When the Israelites were about to enter the Promised Land, they were given instructions and how to live in community together. They were to observe the Sabbath, and rituals that went with it. But much of the instruction had to do with how they treated each other and set themselves apart as holy people.

The 19th chapter of Leviticus instructs the people in principles of generosity and justice. Justice must be fair with no favoritism shown, with neither slander nor revenge, for they were to “Love their neighbor as themselves.” Leviticus 19:18b

The Levitical Code insisted on care for immigrants. ” When immigrants live in your land with you, you must not cheat them.  Any immigrant who lives with you must be treated as if they were one of your citizens. You must love them as yourself, because you were immigrants in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:33-34

Since Donald Trump took office, rather than being respected and treated fairly, our immigrant population has been persecuted. Laws have been subverted, changed and unjustly applied.

Most recently, a naturalized citizen and sitting member of Congress, my Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar,  has been targeted, with the hope the Trump administration will find something, which will allow them to deport her. Claiming fraud from paperwork her  father submitted almost  30 years ago, as he became a citizen.

President Trump, has an unnatural hate for Ilhan Omar. Having tried and failed to find fraud previously, during the first Trump administration, last week the Department of Homeland Security raided her home, seized her phone, laptop and papers, searching for some evidence she is older than she is. A fishing expedition, to get back at a Somali American, who is critical of the president.

Ilhan Omar left Somalia as an 8-year-old fleeing war, spending four years in a refugee camp in Kenya. At the age of 12 her family immigrated to  the United States. Any papers related to her birth were either lost fleeing the war, or never existed. Like refugees before her, the date of her birth existed in the memory of her parents. When her father became a naturalized citizen, Rep. Omar was a junior in high school and was granted citizenship through her father’s naturalization. Her now deceased father vouched she was 17 at the time. The Trump administration is trying to prove, that even though she was a junior in high school, she was actually 18, and therefore should not have been granted citizenship, and thereby committed fraud. It is difficult to assign fraud to a high school refugee student.

Our president has trouble with intelligent women, who challenge him. But Ilhan Omar is not only an intelligent woman, but an intelligent black woman of Somali descent,  who is Muslim. The president has made no secret of his contempt for the entire Somali population in our country, more than 80,000 of whom live in my state. People who are my neighbors, staff care centers, greet me at checkout counters and are among our police officers.

That hate directed to an entire population of Somali people demeans our country and what it means to be a citizen. The Biblical mandate expressed both in Leviticus and in Matthew, is to love our neighbors, as we do ourselves. If we are to be the nation we claim we want to be, it will be because we have put love for our neighbors at the center of our politics, regardless of ethnic background and color of their skin.

Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40