Obviously, the motivations for an act are based on the beliefs of the perpetrators. In this case, the belief is “those brown people are Papists who need to be converted to Real Christians”; the accuracy or lack thereof of the belief is irrelevant.
Why would it be the girls only? 
I think you don’t give them enough credit. I think they are well aware of the Pentecostalization of Central America largely because they are the ones encouraging it and frequently they are the ones on the ground leading to the conversions. They also know because Hispanics make up over 1/10th of Evangelical churches and are a common sight in Evangelical churches. That’s one of the reasons that Evangelicals came out so strongly against the policy, they’re afraid of losing their flock of the future. Evangelicals aren’t stupid. They recognize the demographic realities of the US and they know that right now they are a white movement, but they also are quite aware that the Global South is their feeding ground. They are banking on the browning of America. White people are the atheists, brown people are the future and they figure two generations from now, atheism is going to be functionally extinct due to the browning of America. It’s why in Europe, they are dropping missionaries among immigrant groups rather than among white Europeans. Demographics are reality and they know it.
Republicans don’t get it (or more accurately, they get it, but they are valuing short term over long term gains) and many of the older white Evangelicals aren’t too happy about it, but the leadership and the younger generation of Evangelicals is quite aware of it. Read their trade publications sometime and see where they are shipping missionaries. Look at their advertisement for bilingual pastors and how many of their churches open Spanish language campuses or have Spanish language services. Even listen to Trump, he never says let’s stop quotas from those countries, it’s always about ‘LEGAL’ immigration, which we know is dog whistling, but it offers plausible deniability to Evangelical leadership.
There’s no need to resort to conspiracy theories, the motivations for the Republicans’ behavior here are obvious and completely consistent with their past conduct.
- Republicans are racists who don’t respect the humanity of nonwhites, especially foreigners. They understand that America is changing fairly quickly and they fear being displaced by brown people, so they are reacting with as much viciousness as they can get away with to try and reverse or at least forestall that trend. The cruelty of their policies is very much intentional, they want to deter refugees from even considering the US as a sanctuary. This is the same animus behind the Muslim ban and their treatment of the Dreamers. Note that in each case, to the extent they’ve been restrained, it’s been by the courts or public outcry from mostly non-Republicans. If it were up to the GOP alone, they would likely go much further than they have so far. Remember that just a few years ago a frontrunner for the GOP nomination publicly called for an electrified fence to kill would-be immigrants. Unmitigated cruelty to “illegals” (and really any other minority accused of breaking the law) is a virtue to GOP voters.
- They want to use these kids, along with the Dreamers, as hostages to trade for the wall or other policy goals they wouldn’t be able to sell otherwise.
- Republicans are indifferent to the well-being of children, as reflected by their willingness to slash funding for education, food aid and health care programs. Let’s also keep in mind that less than a year ago they backed a child molester to represent them in the Senate. They’ll protect their own kids fiercely, but everyone else’s are expendable.
It would be nice if this situation was so out of character that we had to search for far-fetched explanations, but that’s not where we are. This is just Republicans being Republicans.
:dubious:
Personally, I think if anyone gets priority to adopt these little Catholic kids, it should be Jewish families, to avenge the memory of Edgardo Mortara.
Well, the entire Trump administration has been one sustained attempt to actually perpetrate every bad thing that the right had accused Hillary and Obama of doing.
Lax email security: check
Using a charitable foundation to make money: check
Abuse of executive power: check
fawning over dictators: check
Disrespecting Troops: check
Poltically offensive fashion choices: check
Now Trump can’t change it so that he was born in Kenya, but the Ping Pong Pizza accusation is still sitting wide open waiting for a check mark.
(just for the record, the above is just an amusing observation, and no I don’t actually think he has sunk that low without further evidence).
The difference is that the Jews had never done anything remotely close to drinking the blood of christian babies, while there are well documented cases of Christians forcibly taking children from their parents order to “save their souls” through indoctrination. Some of them in 20th century America.
I agree with senoy in that I very much doubt any part of the original motivation of this policy was to steal little brown children so that they can be raised by good American Christians, but I’m not sure that the motives matter so much if that’s the end effect anyway.
That’s pretty ugly.
Throw in the religious right’s support for Trump & Sessions, the Quiverfull movement and a smattering of Dominionism (cue Betsy Devos,) and you’ve got all of the elements of a great conspiracy theory that does indeed bear a striking similarity to blood libel, but a version with more truth to twist around it than the original.
In summary, the state of affairs on the border in no way represents evangelicals or their beliefs, other than in the strictly literal sense that, as a demographic, evangelicals overwhelmingly voted to be represented in government by the current regime.
I don’t think that anyone in the white house did this to benefit “religious adopters” or sex traffickers. The first isn’t something that Trump cares about and the second is too illegal for him to risk. That said, the whole debacle was poorly planned and executed. More kids are going to end up permanently separated from their families than if it hadn’t happened. The lucky ones will get adopted by people who will care for them, super religious or otherwise.