Proclaiming the jubilee year for undocumented migrants: anti-immigration biopolitics and a Christian theopolitical response

President Obama announced a major executive action on immigration policy on November 20, 2014, which will protect up to 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation. Obama's executive order, however, outraged Republicans in Congress, who argue that the president does not have the authority to delay deportations in such magnitude. On December 3, 2014, a coalition of 17 U.S. states led by Texas Governor-elect Greg Abbott sued the Obama administration to stop it from protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation. The purpose of this paper is to respond to the current political (d)evolvement with a new theological appropriation of the biblical concept of “jubilee.” I argue in this paper that Christian churches and communities should adopt a new theopolitical paradigm modeled after jubilee in engaging the political process to promote justice and peace for many undocumented people. The strength of this new model lies in its theological emphasis on the Christian ideal of forgiveness, and a key theological insight we can draw on from the concept of jubilee is that no humans should be kept under permanent indebted, enslaved, or illegal status.