If you know me, you know how much I hate ICE. I have hated this agency since its inception, years before Donald Trump was anything more than a reality-show host with a bankruptcy habit. I have roasted the people who volunteer to cosplay for it, documented what it did to Los Angeles, and explained why it was always going to go rogue, because I never believed ICE was built on a legitimate premise. Let’s be clear about something: America’s immigration system was a dysfunctional, discriminatory mess long before ICE came along. We had decades of abusive enforcement, family separations, racial profiling, and politicians treating immigrants like disposable campaign props. Then 9/11 happened, the country collectively lost its goddamn mind, and Washington decided what this already broken system needed was another federal agency with a bigger budget, a scarier acronym, and even less accountability. ICE was born out of that psychological wreckage in 2003, and it has spent the intervening years demonstrating that the government can always find a way to make an already terrible situation worse. I am never happy to see anyone hauled into ICE custody. I have watched this agency detain American citizens, terrorize communities, and put families through hell while the GOP shrugged, and nothing about that has ever made me smile.
Well, scratch that. There is one exception. I get a certain joy out of watching MAGAs get a firsthand demonstration of the policies they cheered for. Especially the loud ones. Especially the obnoxious bastards who treated other people’s suffering like a spectator sport, cheering every raid like it was a touchdown and every detention like it was a sermon illustration. There is something deeply satisfying about watching a man spend years demanding that the government ruin people’s lives, only to discover that the government has excellent hearing and occasionally takes requests from idiots. Milo Yiannopoulos was one of them. He will not be the last.
Enter Samuel Sey.
Now, I have to confess something. I have an extra reserve of contempt for Canadians who move to the United States and have the nerve to become Republicans. I cannot fully explain it. There is just something about leaving a country with universal healthcare, looking south at our medical bankruptcy, school shootings, and politicians who think the Ten Commandments belong in classrooms but free school lunches are socialism, and deciding, “You know what? These people have their shit together.” What the hell happened to you in Toronto? Did somebody at Tim Hortons put the wrong amount of cream in your coffee, and you decided the entire concept of liberal democracy had to go? Canada has its own right-wing lunatics, God knows, but moving to America specifically to join ours is a level of political stupidity that deserves its own immigration questionnaire. Are you coming here for work, family, or the opportunity to defend a billionaire who wears more bronzer than a competitive bodybuilder? Check one.
And Samuel Sey is a particularly irritating specimen.
Born in Ghana and raised in Canada, Sey built a career writing for conservative outlets including The Daily Wire, WORLD, The Blaze, and Turning Point USA, telling largely white evangelical audiences exactly what they wanted to hear from a Black immigrant. He argued against the existence of systemic racism and treated racial inequality like a statistical inconvenience that could be explained away with enough Bible verses and selective reasoning. His entire routine was to walk into a room full of white conservatives, announce that racism was not nearly the problem everyone said it was, and collect applause from people who probably locked their car doors when he pulled into the parking lot. His credential was his skin and his passport. His product was absolution, sold by the pound to people who wanted permission to stop thinking about race. If Clarence Thomas had a Canadian cousin who discovered blogging before discovering self-awareness, the result would look something like Samuel Sey.
Christian nationalism, stripped of its sermons, is a simple proposition: being a real American means being a certain kind of Christian, and the government’s job is to write that faith into law and keep it permanently in charge. Sey has embraced the religious justification for immigration enforcement with the enthusiasm of a man auditioning to become ICE’s first chaplain. He preached that national borders have biblical legitimacy and that Christians should support deportation. He declared that “anti-ICE protestors are influenced by Satan.” He told his followers, “If you love America, you should support ICE.” When Renee Good was shot and killed in her car in Minnesota in January, Sey insisted she would still be alive if she had not tried to run over an ICE agent, brushing aside video evidence that challenged the administration’s account. Imagine watching a woman get shot to death and deciding your most urgent responsibility as a Christian is to defend the man who pulled the trigger. Jesus said blessed are the merciful. Samuel Sey thought that was a mistranslation and the original Greek said blessed are the federal agents with qualified immunity.
And here is where the story gets even funnier. Some of the loudest self-described Christian nationalists cannot stand this fool. Sey spent much of the past year feuding with pastors who promote antisemitic and pro-segregation theology, under the impression that there was a respectable section of this particular political sewer where he could set up a folding chair. When ICE detained him, Texas pastor Joel Webbon ▶thanked God for the arrest and celebrated the prospect of Sey being silenced. Dale Partridge sneered that “𝕏a black migrant who slanders Christian Nationalists is the White evangelicals’ ultimate hero.” Their followers piled on with racial slurs and attacks on Sey’s interracial marriage. Picture defending a political movement, only to discover that some of its most enthusiastic members think your marriage is an abomination and your presence in the country is a clerical error. Sey showed up to the Christian nationalist potluck carrying the potato salad, and half the congregation wanted to know who let him through the front door. He thought he was joining the choir. They were measuring him for the exit.
If you have ever had a conversation with any of these Christian nationalist idiots, and I have had several, you would think they and God are roommates. They will walk you through the inner workings of the Almighty’s mind like they split the rent, share a Netflix password, and argue over whose turn it is to take out the trash. These fools speak with such confidence about God’s personal political preferences that I sometimes wonder whether the Lord has a group chat I was never invited to. Apparently God has strong opinions about immigration quotas, drag queens, public school libraries, and which Republican should chair the House Judiciary Committee, but has been strangely unavailable to discuss the sexual abuse scandals in his own churches. I have mostly stopped having conversations about the Bible with these people because it is a waste of oxygen. They will twist scripture into a pretzel, sprinkle some Leviticus on top, and serve it to you as the unchanging word of God. Challenge them with the actual text, and you become the one who doesn’t understand Christianity. These people could find a biblical justification for stealing your wallet and then demand a tithe when you ask for it back.
I wrote an entire article about former child actor turned evangelical pain in the ass Kirk Cameron and his courageous escape from the godless wasteland of Los Angeles County to Nashville, Tennessee. Cameron made this journey sound like Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt, except Moses actually left Egypt, and Cameron fled one Democratic city for another Democratic city surrounded by a state full of Republicans. Congratulations, Kirk. You escaped liberalism by moving somewhere that votes for Democrats in municipal elections. I imagine the Lord was deeply impressed by this extraordinary act of geographical incompetence.
