In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan delivered a no-holds-barred defense of Trump’s mass deportation regime at the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Victory Dinner in Duluth, Georgia, last week in an event that appeared designed to bolster the campaigns of two major Republican candidates running for U.S. Senate and governor in the state. 

Homan’s speech signaled that an unabashed defense of the administration’s immigration brutality is a key part of its midterm strategy to mobilize right-wing evangelical and Catholic voters to back Republicans. In a surprisingly profanity-laced speech that castigated critics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), including Democrats and federal judges, Homan became another administration official to inject himself into midterms campaigning this cycle, this time to lend a Christian imprimatur to Trump’s racist and violent assault on immigrants.

“We got elections coming up,” Homan told the crowd. “You better get out there.” He warned that Democrats would try to reverse the “successes” achieved by ICE and Border Control, who he praised as “part of the finest 1% this country has.” Homan, a Catholic who, along with Vice President JD Vance, has attacked Pope Leo’s critiques of the Trump regime’s immigration crackdown, added, “God bless the men and women of the Border Control and God bless the men and women of ICE.” To critics on the right, who, Homan claimed, have complained that immigration authorities are insufficiently “serious” about mass deportations, he retorted, “you’re full of shit.” He blamed Democrats and “radical judges” for thwarting administration efforts, and........

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