Religious Freedom Watchdog Concerned About Looming Oversight

Kristina Arriaga’s surprising resignation from the USCIRF reveals some broader disagreement about who has a voice in US efforts to address persecution abroad.

When American pastor Andrew Brunson was imprisoned in Tukey, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) played a major role in spotlighting his case and eventually securing his release. USCIRF commissioners were the first Americans other than his family and local State Department staff to visit Brunson in prison. USCIRF commissioners witnessed his trial on allegedly trumped-up charges and sounded a media alarm, and a USCIRF commissioner accompanied him home.

But former USCIRF commissioner Kristina Arriaga says none of that would have occurred if senior members of the commission’s paid staff had gotten their way. The senior staff argued USCIRF was not permitted to advocate for Brunson, Arriaga told Christianity Today, because he was an American and the commission’s mandate is to advance international religious freedom. Nonetheless, the commission voted unanimously across party lines to overrule the staff and speak out.

That episode was just one example, Arriaga said, of how “some bureaucrats in USCIRF … want to control commissioners” in a way that could hamper religious liberty around the world. Now she is concerned that a proposed USCIRF reauthorization bill in the Senate signals bipartisan willingness by legislators to side with those bureaucrats. Even though the bill has been withdrawn, she has resigned from USCIRF in protest to highlight the problem.

“I felt that there had to be sort of a shock and awe campaign by going public to alert Democrats and Republicans who value USCIRF that this bill had been introduced in the dark,” said Arriaga, who was first appointed to USCIRF in 2016 by then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. She had a long career at the religious liberty ...