On Saturday, federal immigration agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, sparking swift backlash both in the streets and online. Even some conservatives characterized the incident as a bridge too far. But, in other corners of the internet, female conservative Christian influencers appeared to be attempting to convince their largely female audience that officers were simply doing their job.
Rachel Moran, a Senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, sees influencers’ messages as part of a broader pattern. “For more conservative female influencers, we’re seeing them frame ICE-related violence within cultural frames that feel comfortable to them, such as religious narratives—battles of ‘good versus evil’ in which ICE is always good and any form of protest bad,” she wrote via email.
One of the loudest voices calling for women to stand with ICE is Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcaster, commentator, and author of a 2024 book titled Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. That phrase, “toxic empathy,” stands in for a larger argument of how Christian morality has been used to pull people—especially evangelical Christians—to the left. As Stuckey explains on the podcast of the New York Times‘ Ross Douthat:
"Empathy by itself is neutral. Empathy by itself, I believe, is neither good nor bad….But putting yourself in someone’s shoes, feeling what they feel, can also lead you to do three things that I say makes empathy toxic: One, validate lies. Two, affirm sin. And three, support destructive policies."
You can catch the drift here: Calls to love your neighbor have, according to Stuckey, drowned out the other side of the equation—the harms supposedly caused by helping someone. If you are empathetic to an immigrant, you are ignoring the harm Stuckey says immigration causes.
