Save Americas' refugees first

We have hundreds of refugees here already whom we are deporting back to violence and death. We should be inviting these families and children from Central America to integrate into our communities before we begin to think about helping Europe with its refugee crisis.

We haven't been offered the opportunity for our churches to adopt these refugees like we did with the Vietnamese families who came here as refugees after losing the war there.

Instead, our Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) chose the recent holidays to stage a reign of terror on refugee families. Just days before Christmas, ICE announced that it would begin gathering up families for deportation, and these raids began on New Year's Day weekend.

This was a totally cruel way to spoil Christmas for these Christian refugees. They will be held in ICE's notorious prison camps in Texas and Pennsylvania until their deportation occurs, back to the anarchy and drug gang rule of their home countries, where boys will be forced to join the gangs and girls to become sex slaves to the gangs, or face death at the hands of the gangs.

Congress refused to pass President Obama's immigration bill, but he should use his power to save our own refugees and let us help them settle and become Americans.

This story was originally published January 13, 2016 at 10:21 AM with the headline "Save Americas' refugees first."