Nashville, TN – Tennesse pastors condemn today’s Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Trump administration to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for approximately 500,000 legal refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The pastors characterized the decision as racially motivated, morally indefensible, and a direct violation of Christian teachings about welcoming strangers and protecting the vulnerable.
“This is not about law and order. This is not about national security. This is racism and cruelty. This is about turning our backs on our neighbors in their hour of need,” Rev. Lovett-Owen stated. She then shared the story of her friend John who was born in Venezuela who now resides in the US. “He braved so much on his way here and when he got here he knew that he wanted to make his life here. He studied, he got a job, he’s been working so hard on learning the language. He joined a church and decided to raise his family here. He is a good person, a contributor to our community. And now after doing everything right, doing everything we asked of him, he is facing deportation. What kind of nation does this?”
Rev. Lovett-Owen called on churches to serve as sanctuaries and urged every congregation and Christian leader to condemn the decision while supporting legal challenges and opening their doors to affected families.
Rev. Emily Jo Haynes, Pastor of Kaleo Nashville Church, also released a video statement expressing being “devastated” by the ruling, emphasizing that the affected individuals “were approved to come here because of the violence in their countries” and “feared for their lives and came here as a last resort.”
“What an inhumane and heartless decision to remove their legal status and subject them to possible deportation,” Rev. Haynes stated, echoing Justice Jackson’s dissent that the decision “would facilitate needless human suffering.”
Rev. Haynes criticized systems of oppression that “operate in God’s name” while choosing “to oppose biblical mandates,” citing scripture: “In Leviticus 19, God commands us to love the foreigner as ourselves because we too were once foreigners. In Luke 4, Jesus declares his mission to set the oppressed free. In Amos 5, God demands that justice roll down like waters.”
“This Supreme Court decision is the opposite of justice. It is cruel and harmful to our neighbors and the foreigners who our nation has now lied to about their ability to seek legal respite through a protected status here in the United States,” she continued.
Drawing from her personal experience, Rev. Haynes noted: “I live in a community of immigrants. The top 10 restaurants in my neighborhood are owned and operated by people of different culinary and cultural background from all over the world. When we welcome the foreigner we receive the great beauty of different cultures and our lives are made rich. This decision hurts not only our neighbors, but ourselves.”
Addressing the affected refugees directly, Rev. Haynes declared: “You are not statistics. You are beloved children of God. Your dignity is not subject to the whims of courts or the calculations of politics.” She called on Christians to “speak out, organize, and do all we can to protect our neighbors and community members and we will not stop calling out the evils of this current presidential administration.”
Both pastors called for immediate action from their congregations and fellow Christians, including contacting elected representatives, supporting legal challenges to the decision, providing sanctuary and direct assistance to affected families, and speaking out against what they characterized as systemic and intention harm.
