Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) delivered a sharp critique of U.S. immigration practices and the rhetoric surrounding them during a Tuesday appearance on ABC’s The View, drawing a provocative parallel between Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the biblical figure Jesus.

Warnock, who serves both as a senator and senior pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, addressed the case of Abrego Garcia, an illegal immigrant and alleged MS-13 member who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month.

“You have warned that right now in this country, people are trying to weaponize despair,” cohost Sunny Hostin said to Warnock.

“We are seeing migrants being sent to a notorious foreign prison without any semblance of due process. We have Kilmar Abrego Garcia sent there, based on an administrative error, and now the government says we can’t get him back. What do you make of this country welcoming in strangers?” Hostin asked the pastor, framing the story as an indictment of the nation’s treatment of migrants.

“I am a Matthew 25 Christian,” Warnock responded, referencing the Bible verse emphasizing compassion for strangers and the marginalized.

“Jesus said the way you treat the folks on the margins, that is the acid test of your spirituality … and a lot of it, it seems that cruelty is the point,” he continued.

Warnock further criticized those who, in his view, claim Christian values while supporting harsh immigration policies.

“I think Jesus is the biggest victim of identity theft in this country,” he said, drawing applause from the studio audience. “I don’t know who this Jesus is they’re talking about. The Jesus I know was born in a barrio called Bethlehem, raised in a ghetto called Nazareth. He was an immigrant, smuggled into Egypt,” Warnock added.

The senator’s comments come as U.S. immigration policy remains deeply divisive. Abrego Garcia’s deportation and subsequent detention in El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo have drawn criticism from fellow Democrats.

While Warnock’s remarks resonated with many viewers, some Christians have argued that the depiction of Jesus as an immigrant is historically inaccurate, noting that Jesus’s flight to Egypt occurred within the Roman Empire and was a temporary refuge from danger, not an act of international migration.

Warnock framed the current immigration debate as part of a broader national crisis, not just legal, but spiritual.

“Our country is going through what I call a kind of soul weariness,” he said. “We’ve endured years of pandemic, decades of war, and now a wave of political demagogues who traffic in division because they have no vision.”