Latino evangelical leader Samuel Rodriguez, who portrays himself as a champion for law-abiding immigrants, is scheduled to speak this week at a conference organized by the religion arm of TPUSA, whose leader Charlie Kirk promotes harsh anti-immigration positions and rhetoric. TPUSA’s focus is on promoting right-wing ideology among young people; its newer TPUSA Faith project works to convince right-wing pastors to be more aggressive in their political engagement.
Rodriguez and other dominionist and Christian nationalist figures are listed as speakers at a TPUSA Faith pastors summit being held at a resort in Rancho Palos Verdes in California Aug. 6-8. Kirk has largely abandoned his previous libertarian leanings to embrace and promote a Christian nationalist agenda as well as strident America First rhetoric when it comes to immigration.
Rodriguez has remained solidly in President Donald Trump’s camp even as the administration’s brutal sweeps and deportations have made a liar out of Rodriguez, who repeatedly assured Hispanic Americans that law-abiding “good people” would not be targeted for deportation.
Meanwhile, Kirk insists that “every single trespasser” should be deported, including whole families. “If we compromise on immigration law, then we do not HAVE immigration law,” Kirk said recently, adding, “We must be uncompromising in the enforcement of law, period.”
At a TPUSA event in July, “border czar” Tom Homan said his officers prioritize public safety and national security threats, but added, “If you’re in the country illegally, you’re on the table.” Homan warned, “You harbor and conceal an illegal alien, you’re going to jail.”
Kirk’s hostility to immigration goes beyond those who are undocumented. In 2023 he declared, “We have way too many legal immigrants coming into this country.” This June, he tweeted, “It’s time to ban third world immigration, legal or illegal.” He went on to say, “We need a net-zero immigration moratorium with a ban on all third worlders.” He also tweeted that “BOTH illegal and legal immigration can ruin your country,” calling U.S. legal migration policies “suicidal.”
Rodriguez: A Trump True Believer
It’s arguable that nobody has played a bigger role promoting Donald Trump to American Latinos than Rodriguez, a California-based pastor, New Apostolic Reformation figure, and head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference.
Rodriguez has been promoting Trump for years. Back in 2016, Rodriguez told his followers that getting an anti-abortion Supreme Court was more important than Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. He was rewarded by being invited to give a prayer at Trump’s inauguration. In 2020, Rodriguez assured people that Trump’s “heart is in the right place.”
After Trump’s 2024 victory, Rodriguez celebrated the increased percentage of the Latino vote that went for Trump, calling Trump “a brother.” Rodriguez helped secure that vote by telling his followers not to worry about Trump’s mass deportation rhetoric, and he continued giving soothing assurances after the election.
In November, Rodriguez appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network where he suggested that he was speaking with inside knowledge gained from his “access to the team.” He said the Trump administration was “going to come after the criminal element” and single males who came into the country during the Biden administration. He insisted that people living peacefully in the country for a long period of time would not be targeted, saying, “the idea that they’re going to come after families that have been here for 25 years … [shaking his head no] …That’s not going to happen.”
In December, Rodriguez made a similar case in an appearance on NPR, saying his comments were based on conversations with Trump’s transition team:
The mass deportations will focus on the mucho malo hombres - those that are involved in criminal activities. I do not believe the incoming administration will be targeting a man who is working, who's been here for 20 years, whose family was raised here and kids were born here and has never even received a parking ticket. I do not believe that person will be targeted for deportation.
Of course, that has not turned out to be true.
Denial and Defense
Rodriguez kept up the pro-Trump messaging once the administration was in power. While Rodriguez has sometimes criticized the kind of arrests and deportations that he said would not be taking place, he speaks as if they are a result of immigration officials ignoring rather than carrying out Trump’s orders.
Early in the new administration, while some evangelical leaders were criticizing Trump’s policies on immigration and international aid, Rodriguez joined with other evangelical leaders to “affirm” Trump’s policies and challenge “the proliferation of misinformation by political activists who seek to promote fear rather than long-term solutions.” They pledged to advocate for “long-term solutions, especially for those families long rooted in the United States.”
Rodriguez gave Trump cover when the president announced that churches were no longer off limits to ICE. He defended Trump’s halt on refugee settlement. He repeated the administration’s talking point about “collateral damage.” He excused Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship.
In March, Rodriguez and a gathering of Christian nationalist and dominionist leaders were invited to pray over Trump in the Oval Office.
