All year, we've witnessed in America a law enforcement presence dedicated to a single mission: mass deportation. While initially this mission was centered on the eradication of dangerous criminals, those now detained with no criminal history has outpaced those with convictions or pending criminal charges. The stories have been saddening and legally complex, leaving Christians with a tension between the mandates of "loving the foreigner in our midst" and the respect we owe to the ruling authorities appointed by God. A tension that cannot be broken by partisanship or by reducing this multifaceted issue to a binary designation of legal vs. illegal.

In today's episode, I talk to two World Relief staff members working in this area about the state of things in our country in an effort to continue my own education and to show just how complicated this all is. Ted Oswald and Anna Colby are both attorneys with World Relief's Immigration Legal Services helping immigrants and refugees in the Sacramento area. (You can find some of Anna's writing here.)

Cross & Gavel is a production of CHRISTIAN LEGAL SOCIETY. The episode was produced by Josh Deng, with music from Vexento.