WorldWatchMonitor

ProPublica aside, Iraq's northern plains are a key -- albeit underreported -- religion story

ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that does investigative journalism, isn’t known for religion coverage. Why, I have no idea, as the field is indeed rich.

But earlier this month, it published a piece on Iraqi Christians that calls out the duplicity of the Donald Trump Administration for calling Iraq too dangerous for Christians on one hand, while deporting hapless Iraqis from the United States whenever it can.

It’s one of the few pieces of reporting out there this year on how Iraq continues to be a huge mess.

Even as U.S. immigration officials have pushed to deport hundreds of Iraqi Christians over the last few years, asserting in court that they are unlikely to be targeted in their homeland, another arm of the Trump administration has insisted just the opposite, saying that Christians in Iraq face terror and extortion.

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.”

Meanwhile:

The administration has sought to deport hundreds of Iraqis, many of them Christians, who immigrated to the U.S. years ago. To stay in the U.S., many of the Iraqis have to prove that if they are deported, they are most likely to be tortured by, or with the tacit permission of, the Iraqi government — a higher standard than what is used in typical asylum cases. That gives DHS a strong incentive to emphasize Iraq’s progress and portray the country’s government as competent and willing to protect all its people.


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