important,” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina told NOTUS last week when asked about a group of Iranian Christians who were deported to a jungle camp in Panama. “I kind of cast a skeptical eye towards someone who says they passed through two or three jurisdictions where they’ve been safely removed from Iran, and that somehow we owe them asylum in the U.S.”
“Look, Iran’s a horrible place,” Tillis continued. “But there are a lot of places a lot nearer than the United States that they could get out of harm’s way.”