MIAMI _ President Donald Trump regularly gives speeches before packed arenas. But a campaign event planned Friday in South Florida has the makings of an unusual Trump campaign event _ and not just because it will be held at a South Florida megachurch.
Trump, currently winding down a two-week holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, is scheduled to travel south Friday afternoon to speak at the 7,000-seat sanctuary of Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus in West Kendall, an event that could include undocumented immigrants, evangelical pastors and Trump Republicans.
The 5 p.m. event, a kickoff of a new Evangelicals for Trump coalition, was announced last month shortly after the magazine Christianity Today called for Trump's removal from office.
Trump's campaign says the church and its congregation were "a natural fit to launch our Evangelicals for Trump coalition."
But the church at is attended by thousands of Hispanic Christians, some of them undocumented immigrants. That means Friday's rally could bring dozens of pastors and hundreds of vulnerable Christians together with Trump's steadfast Republican base in support of a president who often relies on hard-line immigration rhetoric and occasionally profanity to move his audiences.
Aware of the president's crackdown on immigration, Guillermo Maldonado, the head pastor of the church and a supporter of the president, assured his flock Sunday during a Spanish-language service that undocumented members of his congregation could come see Trump speak without fear of risking deportation.
"You don't have to be a citizen," Maldonado said.
On Thursday, Jackie Lee, a senior adviser in Florida for the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden, picked up on those comments and in a statement attacked "the countless ways that Donald Trump has stoked fear in Hispanics and immigrants in Florida, including many King Jesus International Ministry churchgoers."
In English, the church's name _ Ministerio Internacional El Rey Jesus _ translates to King Jesus International Ministry.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment in response to Maldonado's welcoming of undocumented immigrants to Friday's event.
The location and Maldonado's Sunday comments, as reported in the Miami Herald, also caught the eye of an atheist church-and-state watchdog group. The Freedom From Religion Foundation called on the IRS this week to investigate whether Maldonado had broken rules prohibiting 501(c )(3) nonprofits from participating in political campaigns when he told congregants Sunday that they would be supporting their pastor by attending Trump's event at the church.
The Trump campaign has said little about what to expect from the president's appearance, or the event itself. Trump is now in the midst of a reelection year, and an impeachment trial appears imminent in the U.S. Senate. He is expected to return to Washington on Sunday.
Maldonado said during Sunday's service that the event on Friday would include 70 pastors, who would speak in support of Trump. Several weeks ago, dozens of Christian leaders signed a letter to Christianity Today calling its December editorial "offensive."