In June, Rodriguez released a statement thanking Trump for “making crystal clear that the focus on enforcement must be on real dangers--‘criminals’, not on the quiet, hard‑working people who have built their lives here.” He called for a “permanent, humane solution for those who have made America their home in everything but paperwork.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s comments suggesting that ICE would hold off on sweeps of farms or worksites was short-lived when he got pushback from immigration hardliners and reversed course.
Trust Me
In June, when militarized ICE sweeps in Los Angeles were met with protests, Rodriguez appeared on Univision’s Primer Impacto, a Spanish-language program, where host Pamela Silva asked how Rodriguez could justify the broad raids, including arrests of people appearing in immigration courts, which were spreading fear in immigrant communities.
Rodriguez’s first response was to blame the Biden administration. And he claimed, without offering any evidence, that “most of the people leading these protests are not people from Los Angeles,” alleging that they were being led by far-left “Antifa” groups.
Rodriguez said that the White House told him it is prioritizing criminals but that their friends and family members are sometimes caught up. He said he did not agree with deporting “good people” who have been in the country for years without committing any crime other than crossing the border or overstaying their visa.He said he feels the community’s pain and promised that he is not being silent, even if he could not share details of his conversations with policymakers.
Rodriguez also appeared on PBS NewsHour in June, when host Geoff Bennett showed video of Rodriguez telling viewers in November, “I would be the first one vociferously protesting if the administration comes after families that have been here 20, 25, 30 years, 15 years, God-fearing, hard-working, not living off government subsidies, whose children were born here.”
Bennett asked, “So did you protest when ICE started deporting long-settled families and farm workers?”
“I can’t necessarily express how I protested,” Rodriguez responded, “but I can say with clear conviction and with a love to God and integrity in my children, I can go to sleep at night knowing that I was faithful to my word.” Rodriguez said that he has expressed his “angst” and “consternation” with members of the administration, though he declined to share specifics.
“I was given assurances,” he continued, “and I commend and applaud President Trump for pivoting from making a declarative statement as it pertains to, ‘Please, target the criminal element,” and, his wording, not mine, ‘leave the good people who are hardworking,’ and he was referencing farmworkers in California, but others likewise, leave them alone.”
He continued to praise Trump. “I agree with President Trump’s clear articulation that the priority should be exclusively those involved in nefarious activities,” he said, asserting that “if Homeland Security would execute President Trump’s instructions, the fear would go away and we would work on a congressional solution.”
The Questionable Politics of Cruelty
The recent Republican budget bill massively boosted the budget for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. And thanks to Trump stripping more than one million people who were here under some form of legal protection, there are far more people eligible to be deported, as the American Immigration Council recently noted. Some immigrants are being hit with massive fines with less due process. MAGA politicians are using concentration camps as photo-ops.
If there is, as Rodriguez seems to suggest, a struggle behind the scenes between people seeking a more compassionate policy toward longtime undocumented immigrants and people like Stephen Miller and Charlie Kirk who want to deport every last one of them, it’s pretty clear that the cruelty crowd is winning out so far.
That’s not to say it couldn’t change. Trump’s mass deportation policies have not proved as popular as the administration had hoped; a recent poll showing that his approval rating on the immigration issue has fallen 9 percentage points since April as his net approval rating overall has dropped to -20.
Moreover, a recent Gallup poll found that Trump’s approval rating on immigration among Hispanic adults is just 21 percent, compared to 35 percent nationally. Rodriguez told the Christian Broadcasting Network this month that the fear generated by ICE raids is having a harmful impact on Latino evangelical churches, with many experiencing 35 or 40 percent drops in attendance. "This is serious," he said.
The unpopularity of the mass deportation strategy, which is about to get amplified with billions of dollars and new detention camps, could create angst among Republican officials. GOP leaders presumably do not want to alienate a key constituency that has been moving in their direction, but they could have a hard time taking a different path that would be acceptable to a MAGA base that has been bombarded with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote in July that Americans want a secure border, but they “also are compassionate, don’t want to break up families, and shrink from harsh roundup tactics.” The editorial suggested that Trump might have an opportunity to get “real immigration reform” through Congress, but doesn’t seem convinced that he will, asking, “Who knows whether he will try.”
After all, Trump is the guy who pressured congressional Republicans to kill a bipartisan border bill so that he could continue to use immigration as a campaign issue.
