Trump’s faith guru: ‘Jesus wouldn’t have been an illegal immigrant’

A US televangelist who acts as a spiritual advisor to President Donald Trump has defended the White House’s hardline stance on border control, saying that Jesus would not have been a ‘sinful’ illegal immigrant.

Pentecostal preacher Paula White, chair of the president’s Evangelical Executive Advisory Board, told the Christian Broadcasting Network that Jesus could not have been the Messiah if the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt had violated immigration law.

“I think so many people have taken biblical scriptures out of context on this, to say stuff like, ‘well, Jesus was a refugee,’’ White said.

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“Yes, he did live in Egypt for three-and-a-half years,” White said. “But it was not illegal. If he had broke the law then he would have been sinful and he would not have been our Messiah.”

The Book of Matthew tells how Mary and Joseph fled Judea with the infant Jesus to escape the wrath of King Herod, an example cited by Christian groups who oppose the crackdown at the US-Mexico border which has resulted in the separation of thousands of families.

White, a longtime friend of the president before his election victory, said that her recent visit to a holding facility for undocumented immigrants in Virginia and had “100%” cemented her faith in the administration’s policies, The Hill reports.

Detainees held there receive “three square meals, psychiatric care, clinician, medical care, chapel, events, schooling, language, and love”, she claimed.

The televangelist is not the first member of the president’s inner circle to use Christian scripture to justify the strict enforcement of border control, Newsweek reports.

Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the Bible to justify detaining those who cross the border illegally.

“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes,” he said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later stood by Sessions’ comments, telling reporters it was “very biblical to enforce the law”.