The National Latino Evangelical Coalition has also kept up a “sustained outreach and advocacy effort” on immigration reform, calling for bipartisan legislation to provide more resources for border enforcement and processing asylum cases while prioritizing family unification.
“Latino evangelicals are looking for people who know how to balance justice and mercy, law and humane treatment of people,” Salguero said of the election.
Bishop Jesus Santos Yáñez, a lifelong Republican whose family settled in Texas before it became part of the U.S., now leads a region of the Church of God of Prophecy covering Iowa, Colorado, Nebraska and Minnesota. He tells the pastors in his multiethnic and multiracial Pentecostal Holiness denomination that they must prioritize helping people without judgment in addition to following the law.
Recently, he accompanied advocates from Mission Talk, a Florida coalition of Latino evangelicals, on a visit to Tallahassee to speak out against new laws that raise penalties for immigrants lacking permanent legal status who are caught driving without a license.
On the National Day of Prayer in May, Yáñez prayed over Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, but like other evangelical Latino leaders, he said he cannot support former President Donald Trump because of the former president’s anti-immigrant and racist rhetoric.
The Rev. Juan García, pastor of the Hispanic congregation of First Baptist Church in Newport News, Virginia, said he spends a lot of time countering the right’s narrative that immigrants don’t belong. “The idea that we’re not loved, we’re not wanted or we’re not valued may be seeded or planted in the minds of people,” said García, who is Puerto Rican.
And García also reminds them of their own worth, saying they spiritually have the “blood of Christ” running through their veins.
García, moderator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a network of 1,800 Baptist congregations that formed in 1991 after breaking with the more conservative Southern Baptist Convention , was one of many Latino Protestant leaders who pushed back against Trump’s claims that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The people Trump is targeting, Garcia said, are those who are “making the economy run.”
Elket Rodríguez, an attorney and global migration advocate for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, lamented “the lack of seriousness” that lawmakers display when speaking about immigration reform, which he said is about more than U.S. aspirations and responsibilities. Rodríguez said “a highly intellectual and honest conversation” would address the root causes driving migration and the impact of immigration on questions around the future funding for Social Security, the nation’s aging population and job openings in agriculture and other sectors.
“If you ask me, misinformation is the biggest threat to migrants and those who want to host them,” Rodríguez said.
Some Latino faith leaders say the term “evangelical” has become too politicized, to represent them. Yáñez, García and Rodríguez all said that while evangelical describes their congregations accurately from a theological perspective, they now shy away from identifying that way.
