(RNS) — When President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, one of his first actions was to abruptly block migrants from seeking asylum in the United States through the southern border. Immediately, hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge lost a legal pathway forward.
But as despair flooded through the border city of Juarez, Mexico, where previously scheduled asylum appointments were canceled, some Christians cheered.
“We wanted to explore that tension,” historian and author Jemar Tisby told RNS on Wednesday (April 8). “How can people who claim to follow a migrant, Jesus, also celebrate when migrants are shut out from seeking safety?”
Tisby is something of an expert on contradictions within Christianity. Once an evangelical insider, he became a controversial figure among conservative evangelicals after the 2019 publication of his bestselling book “The Color of Compromise,” which examined U.S. Christians’ historical complicity with racism. Since then, he’s authored two other books about faith and resisting racism. And now, he’s taking his assessment of white Christian nationalism a step further through film.
“Jesus Was a Migrant,” which premiered in Los Angeles on Thursday, is the first official production of Tisby Studios, the filmmaking division of Tisby Media. It follows Tisby to the U.S.-Mexico border, where, in partnership with the Christian nonprofit FaithWorks, he encounters families finding hope through faith despite the hardships they’ve endured. From there, the documentary explores the relationship between Christian theology and U.S. immigration policy.
Others can sign up to host a screening of the film on its website. RNS spoke with Tisby, executive producer of the documentary, about the f …
