A Faith-Based Response to Ending TPS

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and Syrians officially ended on July 27, 2026. With the stroke of a pen, the legal status of over 300,000 Haitians and some 6,000 Syrians went from lawfully present to imminently deportable. My heart breaks for these families whose level of safety has plummeted, facing a forced return to an area deemed unsafe to travel to by the very government enforcing it. Recent reporting suggests that newly returned deportees face grievous hardship already.

As a minister ordained in the Baptist tradition, I believe God loves every human on earth equally, and that God's heart is breaking, too. Since bestowing the status of beloved onto all humans is God’s starting point, I believe it is our work to make this our starting point as well.

When considering complicated situations like these, if I skip this important step, it can be tempting for me to instead begin with questions around ethnicity, political status or economic value. This leads to othering, viewing people in terms of categories and labels, which in turn makes it easier to justify evaluating one’s worth through the lens of social and political structures, rather than through the inherent value of God’s love.

One of the most common ways this plays out in the TPS debate is when it leads us to weigh the economic potential of an individual or family as a significant factor in how we view the fairness of terminating TPS status. Does God assess my value to the economy before deciding whether to bestow steadfast love onto me or ask what value I bring to the kingdom before deciding whether grace will be available to me?

As the embodiment of God’s steadfast and unconditional love, Jesus’ default response when encountering anyone not considered clean or worthy of community by those in power or with influence is the definitive answer to these questions. Jesus simply cuts through the categories and structures of separation, begging us, the reader and follower to ask ourselves, what does it mean when the people of faith and the religious leaders in power have higher standards than God?

In Jesus’ time, the conversation around eligible vs. ineligible centered on things like skin diseases and social status to determine who could be in “in community” and who could not. Under Levitical law, anyone dealing with a skin disease would be declared unclean by a priest, forced to wear torn clothes as an identifier, live alone outside the camp and barred from approaching the tabernacle, or center of worship. In one particular interaction with a man who had been removed from community due to a skin issue, covered in Mark 1, Matthew 8 and Luke 5, Jesus simply declares him clean and moves him from ineligible to eligible and on a path back into community in one stroke of his word.

When holding this up as a model of grace, it is clear to me that the termination of TPS, and other removal policies, embodies the exact opposite posture and thus represents an opportunity for people of faith to offer a more loving alternative to policies that place those whom God loves in danger.

Just as Jesus always focused on finding the “paths back into community,” legislation like the Dream and Promise Act that is currently before the House of Representatives represents one policy solution more aligned with Jesus’ consistent model of grace of including rather than excluding. This bill offers one such concrete path to community.

I do not advocate for theocratic laws that enforce Christian values and principles. Any government can set the policies of its citizenship and border oversight. I do advocate, however, for Christians, as represented voices of our nation, to continue to help shape those policies to better reflect the embodied values of Jesus.

Ask yourself if the policy of moving someone’s status from eligible or legal to ineligible or illegal is consistent with the model of grace that Jesus consistently demonstrates through his encounters with those on the margins? Most importantly, as people of faith, let’s not shy away from the hard work of starting where God starts, so that we can also see the paths that lead back to community.