Genesis 21:8–21
Preachers don’t often spend time with Hagar’s story in part, I think, because it reflects so poorly on some of the so-called heroes of our faith. Abraham and Sarah are lionized throughout our liturgies, prayers, and the Scriptures themselves. Their treatment of Hagar, however, is by any measure abhorrent and horrible. They regard Hagar as property and an instrument of Abraham’s reproductive desires. They see Ishmael as little more than an inconvenience once Isaac comes along. They banish Hagar to her death alongside her child, choosing to let nature do their dirty work for them.
US immigration policy operates on similar lines. After decades of causing destabilization in Central and South America, the US became the recipient of the mass migrations that resulted from its military and political schemes. Rather than take responsibility for its actions, the US regularly refused asylum claims because to do so would essentially be an admission of guilt. To deal with the influx of migrants, the US adopted a policy of “prevention through deterrence." Prevention Through Deterrence was the US government’s way of letting nature do their dirty work for them.
The US closed customary locations for crossing, funneling migrants toward remote, harsh, depopulated, and dangerous regions of the desert. The terrain was hostile, dry, and hazardous. Since the adoption of this policy in 1994, thousands of migrants have died in the desert as a result. No More Deaths, a migrant advocacy group in Tucson, Arizona, estimates that only in the past two decades at least 7,000 people’s remains have been recovered in the desert.
Like Hagar and Ishmael’s expulsion into the desert, these are acts of premeditated murder. The US immigration strategy is one of premeditated harms against migrants in the service of our supposed safety and security. God intervenes on behalf of Hagar and Ishmael in Genesis, but no such deus ex machina exists for thousands of the dead in the desert. To this day, no one is named as the perpetrator of the deaths in the desert. No policy maker, border agent, or immigration official is listed on their death certificates. Instead, it’s blamed on the land and the migrants themselves.
It’s as if Sarah and Abraham were to stand up and say, “That’s a shame what happened to Hagar and Ishmael. So sad, but it’s dangerous in the desert.”
Preachers should engage this passage with their congregations, prompting them to consider the effects their choices, political alignments, and views of migrants have on actual lives. I went with my congregation to Tucson a few years ago in the heat of the summer to drop water stations in the desert with No More Deaths and Borderlinks. Confronting firsthand the cruelty of our immigration system changed the way members of the congregation regarded not just migrants but themselves and their government. Preaching these stories is no true substitute, but it is a place to start.
You can find out more about immersing yourself and your community in Borderlinks’ migrant work at borderlinks.org and you can read more about No More Deaths in the work of Isaac Villegas, especially in his book Migrant God: A Christian Vision for Immigrant Justice.
Rev. Wesley Spears-Newsome (he/they) is a pastor, organizer, and author from North Carolina.