ICE is Spending 38 Billion Dollars for Concentration Camps. Fiscal Conservatives and Red-Voting Jesus Followers, Where Are You?

Hey, is this thing on? Are you out there?Do You fiscal Conservatives still exist? Are Red-Voting followers of Jesus still a thing? Because right now, I’m having a really hard time accounting for either of you.According to The Washington Post, ICE is spending 38.3 billion dollars to buy warehouses across the country and turn them into detention centers.38 billion.We seemingly can’t afford to provide people with affordable healthcare, or give hungry kids food, but we can expedite the creation of massive concentration camps to address a need that has never been substantively proven to exist.We’re apparently unable to care for our veterans, or fund our public schools, or pay people a living wage, but we can essentially incarcerate tens of thousands of people, the majority of whom have never been given due process or convicted of a crime.The overall budget for ICE is close to 90 billion dollars.Where are you, fiscal Conservatives, on this kind of reckless spending? How is this a prudent use of financial resources, manpower, and infrastructure? Do you support allocating this amount of money to such an endeavor, considering the high costs of groceries, housing, and healthcare for all Americans?What is the economic justification for an initiative that is financially upending local communities, decimating international tourism, and crippling our nation’s farmers?How is any of this compatible with your stated economic ethos? And where are you, supposed Conservative Christians, in the face of this unprovoked violence toward an entire people group? What is your spiritual stance on racial profiling, indiscriminate violence, masked mercenaries, mass incarceration, and ethnic cleansing?How do you make theological sense of the kidnappings of children, the vicious beatings of fathers and grandmothers and big brothers, the shootings of peaceful bystanders, and the random brutality playing out all over our nation? How does any of this specifically embody the teachings of Jesus?What is your specific scriptural justification for not welcoming the stranger, for withholding care from the least of these, and for refusing to love your neighbor as yourself?When you see the unthinkable trauma to individuals, to families, to children, to local communities, to an entire nation, how does any of it align with your personal faith in Christ?Maybe I’m shouting into the void, here. Maybe my words are floating into the ether.Maybe I’m interrogating ghosts. Maybe fiscal Conservatives and actual red-voting followers of Jesus are relegated to our nation’s past.But if you’re out there, I’d really like to know precisely and explicitly how you people on the Right justify what this Administration is doing through ICE, either economically or morally, because from where I’m standing, this all feels both financially reckless and morally reprehensible.What am I missing here? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe