US President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown has been promoted with biblical righteousness by senior members of his administration, including Attorney-General Jeff Sessions. And in heartland communities where the President is popular, the crackdown is often debated - by supporters and critics alike - through the lens of Christian morality. In Mount Pleasant, a town of 8500 in rural south-east Iowa that voted heavily for Trump, the President's immigration policies created a sharp, unexpected fracture in the days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on May 9. Fault lines appeared among public officials, businesses and, especially, the town's many churches. "This whole immigration thing has been an abstraction," said state Representative Dave Heaton, a Republican from Mount Pleasant. "It's been on TV and in the newspapers. And all of a sudden it's here in our town. Relationships and everything are all of a sudden up for grabs." The Midwest Precast Concrete plant in Mount Pleasant, scene of the immigration raid. Credit:New York Times It was a few weeks before parent-child separations at the border exploded into the news, exposing divisions among faith groups nationally. Mainline Protestant churches harshly condemned Trump for his policy of separating families. Evangelical leaders also deplored the separations, although they largely deflected blame away from Trump. The expressions of dismay helped to drive his eventual retreat from the policy, but they reflected the same interfaith divide that opened in Mount Pleasant over the workplace raid, another facet of the administration's "zero tolerance" policy.

Hegar, a Texan who served four years in the Marines before attending a Presbyterian seminary, finally asked the Trump supporter he was debating on Facebook: "Which Scripture do we obey?" He answered himself: "The one from Jesus to 'Do unto others' is what we choose." Hegar's church on Walnut Street is across from the site of Mount Pleasant's most popular event, a Labor Day festival of steam-powered tractors and other farm machinery. In the days and weeks after the raid, the church became a hectic crossroads for family members of the detained men and their supporters. Parishioners in a group called Iowa Welcomes Immigrant Neighbours raised $US80,000 to help detainees' families pay rent, utilities and legal fees. The Reverend Trey Hegar meets Felipe Clamos, right, one of 32 cement plant workers arrested by immigration authorities in Mount Pleasant. Credit:New York Times Other mainline Protestant churches, including the Lutherans, contributed to the fund, as did the Catholics at St Alphonsus, where a Spanish Mass is held once a month. Notably absent from the donor roll, though, were Mount Pleasant's evangelical churches.

Hegar said he heard relatives of a detained man say that the pastor of the evangelical church they have attended for years had not called to ask if he could help them. "My heart breaks for that," Hegar said. The town's evangelical pastors, whom he knows, are compassionate individuals, he said, "but to see nothing, after something like this in their backyards - I'm shocked". Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis has recently erected a diorama of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in a cage in protest over the Trump administration's immigration policy. Credit:The Indianapolis Star via AP He attributed their silence to the strong political alignment between US evangelicals and Trump, who counts heavily on their votes. "The nationalistic politics and theology goes hand in hand now," Hegar said. "It drives me crazy when we don't practice what Jesus preaches because of the mix of religion and national politics."

Pastors of three leading evangelical churches in Mount Pleasant declined repeated requests over several weeks seeking comment for this article. One evangelical pastor who did agree to an interview in the days after the raid was Jim Erwin, the head of Wellspring Evangelical Free Church. He said no one from the mainline churches had suggested he raise money; if they had, he said, he might have chipped in. But Erwin added that he believed the detentions were justified: "Because they're breaking the law, I recognise the authorities do need to come in and do that." The First Presbyterian Church in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Credit:New York Times On a day in mid-May when the President referred to immigrants who join gangs as "animals", more than 100 people crowded into the fellowship hall of the First Presbyterian Church, including about 25 wives and children of the detained men.

Walfred Urizar-Lopez, 15, said that he and his father, Elmer Urizar-Lopez, 41, fled Guatemala for their lives after a gang tried to recruit Walfred as a drug courier. His father had gone to the police, but their advice was to cooperate with the drug-runners; his father refused. "The gang told my dad he has no idea what kind of problems he will have," Walfred said at the church, speaking through a translator. The arrest of his father in the factory raid left Walfred, a high school sophomore, alone in Mount Pleasant. In jeans and a flannel shirt, he thrust his hands into his pockets and fought back tears. "His situation right now, it's very bad," said Eneida Carillo, whose family, also from Guatemala, had taken Walfred in. She said a lawyer had told them that day that Walfred's father would probably be deported. Carillo began to cry. "As soon as his dad gets back, they will probably kill him,'' she said.

