The Family Research Council and Intercessors for America, representing the traditional religious-right movement and MAGA-era spiritual-warfare wings of Trump’s base, are trashing the DIGNITY Act, a bipartisan congressional proposal to make it possible for some law-abiding, long-time undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally while denying most of them any path to citizenship.
The coordinated effort to squash the DIGNITY Act undermines the efforts of Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, who is promoting the legislation, also known as the DIGNIDAD Act, the Spanish word for dignity.
Rodriguez has been a loyal member of the MAGA religious-right, speaking at conferences, urging Hispanic Christians to vote for Trump, praying at Trump’s inauguration, and showing up to bless Trump at the White House. His reward for that loyalty has been to have the administration make a liar out of him. Rodriguez repeatedly urged Hispanic voters not to fear Trump’s mass-deportation rhetoric, telling people that his contacts assured him that Trump would focus on getting rid of the worst criminals and would not target people with families who have been in the country and contributing to their communities for many years.
As we all know, that didn’t turn out to be true.
While Trump has sometimes made comments suggesting he’d like to work something out for law-abiding people who have been living here for years, his base won’t let him. As Right Wing Watch recently reported, the Stephen Miller-Steve Bannon wing of the MAGA movement is in no mood to compromise. In fact, the new Mass Deportation Coalition is demanding an even more aggressive approach to detaining and removing people “without political carve-outs or deference to special interests.” The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Baptist Leadership—a group led by Christian nationalist William Wolfe—are part of the coalition pushing a harder line.
The DIGNITY Act has some bipartisan backing in the House of Representatives and is supported by a coalition that includes Rodriguez’s NHCLC and the National Latino Evangelical Coalition along with some business groups, but does not appear to include major civil rights and immigrant rights organizations.
Over the weekend, the Family Research Council’s news and commentary outlet “The Washington Stand” published an article calling the DIGNITY Act an “amnesty bill” and highlighting the “fierce backlash” that has greeted it. The heavily slanted article quoted multiple spokespeople from the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Statistics and Republican Members of Congress denouncing and mocking the bill, along with right-wing activist Matt Walsh and Project 2025 sponsor the Heritage Foundation.
On Tuesday, the pro-Trump spiritual warriors at Intercessors for America promoted the FRC article and urged readers to pray that God would “stop any effort to grant mass amnesty that undermines justice in our nation” and would give the nation’s leaders “the courage to put Americans first and enforce our immigration laws with integrity.”
Given how closely connected IFA is with the Trump administration—IFA runs what amounts to a public relations campaign for the administration under the banner of The White House Prayer Team—it’s safe to assume that IFA’s prayers against “amnesty” are a clear signal that those hoping for a more compassionate immigration enforcement policy are unlikely to get any help from the White House.
Indeed, on Monday the White House Prayer Team’s email newsletter promoted a White House press release denouncing Democrats, highlighting a handful of undocumented immigrants who committed violent crimes, and charging that those crimes “are the direct and deadly result of Radical Left policies that prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens.” A few days earlier, the Prayer Team promoted a White House email celebrating Trump’s replacement of immigration judges with people who can be counted on to reject virtually all asylum claims.
In January, IFA and the White House Prayer Team backed ICE in the face of backlash against its violent actions in Minneapolis.
