The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little
fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with
senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo and
Gabon, whose president greeted him inside an opulent seaside palace.
The American, a career State Department official named Christian Ehrhardt, was an unlikely diplomatic
VIP. For nearly two decades, he served as an officer in the agency’s security
branch, focusing on embassy protection, before being summoned to Washington
last year to lead a new initiative — the Office of Remigration.
Since then, Ehrhardt, 41, has crisscrossed Africa, trying to
persuade the continent’s leaders to accept flights full of people deported from
the United States even though the migrants are not their own citizens. These “third country”
deportation deals, a controversial innovation of the second Trump
administration, have become a central part of the president’s hard-line
approach to immigration, and they’re negotiated by the office Ehrhardt now
oversees.
He has been making rapid progress. The Trump administration has
authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31
countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June, according
to internal government records reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents, which have not
been previously reported, provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the
Trump administration’s fast-growing third-country network.
Under the arrangements, the U.S. has expelled migrants to
countries across the globe where they have no previous connection. Early deals included
flights to Costa Rica carrying migrants from China, Russia, Iran and
Afghanistan and a flight to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini with migrants
from Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration and the Supreme Court
ended Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians nationals. Due to
severe gang violence and ongoing security risks, the FAA bans U.S. aircraft from
landing in Port-au-Prince, forcing returnees to navigate gang-controlled routes
to reach other parts of the country.
The U.S. Department of State has issued a
level 4 – Do Not Travel advisory for Haiti due to extreme safety risks.
The agreements have been secured under the orders of Stephen Miller, a long-standing aide to the
president who now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Current and
former officials say that Miller, known for his relentless anti-immigration focus, has
been able to push key appointments at the State Department that have allowed
him to overrule other foreign policy objectives in his goal of achieving more
deportations.
Ehrhardt is “considered a White House envoy” when he meets with
foreign leaders, said a U.S. official familiar with his meetings. “The
messaging is not just that he is a deputy assistant secretary of state. He’s
really part of the White House, so they roll out the red carpet.” This
official, like many others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity
to discuss internal State Department operations.
The Office of Remigration — a division of about 15 employees in
the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) — marks an extraordinary break
in U.S. foreign policy, inverting the nation’s long-standing commitment to
resettling refugees in need into an intensive focus on expelling them from the
country. The
office’s name itself is a point of contention, as the term “remigration” has
been popularized by white nationalists in Europe who seek the expulsion of
racial minorities and immigrants.
The administration also has pledged grants totaling $179 million
to the International Organization for Migration and $124 million to the U.N.
Refugee Agency for refugee- and infrastructure-related projects in the third
countries. Those organizations are not directly party to the deals, but that
money has been negotiated by the foreign governments in connection to their
deportation agreements, according to the government documents and people
familiar with the deals. These payments have largely replaced voluntary
contributions the U.S. government traditionally made to the global aid
organizations and are used as “sweeteners” to get foreign countries to accept
the third-country deportees, people familiar with the deals said.
So, what does the Bible say about immigrants?
https://sojo.net/22-bible-verses-welcoming-immigrants
Welcoming others, regardless of their background or nationality,
is a central theme in scripture. This collection of verses urges us to embrace
those who are different and extend kindness to the marginalized. Whether
through love, acceptance, or advocacy, these verses show us the importance
of caring for the immigrants in our communities.
There are 22 Bible
verses on welcoming immigrants.
Here are some of
them:
‘I am a stranger and an alien residing among you; give me property
among you for a burying place, so that I may bury my dead out of my sight.’
Genesis 23:4
“You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a
sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt."
Exodus 23:9 (ESV)
You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the
land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 10:19
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do
him wrong. 34 You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native
among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the
land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
Leviticus 19:33-34 (ESV)
‘Cursed is anyone who withholds justice from the foreigner, the
fatherless or the widow.’ Then all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’
Deuteronomy 27:19 (NIV)
Stephen Miller is an evil man,
and the country will be better off as soon as he is gone from government service.
Considered one of the most influential figures of the
Trump administrations and Trumpism
movement, his politics have been described as far-right, anti-immigration,
and white
nationalist.
Miller grew up in Santa Monica,
California, and attended Duke University,
where he was a columnist for The Chronicle
and president of the Duke chapter of Students for Academic Freedom. After graduating
in 2007, he worked as press secretary for US representatives Michele Bachmann
and John Shadegg.
In 2009, he joined the staff of Alabama
senator Jeff Sessions,
where he worked on immigration policy and helped defeat the Border Security,
Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. As
an aide to Sessions, Miller influenced the direction of Breitbart News.
He advised both of Trump's presidential campaigns. After Trump's loss in the 2020 election, Miller founded America First
Legal, a conservative legal advocacy organization, in 2021.
Miller has been a central figure in the Trump
administration's immigration policy, including the family separation policy and Executive Order
13769, which restricted travel from several Muslim-majority
countries. As director of speechwriting, he supervised the writing of Trump's
inaugural and State of the Union addresses. Miller is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of
extremists. His influence and views are the subject of both traditional and
independent media, as well as of both domestic and international.
Stephen N. Miller
was born on August 23, 1985, in the affluent North of Montana
neighborhood in Santa Monica,
California, the second of three children[of Miriam (née Glosser) and Michael Miller. Miller is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent
His family's lineage escaped Russian pogroms and the Holocaust.
In view of the horrors his ancestors
endured, Stephen Miller’s hard-line approach on immigration makes absolutely no
sense at all.
This is what the plaque on the Statute of Liberty
says:
Not like the
brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied
pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your
poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
