In N.C., Afghan refugees seek to belong, but face the threat of deportation | Opinion

On Christmas Eve 2023, my sermon topic was “The Flight to Egypt,” a time described in the Bible when the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph escape King Herod’s plan to kill baby Jesus.

As I was preaching, a Middle Eastern family entered the sanctuary, marked by her hijab and their accents. Their young boy began meandering about the sanctuary, even walking to the front of the sanctuary to play with the nativity set we place on the communion table during the Advent and Christmas season. Several folks from the church tried to redirect the child and engage the family while I preached. As the service ended, the family came forward to ask for help.

“We are at the end,” they said.

We formed a friendship in the following months as we talked about their needs and what was next for them as recent refugees who had sought refuge from persecution in Afghanistan. They had worked with the U.S. military as translators. They were threatened. Isolated. Lived in a refugee camp. Received the highest vetting possible. Had a child with unique needs. Wanted to work and make a living as Americans one day.

I helped the father start a mobile home repair business, and he has grown his business to include the occasional car sales. With jacks and hand tools he replaces transmissions, swaps engines, does body work, generally accomplishes more in a few hours than a shadetree mechanic like me can accomplish in a week.

They told me a year ago how they were afraid that the actions of other Afghan refugees would cast a pall over all of them. “There are bad people that came in when the U.S. left,” they said. They live in constant fear of doing something wrong and being deported, and come to me frequently for advice about doing the right thing – the American thing – including paying their taxes on time, doing legal business registrations, and reporting criminal activity to the police. They were carjacked a few months ago but worked with police in Charlotte to recover the car and catch the thief.

During Operation Charlotte’s Web, the ICE operations in North Carolina, they sent me pictures of men in body armor and masks circling their apartment complex in the back of pickup trucks. They would not leave the apartment and were scared to attend a doctor’s appointment for the mother’s pregnancy with their second child until we talked with her about safety and calling the police if they were scared.

The Washington, D.C., attack on National Guard soldiers by an Afghan national has struck terror and anger in their hearts. They are furious at their own people. “We do not want to be called Afghan. We want to be American.” They are terrified that the life they are building will be ripped away. Their case to complete their green card has been put on indefinite hold. The trauma of wondering if they will be carried away in a van any day is terrifying, even as the mother is one week from her due date. Even the thought of being analyzed again as they were when they were allowed to come in the first place – to re-establish that they had a credible fear of persecution – creates extraordinary stress.

“Will they take us away, brother Ben?” the mother asks me often.

My story is not unique among pastors in North Carolina. Those who opened their arms found the only threat from the arriving Afghan refugees was weight gain from the amazing food they prepare for us.

What to make of this shooting in D.C. and the problem of vetting? We can enhance the vetting for all those who landed during Operation Allies Welcome. They did not arrive as refugees and did not receive the same vetting my friends did. I’ve been to Washington, D.C., personally to plead with lawmakers to pass legislation like the Afghan Adjustment Act, which would both subject Operation Allies Welcome arrivals to the same gold-standard vetting as refugees and ensure those who passed it could remain permanently in the United States.

But the shooter in D.C. reportedly had the highest levels of vetting and worked with the CIA. Here we come to the Christmas story being told from pulpits across America: No amount of vetting precludes the reality of broken humanity or the ravages of psychosis. No vetting prevents someone making the choice to commit a crime. As a pastor, I have known clergy who abused children, elders who beat their wives, children who tried to kill their own parents — all of them U.S.-born American citizens. To assume that a whole people group must bear the blood guilt of one of their members would cast guilt on all of us, and it also violates a central piece of Christian theology: that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The Christmas story does not begin with light but with the acknowledgement of a deep darkness. The pathway out of that darkness does not begin with sending our Afghan allies back to face certain death, but rather within a manger. The first chapter of the Gospel of John tells us that a people walking in darkness see a great light, a light for all mankind. That light — our hope, safety, comfort and salvation from sin — is not in perfect vetting of broken people but in the hope of Jesus coming to earth.

Benjamin Marsh is a pastor at First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem.

This story was originally published December 15, 2025 at 2:09 PM with the headline "In N.C., Afghan refugees seek to belong, but face the threat of deportation | Opinion."