Once again we have the Trump administration taking two polar opposite positions on the same issue in different contexts. They’ve talked up the persecution of Christians in Iraq by militias, until they rounded up a bunch of Iraqi Christians living in the Detroit area want to deport them back to Iraq. Now suddenly they don’t face any persecution there at all.





Last September, a senior Trump appointee at the U.S. Agency for International Development told a government commission that in the part of northern Iraq where many Christians live, militias aligned with Iran “terrorize those families brave enough to have returned, extort local businesses and openly pledge allegiance to Iran.”

In some towns, the numbers of Christians who have returned after the defeat of the Islamic State “have reached only 1 to 2% because of persecution by these militias,” said the official, Hallam Ferguson. “While the Iraqi government has pledged to rein in these militias, they continue to operate with impunity in many areas, with the authorities seemingly unable or unwilling to confront them.”

The same day, a Middle East expert completed a sworn declaration at the request of the Department of Homeland Security for use in its efforts to deport Iraqis. The American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin argued that despite a recent history of American occupation, terrorist attacks and the violent takeover of large swaths of the country by Islamic State militants, Iraq is now a more stable country with an increasingly professional government.

Iraqi Christians could count on the state’s protection and are “largely immune” from politically motivated violence, Rubin wrote.

“For the past several years, Iraq’s Shi’ite-majority government and security forces have worked to secure Christian churches and Christian neighborhoods,” Rubin wrote. “It is the elected Iraqi government which is now in control of Iraq.”