Illegal immigrants have a friend in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Illegal immigrants might have an unexpected ally amid the incoming Trump administration’s expected crackdown: Mormons.

“Mormons are balancing their respect for the law with compassion for immigrant communities,” said Stephen Cranney, a data researcher and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “If there were a mass deportation, a lot of Latter-day Saints in the United States would be gone.”

Jessica Larson, senior director of advocacy at Mormon Women for Ethical Government, said the LDS church doesn’t waffle on its message of humane treatment for other human beings.

“Let me be clear: we do not support rounding up any you know, we do not support ICE rounding up people and putting them in any types of camps on the border,” Ms. Larson told The Washington Times.

The LDS church, which has nearly 7 million U.S. members, has historically taken what it sees as a pragmatic and compassionate stance on immigration, calling for solutions that uphold family unity while respecting legal frameworks. The church differs from evangelical Protestants on immigration, despite holding similar views on other social issues like gay marriage and abortion.

A recent study by American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life found the LDS church was much less likely to view immigrants as burdens or to support harsh measures to deter illegal immigration, with only 6% of members agreeing that migrants should face increased danger crossing the border — the lowest among any faith group.

Several LDS sources say the church’s own history of national ostracization is, in part, what animates its advocacy for immigrant causes.

“When we were driven out of the eastern United States, we came to what was then Mexico, ironically enough: the Utah territory. When we came to Utah, it was technically Mexican territory,” Mr. Cranney said. “So occasionally, in general conference talk, [Mormon leaders] willl say, ‘We were refugees, too.’ In the same way, you know, that we were refugees and we were driven out, there’s this sort of obligation to help other refugees.”

A Fox News exit poll showed that 64% of Latter-day Saints supported President-elect Donald Trump, while 32% supported Vice President Kamala Harris.

Samuel Rugh, a member of the Latter-day Saints for Harris-Walz coalition and sociology professor at Brigham Young University, told Deseret News that Mr. Trump’s performance in Utah underwhelmed compared to other Republican presidential candidates. He noted that former Sen. Mitt Romney (himself a Mormon) and President George W. Bush, for instance, both claimed more that 70% of the LDS vote. 

Mr. Trump’s plans for mass deportation apparently include using the military. Late last month, he shared a social media post signaling plans to declare a national emergency.

According to the 2022 Cooperative Election Survey, 61% of Latter-day Saints supported granting legal status to undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria, including paying taxes and avoiding felony convictions. Among Republican Latter-day Saints, 52% backed this pathway to citizenship, the highest support among Republican religious groups.

The church’s unofficial pro-immigration stance isn’t without its internal challenges. While the church advocates for compassion, some members struggle with the tension between doctrinal principles and legal realities.

“Some members have asked why undocumented immigrants can hold temple ‘recommends,’” Mr. Cranney said, referring to the requirement for members to live in accordance with the law to enter LDS temples. “There’s a mix of opinions. You have members who are to the right of the church on this issue, and some who are to the left.”

This internal divide mirrors broader political polarization in the United States.

According to 2024 data provided to The Washington Times by the Utah Foundation, Utahns are generally supportive of immigration but draw a sharp distinction between legal and illegal immigration.

Two-thirds of Utah voters agree that “America’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation,” though conservative voters were more likely to worry that openness risks losing national identity.

Several members say this attitude is driven by the church’s expectation of a “mission” by young members, in which they spend six months to two years proselytizing in a particular area of the world, usually in pairs.

As Mr. Cranney pointed out in the Deseret News, researchers in a 2015 Columbia University Press report said a mission “fosters an empathetic perspective on illegal immigrants” having “seen firsthand the abject poverty that compels migrants to enter the U.S. illegally.”

But when the Latter-Day Saints support immigrants, they’re also supporting their own members.

“Anecdotally, I can tell you my own congregation has members from several South American and African countries,” Jennifer Wheeler, media specialist for the LDS church in Arizona, told The Times in an email. “Additionally, most states have congregations that are dedicated to a specific language (Spanish, Mandarin, French, etc.)”

Arizona, for example, has 51 Spanish-speaking congregations, church officials told The Times.

“It’s kind of conventional knowledge among missionaries that Hispanic communities are often more open to proselytizing than others,” Mr. Cranney said.

He noted that while living in Philadelphia, a large portion of his congregation consisted of Liberian immigrants, many of whom joined the church after moving to the United States.

In Prince George’s County, Maryland, where Mr. Cranney lives, many members of his ward are first-generation immigrants from Nigeria. “If all immigrant members disappeared tomorrow, it would leave a noticeable hole in many congregations,” he said.

Mormon aid to immigrants isn’t limited to those within their own ranks. Many church members are involved in advocacy work for immigrants at large, regardless of their religious status. The Mesa Welcome Center in Phoenix holds regular classes for foreigners to build their skills in English, and no questions are asked of participants about their legal status.

Dinorah Graham, the Mesa center’s director and an immigrant herself, said evangelism isn’t part of the team’s mission.

“We don’t evangelize, because we have students from different countries with different beliefs,” she said. “One of the classes that we teach helps to increase your spirituality, because in this country, we tell them, there is not a national religion.

“But it’s expected that all of us learn about treating each other with kindness and love and respect each other’s religion,” Ms. Graham said. “And we don’t teach the Gospel, but I teach my mission is to live in such a way like Christ, you know that the people can recognize him through our kindness, our service and our work.”

Ms. Larson’s group, Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG), works on mobilizing civic engagement and advocating for ethical policies in several arenas — immigration included. The LDS organization started informally on Facebook after the 2016 presidential election.

“A lot of the women that were going there were interested in what they considered to be anti-immigrant policies and executive orders of the first Trump administration,” she said. “Like, for example, when the executive order about limiting who could come into the country based on their country of origin, and then some of the border policies.”

On a personal note, Ms. Larson, an attorney, said she hopes the bipartisan immigration framework that Congress has put forward this year, and believes Mr. Trump will want to emerge from the border melee “a hero.”

“I personally think that he’ll want to claim that he solved immigration, that he solved these problems, that he is the hero,” she said. “Look what I did. See, nobody could do this for 45 years, and I came in and I did it. And I don’t know if it will solve the problems, but it would be a step forward.”