Latino Latter-day Saints lament church’s silence on President Trump’s mass deportation campaign

Amid the Trump administration’s historic campaign of mass deportation of immigrants, top Latter-day Saint leaders have largely avoided the topic, last issuing a statement to the general public barely a week into Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Latino and Latina members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have noticed.

“I’ve just been very disappointed by…the church in general,” said Victoria Gomez, a 33-year-old Mexican American from Monterey, California. “It’s really just out of touch, an ivory tower.”

Sujey Vega, author of the new book “Mormon Barrio: Latino Belonging in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” said the silence emanating from Salt Lake City should come as little surprise. The same goes for the sense of betrayal felt by many of the faith’s immigrant members and their children.

“For years now,” said Vega, who teaches at Arizona State University, church leaders have “been kind of playing the role of ‘We welcome everyone, and we certainly appreciate our Spanish-speaking members,’ while also reinforcing the need to obey the law without ever critiquing it.”

What the church has said on immigration

When it comes to immigration, Latter-day Saint leaders have returned repeatedly to the same two points: A nation has the right to secure its borders, and policies ought to be humane while keeping families together.

“The bedrock moral issue…is how we treat each other as children of God,” the church’s 2011 manifesto on the topic stated.

The release, reiterated in fragments in subsequent statements, went out of its way to name a tactic of immigration enforcement that would be “a cause for concern, especially where race, culture or religion are involved.”

The “history of mass expulsion” should give policymakers “pause,” the release read, “particularly if that group comes mostly from one heritage.”

In 2018, in the first major policy statement under then-newly installed President Russell M. Nelson, the church urged Congress to act quickly to protect from deportation hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers,” whose undocumented parents brought them to the United States as children.

A year later, the church reupped its endorsement of the Utah Compact, a document originally crafted in 2010 emphasizing humane treatment of immigrants, keeping families together and focusing deportation on serious criminals.

Fast-forward to January 2025, the dawn of the second Trump presidency and its accompanying pledge of mass deportations. The Utah-based faith again released a statement reiterating its stance that immigration policy ought to balance a need for obedience to the law, love for “all God’s children” and keeping families together. Missing was any reference to mass expulsion.

More than a year and hundreds of thousands of detentions and deportations later, the church has yet to state or do anything publicly on the subject. This is true even as reports of family separations have grown — including among its own membership — and legal scholars have warned about unconstitutional actions taken by some immigration officers.

Why the muted response?

“They’re scared of losing Republican members,” said Laura Ortega Ruiz, a 38-year-old Mexican convert in Provo.

Most of the 10 Latino and Latina members interviewed for this story shared the same reasoning. After all, a majority of U.S. Latter-day Saints have voted for Trump each time his name has appeared on a ballot.

That backing comes even as Latter-day Saint immigrants and their families, all said, face daily fears and hardships under the current administration.

Life in immigration limbo

JP was 11 when he and his father left Nicaragua and headed for the United States.

The Tribune agreed to identify him only by his initials because JP lacks permanent legal status.

Now 16, the Chicago Latter-day Saint is a proud owner of a driver permit.

As a high school student, JP has the typical worries of a boy his age — school, figuring out his future, relationships. Also: what to do if the courts reject his or his father’s application for asylum.

The teenager said he wishes church leaders took a more vocal role in advocating for those like him and his father who came to the United States to “reach their dreams,” especially as reports of deaths of those in immigration detention centers continue to grow.

“If LDS leaders said something,” he said, “that would really have an impact on the government.”

‘The permission to tune out’

How much sway Latter-day Saint leaders have on Washington is hard to say. But church members are very much within their realm of influence, argued a 42-year-old Mexican American woman living in Utah County.

The daughter of a Mexican father and a European American mother, the Latter-day Saint asked that her name not be used out of fear for her and her family’s physical safety.

“I tell my son,” she said, pausing as her voice cracked in emotion, “not to wear his Mexico soccer jersey to school anymore because I’m afraid.”

She is hardly alone. She said she’s had conversations with at least 10 other Mexican American families, Latter-day Saints in Utah County, who live in constant fear of being targeted for hate speech — or worse. They wonder why, she added, the church has not done more to uproot the anti-immigrant fervor that feels increasingly commonplace.

“The church’s silence emboldens white nationalists,” she said, “and gives other members the permission to tune out.”

In contrast, the lifelong Utahn said she’s been inspired by how outspoken Pope Leo XIV, who has condemned the country’s treatment of immigrants as “inhuman,” has been on the issue, saying she wished Latter-day Saint leaders would take note.

One of her “biggest disappointments” came from watching the most recent General Conference, waiting, and never hearing, a top church official mention the issue.

An echo from the past

The church’s current response looks and, for those impacted, feels a lot like its muted reaction to a controversial Arizona law from 2010, scholar of religion Sujey Vega said.

In her new book, Vega describes the deep wounds she uncovered in the course of interviews with 14 Latino and Latina Latter-day States in the Grand Canyon State around the time of the law’s passage.

Sponsored by a Latter-day Saint state senator, SB1070, since partially struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, allowed police to arrest anyone they believed to be undocumented.

For immigrant church members living in the area, the law threatened their families, Vega writes. So why, her interviewees wondered, didn’t the church, with its intense focus on the importance of families, condemn it?

Adding to their frustration was how deeply the church had been willing to wade into state politics two years earlier in the case of California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, done so under the banner of protecting the institution of the family.

“‘When Proposition 8 was going on, they were basically saying vote for the values that you believe the church stands for and for your families,’” Vega quotes one interviewee as saying. “‘The church has sent political messages from the pulpits…[and] for immigrants they said nothing.’”

Vega hears similar laments today when she speaks with Spanish-speaking Latter-day Saints about the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrants.

“[Members] are not outright condemning the prophet,” she said. “But I’ve heard rumblings of, ‘I wish the prophet would do this’ or ‘I wish the prophet would do that.’”

Wistfulness, not criticism.

And not from every Spanish-speaking Latter-day Saint.

Latino and Latina members are not a monolith, she and others stressed, explaining that some — in many cases older and documented members, some with white American spouses — support the immigration crackdown, a resolute minority within a minority.

What they wish the church would say and do

For several years, the church has operated immigration welcome centers and English classes regardless of legal status. And bishops, or lay leaders of congregations, are encouraged to offer food and other basic needs to all.

And yet, all those interviewed for this story agreed — more help is needed.

Paying for housing and medical care for members lacking permanent legal status, plus allowing them to work at church-owned food pantries, known as bishops’ storehouses, and publicly defending immigrants in the media — these were some of the specifics on interviewees’ wish lists for actions the church would take. So, too, was providing sanctuary for those worshipping in Latter-day Saint meetinghouses.

However, the church ruled out many of these in its February 2025 guidelines distributed to bishops and stake (regional) presidents, citing a desire to avoid conflicts with federal laws.

And therein is the heart of the tension, Vega explained. The church has repeatedly stressed that equally important to family unity is obedience to the law.

But what happens when the two are in conflict?

In her book, Vega summarizes the answer she encountered most often, one reflected in the interviews for this story: “Heavenly Father [prioritizes] family unity over arbitrary borders or unjust laws.”

Then and now, these members hope to see their church follow suit.

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