On Saturday, federal immigration agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse in Minneapolis, sparking swift backlash both in the streets and online. Even some conservatives characterized the incident as a bridge too far. But, in other corners of the internet, female conservative Christian influencers appeared to be attempting to convince their largely female audience that officers were simply doing their job.
Rachel Moran, a Senior research scientist at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, sees influencers’ messages as part of a broader pattern. “For more conservative female influencers, we’re seeing them frame ICE-related violence within cultural frames that feel comfortable to them, such as religious narratives—battles of ‘good versus evil’ in which ICE is always good and any form of protest bad,” she wrote via email.
One of the loudest voices calling for women to stand with ICE is Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcaster, commentator, and author of a 2024 book titled Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. That phrase, “toxic empathy,” stands in for a larger argument of how Christian morality has been used to pull people—especially evangelical Christians—to the left. As Stuckey explains on the podcast of the New York Times‘ Ross Douthat:
Empathy by itself is neutral. Empathy by itself, I believe, is neither good nor bad….But putting yourself in someone’s shoes, feeling what they feel, can also lead you to do three things that I say makes empathy toxic: One, validate lies. Two, affirm sin. And three, support destructive policies.
You can catch the drift here: Calls to love your neighbor have, according to Stuckey, drowned out the other side of the equation—the harms supposedly caused by helping someone. If you are empathetic to an immigrant, you are ignoring the harm Stuckey says immigration causes.
On Tuesday, Stuckey tweeted that Pretti and Renée Nicole Good, who was shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7, “were people made in God’s image whose lives had value, and their deaths are tragic.” Still, she wrote, their deaths were the result of “local law enforcement refusing keep the public from impeding ICE and local politicians stoking the flames by calling ICE ‘Gestapo.’
Megan Basham, a Christian influencer and author of the 2024 book Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, retweeted Stuckey and added some of her own messages, as well:
“If your favorite fashion or beauty or home design [influencer] or what have you is posting anti-Ice sentiments, please DM me,” she tweeted on Sunday to her 197,000 followers on X. “I’d like to hear about it.” A few hours later, she tweeted, “Ladies, we need you on Insta being informed and unafraid!”
Basham also reposted a tweet that speculated that Pretti might have been radicalized by the nurse’s union he had joined. “It’s time we have a talk about the way healthcare orgs and unions including MNA and SEIU are radicalizing their employees and members across Minnesota and have been for several years,” it said. (The tweet has been liked more than 12,000 times.)
Stuckey and Basham were not the only female Christian influencers defending ICE. While others were tweeting about their shock and sadness about Pretti’s death, Anna Lulis, an anti-abortion influencer with 122,000 followers, was posting photos of children who she said had been murdered by illegal immigrants, ostensibly in an effort to show the other side of the story in the toxic empathy equation. Stuckey amplified some of those posts.
In a similar vein, an account called Conservative Momma, with 135,000 followers, tweeted out a photo of a college student who had allegedly been killed by an undocumented immigrant. “To the those wanting to ‘stop ICE,’ you are advocating for more innocent lives to be cruelly taken,” she wrote.
Kristen Hawkins, president of the anti-abortion group Students for Life, tweeted, “This is about the Left, the party that celebrates 1 million abortions a year, wanting to stop Trump from enforcing our immigration laws, creating chaos, and trying to win over the public (despite his very high approval ratings) before this November.”
On Instagram, one creator posted a tongue-in-cheek series of tips titled “Simple Ways I Lower My Risk of Being Shot By ICE.” The list was accompanied by cozy, stylized photos, including “drinking coffee and cuddling with my baby,” “cooking nutrient dense and healthy meals,” and “hanging out with my husband.”
“Such frames advance traditional conservative Christian values that tell women to disengage from political discussion as it’s outside of their realm of authority,” Moran wrote me. Posts like this encourage followers to “interpret emerging news about ICE violence as justified or outside of their responsibility.”
Still, some followers of these influencers seem increasingly skeptical. In replies to some of the pro-ICE posts, followers pushed back. “It’s sad that you just can’t condemn something that was so clearly wrong,” one commenter told Stuckey. “You are a kook if you can’t watch the video and see for yourself he was not brandishing a gun and threatening anyone,” wrote another.
But Stuckey, at least, appears to be undaunted. “I am really glad I have never listened to the naysayers on X who say changing women’s minds on culture and politics is pointless and impossible,” she wrote on X on Saturday. “I have seen their minds change—over and over and over again. To others with me in that fight, keep slugging.”
