Voices: Once refugees, Latter-day Saints should resist Trump’s immigration policies

In the early decades after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in 1830, its members endured intense political persecution and violence. Cast as social outcasts whose beliefs — especially polygamy— threatened mainstream Christianity, they were driven from their homes by mobs and state militias. Missouri’s infamous 1838 “Extermination Order,” labeling Latter-day Saints “enemies” to be “exterminated or driven from the state,” remains one of the starkest examples of government-sanctioned religious persecution in U.S. history. Their forced migration to the Salt Lake Valley stands as one of America’s largest displacements.

I raise this history not simply to rehash what many Latter-day Saints already know, but because it matters now. As a student of Mormon history and someone who researches the intersection of religion and key political issues, I see unsettling parallels between the rhetoric once used to justify violence against early Saints and the language now deployed against undocumented immigrants — especially under President Donald Trump’s renewed political influence.

For decades, Latter-day Saint leaders have preached compassion. During Trump’s first term, the church’s governing First Presidency issued a rare public statement condemning family separation. The 2016 churchwide initiative “I Was a Stranger” explicitly reminded members that early Saints were refugees themselves and encouraged them to welcome and serve those fleeing violence.

Yet recent statements have taken a noticeably softer — and more cautious — tone. Calls to “love our neighbor” are routinely paired with admonitions to “obey the law.” On the surface this sounds balanced, but in practice it amounts to moral retreat. It signals tacit compliance with the harsh expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, deportations, and punitive restrictions on asylum that Trump has begun to reinstate.

More troubling still, many Latter-day Saints, emboldened by MAGA rhetoric, have embraced harsh anti-immigrant views that blend racism, fear, and indifference. A 2024 Public Religion Research Institute survey found that nearly a third of U.S. Latter-day Saints agreed with the statement that immigrants entering illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.” This phrase — lifted from Nazi propaganda and echoed recently by Trump — should deeply unsettle a people once branded as an impure, subversive population corrupting the nation.

This rhetoric also mirrors a dark chapter in Latter-day Saint history, when “impure blood” was invoked to justify the priesthood and temple ban on members of African descent. Hearing similar language now applied to immigrants is both tragic and telling.

To be fair, Latter-day Saints consistently show more openness toward immigration than their white evangelical peers. A 2012 Pew report found that 41% of Latter-day Saints viewed immigrants as a “burden,” compared with 59% of white evangelicals. A 2015 study showed that 26% of Latter-day Saints favored increased immigration — twice the evangelical rate and higher than any other conservative religious group. More recently, the 2022 Cooperative Election Study confirmed that attitudes among Latter-day Saints remain comparatively more welcoming. This is likely due to the church’s global footprint and the cross-cultural perspective many members gain through missionary service.

Still, being “less xenophobic than evangelicals” is hardly a moral victory. Too many Latter-day Saints now align with a political movement whose language and policies mirror the persecution and dehumanization their own ancestors endured. In 1838, Latter-day Saints were cast as subversive enemies to be removed — a framing disturbingly similar to the one used today against undocumented immigrants.

Given these parallels, the church’s current approach — generic appeals to compassion paired with an insistence on legal compliance — falls woefully short. Early Latter-day Saint leaders did not urge obedience to laws that declared them exterminable or forced them from their homes. They resisted, morally and practically.

The question now is whether modern Latter-day Saints will do the same when the targets are not themselves but vulnerable undocumented people within our country.

Inspired by their refugee heritage, global expansion, and vast financial resources, Latter-day Saints should do more than offer vague encouragements. They should:

• Publicly oppose policies that separate families, expand detention, or criminalize humanitarian aid.

• Organize legal and financial support for undocumented immigrants, partnering with community organizations that already do this work.

• Reject and confront dehumanizing language — in politics, in church settings, and at home.

• Reclaim their own refugee narrative, acknowledging that legality and morality are not the same and never have been.

Illinois artist John McNamara posed the piercing question: “Who would Jesus deport?” The answer remains simple: no one. Christ stood with the displaced and condemned those who cast them out. “I was a stranger and ye took me in.”

It is time for Latter-day Saints to end this hypocrisy, honor their past, and stand firmly with those facing the same injustice they once endured.

Keith Burns is a graduate student at the University of Chicago whose research focuses on sexuality and gender in Mormonism.

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