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# Two Questions About ICE
- URL: https://www.pietaspublica.com/two-questions-about-ice/
- Published: 2026-09-14T12:50:13.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-18T01:42:48.000Z
- Description: A nation is not a waiting room
- Author: Flavius Iustinus
- Tags: Forum Publicum

Moore’s recent use of Romans 13 against immigration enforcement runs two questions together and then congratulates itself for solving both.  
  
Let  
  
(D′): A nation may remove persons who have no legal right to remain, and may do so because a people cannot remain a people if its borders are optional.  
  
(F): This particular act of force, on this particular day, was just.  
  
Moore writes as if objections to (F) were objections to (D′). That is the whole trick. It is an old trick. It still works on people who would like (D′) to be false and have not yet found an argument.  
  
These are different propositions. They have different truth-conditions. A shooting can be rash, wicked, or sloppy without the underlying law being a usurpation. A law can be just and still be executed by fools. If you cannot tell those apart, you are not doing ethics. You are doing mood.  
  
Paul says the magistrate bears the sword against the wrongdoer. He does not say the magistrate bears the sword only when the wrongdoer is a kind of wrongdoer we find it tasteful to punish. Illegal presence is not a liturgical category. It is a civic one. A country that will not decide who belongs to it will eventually be decided by whoever walks in. That is not “baptizing the oppressor.” That is noticing what a country is.  
  
“But the children.” “But the manner.” “But the video.” Those belong to (F). They may be grave. They may require investigation, discipline, better rules of engagement, an end to theatrical cruelty. None of that answers (D′). You may demand that deportation be lawful, limited, and decent because you think the country has a right to remain whole. That is the opposite of Moore’s inference, which treats every ugly frame as a reason to retire the office.  
  
The Received View among Certain Evangelicals is that Romans 13 is a text about not becoming vengeful, and therefore a text against enforcement. That is like saying the sixth commandment is about not becoming a murderer, and therefore a text against the police. The command that limits the sword is not the command that abolishes it. If Moore wants to argue that this use of force failed the test of Romans 13:4—terror to bad conduct, praise for good—he should argue that. What he may not do is wave the chapter at anyone who still believes (D′), as if belief in (D′) were the same act as blessing a corpse.  
  
I am for deportation because a nation is not a waiting room. How the thing is done is a second conversation, and it should be a serious one. It is not a reason to pretend the first conversation never started.  
  
Notes  
  
1\. Russell Moore, “[Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13](https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/01/christians-romans-13-ice-shooting-minneapolis/?ref=pietaspublica.com),” Christianity Today, January 14, 2026.  
  
2\. Romans 13:4.  
  
3\. See “[The Politeness Criterion](https://www.pietaspublica.com/the-politeness-criterion/).”