White Christian Nationalists' Love of ICE and Concentration Camps, in Three Charts
Plus the latest from Redeeming Democracy
As the empirical evidence for the threat white Christian nationalism presents to pluralistic democracy has mounted over the past decade, various insider defenders of conservative white Christianity—and even some mainstream white Christian theologians—have alleged that the term is simply a cudgel. Those who qualify as Christian nationalists on public opinion surveys, they argue, only want to see a role for their faith in the public square. According to these white Christian defenders, rather than capturing a genuine threat to democracy, Christian nationalism is a figment of the ungenerous imaginations of a woke secularist left.
Few of these critics of the term Christian nationalism have carefully engaged with the growing body of rigorous peer-reviewed evidence produced by political scientists Sam Perry and Andrew Whitehead, sociologist Phil Gorski, PRRI, and others. Most either don’t understand or intentionally misrepresent the way that statistical scales comprised of multiple survey questions work.
They quibble with individual question wording without acknowledging the statistically robust way these batteries of questions hold together (e.g., confirmation with factor analysis and a very high 0.93 Cronbach’s alpha measure of internal consistency on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0), measures that indicate that these attitudes comprise a coherent underlying worldview. Moreover, they seldom grapple with the deeply troubling ways these Christian nationalist attitudes—particularly among white Christians—are strongly correlated to anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, antisemitic, anti-Black, and misogynistic beliefs that are anathema not only to liberal democracy but the fundamental Christian ethic of love.
Today, I want to focus on just one disturbing fact: the way white Christians who score high on the Christian nationalist scale support ICE and the building of concentration camps for immigrants on U.S. soil.
We all saw the violent behavior of masked ICE officers in Minneapolis, which resulted in the fatal shootings of Renée Nicole Goode and Alex Pretti, along with the shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. During Trump’s second term, nine people have been shot and killed by federal officers from ICE and CBP. In 2025 alone, 31 people died in ICE custody. Just last week, we got this news:
ICE officers killed two people over the past week, in Houston and the coastal city of Biddeford, Maine, amid a recent surge in immigration arrests. Both were shot after agents tried to stop their vehicles, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
There was a brief window in which ICE was ordered to halt vehicle stops because they had lead to these deadly killings of innocent people, only to have President Trump quickly order them to resume.
The support for Trump’s mass deportation plans and violent tactics—almost exclusively targeting non-white immigrants (while putting out the welcome mat for white South Africans)—is increasingly unpopular among most Americans. But among the white Christian nationalist MAGA base, support remains remarkably high.
The following chart demonstrates that self-identified Republicans are “all in” on Trump’s mass deportation agenda and the buildup of ICE. Across four different questions, seven in ten Republicans support ICE, compared to less than one quarter of all other Americans.
More notable are the opinions of white Americans who score high on the Christian nationalism scale and qualify as Christian Nationalist Adherents or Sympathizers.
Here’s the rundown of support for ICE among white Christian nationalist Adherents and Sympathizers, compared to the rest of the country:
Three quarters (75%) DISAGREE that the surge of ICE officers in places like Minnesota are making our communities less safe., compared to 29% of all other Americans.
77% favor the increase in funding for ICE to increase efforts to arrest, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants, compared to only one quarter (25%) of all other Americans.
71% DISAGREE that ICE officers should be prohibited from concealing their identity with masks or using unmarked vehicles when arresting people, compared to only 26% of all other Americans.
74% hold favorable views of ICE officers, compared to only 22% of all other Americans.
Notably, Christian nationalism is the decisive dividing attitude among whites. Whites who reject Christian nationalism (who qualify as Christian nationalism Skeptics or Rejecters) disagree with their Christian nationalist peers on all of these questions.
But the most chilling evidence for the threat white christian nationalism poses to American democracy is their support for concentration camps on U.S. soil.
Here, nearly identical patterns emerge. Approximately three quarters of both Republicans (73%) and white Christian nationalist Adherents/Sympathizers (77%) agree that the federal government should detain immigrants who are in the country illegally in internment camps until they can be deported. Less than one third of all other Americans agree with this sentiment.
And again, Christian nationalist sentiments starkly divide white Americans. Only 33% of whites who reject the Christian nationalist worldview support detaining immigrants in internment camps.
Taken together, this data paints an ominous portrait of the America that white Christian nationalists want to see. White Christian nationalists are not just supportive of their own rights to carry their beliefs into the public square. Ultimately, they want to purge the public square, and our cities and neighborhoods, of people who do not believe and look like them.
Even in the face of demonstrable violence by ICE and the deaths of innocent people including American citizens, those who qualify as white Christian nationalists enthusiastically support Trump’s masked enforcers whose rough appearance and thuggish behaviors resemble Hitler’s Brownshirts or vigilantes more than trained law enforcement. And if we still needed to see a clear line in the sand, the building of concentration camps across the land is a clear indicator of just how far they’ve cheered America down the path to authoritarianism.