When Hegar spoke at the church meeting, he paused after each line to let Dina Saunders, who teaches English as a second language at the middle school, translate into Spanish. "I am tired," the pastor said. "Estoy cansado." "I am tired of people talking about my neighbours breaking the law, when our country is breaking our own laws. By dividing up families. Separating women from children. Treating people seeking a better life like criminals. "My church - "

"Mi iglesia." " - is your church." "Es su iglesia." Workplace raids like the one in Mount Pleasant were de-emphasised by the Obama administration, but they have been stepped up sharply under Trump. Experts say the raids are meant to deter immigrants from showing up for work or entering the country to seek jobs. Raids at 7-Elevens across the country in January and at a Tennessee slaughterhouse in April made headlines; scores of workers were detained at Ohio meat packing plants in late June. No charges have been filed against the owners of the Midwest Precast Concrete plant in Mount Pleasant that was raided. An ICE spokesman declined to comment, citing a continuing investigation.

According to Robin Clark-Bennett of the Centre for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa, 23 of the 32 arrested men have been released on bond, three have been deported and five remain in jail facing criminal charges. Rusty King, a custodian at the First Presbyterian Church: “Our borders, we can’t open it to everybody.” Credit:New York Times While emotions ran high at the meeting in the fellowship hall, not everyone in Mount Pleasant, nor even at First Presbyterian, sided with Hegar. "I agree with our President: our borders, we can't open it to everybody," said Rusty King, the church's custodian, the following day. "We've got enough poor people here in Iowa that need help," King said. "I work three jobs and still live paycheque to paycheque."

After an initial conversation with a reporter about immigration, he seemed to avoid follow-up calls and texts. But he had a granddaughter, Angel King, pass along a Facebook post written by a young man from Mount Pleasant that echoed King's own views. Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Credit:New York Times "I can't hold my tongue any longer," Garrett Carlston wrote in the post on May 10, when supporters of the detainees were rallying at the Henry County Courthouse. "I feel bad for the families that are going to be torn apart by this but it's hard for me to sit here and act like it isn't the fault of the people who brought them across the border." He wrote that the vigil-keepers lacked sympathy for US citizens. "What about the ones living in Mount Pleasant who couldn't find a job because they were employing illegal immigrants instead?" The view that immigrants take jobs from citizens or depress wages was a common one, but it was disputed by local business owners. The unemployment rate in Henry County is 2.9 per cent, and many factories display "Hiring" signs.

Gary Crawford, who owns Mt Pleasant Tire ("We keep you rolling"), said he paid tyre installers $US16 to $US24 an hour, with full benefits. "I know most of the people who run the factories," he said. "They just can't find help." Crawford belongs to St Alphonsus Catholic Church and on the Sunday after the ICE raid, he heard the Reverend Paul Connolly, with the detained men in mind, devote his homily to the Good Samaritan, the exemplar of caring for strangers. "All of us were immigrants at one time," the priest said. A few days after the church meeting, Angel King, the custodian's 17-year-old granddaughter, who also helps with the church cleaning, was cleaning the glass doors to the sanctuary. She said classmates had started calling her "a mini-Donald Trump" for taking the side of the ICE agents in the raid. The law is the law, she said, and workers in the country illegally had broken it. "They should go back and if they really want to come back bad enough, they should go through the process legally," she said. Nor did she have much sympathy for families separated by the raids. "Families are torn apart every day," King said. She spoke from experience: When she was a young girl, her father went to prison on a drug charge, she said.

She will study criminal justice in the fall at Southeastern Community College, hoping to become a probation officer. One of her classmates at the college will be Juana Barrios, 19, whose father, Oscar Barrios, was detained at the concrete plant. Juana Barrios said her parents brought her to Iowa illegally from Mexico when she was three. She is enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which the Trump administration has rescinded, and is studying to be a nurse. "They say go back and come here legally," she said. "It's not easy. Most of us don't have money. Most of us are denied." Yadira Lopez, left, looks on as her children (from left) Juana Barrios, Andrea Barrios and Oscar Barrios speak by phone with their father, who was detained by immigration authorities. Credit:New York Times Barrios recalled how she had once made a speech at the Catholic Church, naming her father as her inspiration: "I told him, Dad, I'm going to be the best nurse. I'm going to graduate with the best grades. That's the only way I can think of to repay everything they've done for me - to be successful, and make their dream in my future."