Deportation Schism: Why Leftist Catholics Are At Odds With Church’s Long-Standing View On Immigration

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says President Donald Trump’s immigration policies violate church teaching. But prominent Church leaders, as well as top White House officials, are pushing back, leaning on long-standing church teaching that clearly gives nations latitude to restrict immigration.

“Many of the issues President Trump addresses in his recent Executive Orders, along with what may be issued in the coming days, are matters on which the Church has much to offer,” wrote Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in a much-discussed Wednesday statement. “Some provisions contained in the Executive Orders, such as those focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees … are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us.”

Cardinal Robert McElroy, the controversial new Archbishop of Washington, debuted in his role shortly before Trump’s inauguration by arguing that the president’s deportation plans are “incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” McElroy said that “plans which have been talked about at some levels of having a wider indiscriminate massive deportation across the country would be something that would be incompatible with Catholic doctrine.”

Prominent Catholics in the administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Tom Homan, the man heading Trump’s deportation effort, don’t agree. Homan says the administration’s actions are anything but indiscriminate.

Homan’s job is to enact Trump’s executive orders: to protect the American people from the invasion at the southern border and to “execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens, particularly those aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people.”

“We have a targeted enforcement sheet,” Homan told The Daily Wire, “we go out into the field and we know exactly who we are going to arrest, and pretty much where we are going to find them. This is far from indiscriminate arrests, these are targeted enforcement operations, concentrating on the worst of the worst.”

Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, also pushed back on the remark over the weekend, describing himself as “heartbroken” by the USCCB’s response to the efforts to stem the border crisis.

“We are going to enforce immigration law, we are going to protect the American people,” continued Vance. “Donald Trump promised to do that, and I believe the [USCCB], if they are worried about the humanitarian costs of immigration enforcement, let them talk about the children who have been sex-trafficked because of the wide open border of Joe Biden, let them talk about people like Laken Riley who were brutally murdered.”

The strife is indicative of larger dynamics at play between the Trump White House and the Vatican under Pope Francis, who is not only left-leaning, but also critical of traditional Catholics and openly anti-Trump. President Joe Biden headed the most pro-abortion administration the United States has ever seen without personal critique from Pope Francis. In the run-up to the 2024 election, Pope Francis also said that both Kamala Harris and President Trump were “against life,” even though Trump’s Supreme Court picks led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 

The pope also said ahead of Trump’s inauguration that the president’s deportation plans “will be a disgrace, because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill for the imbalance,” adding, “It won’t do. This is not the way to solve things.”

(Photo by Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)

And though the USCCB slammed Trump’s deportation plans, the conference remained mum on a slew of Biden’s actions against religious Americans — including his jailing of pro-life activists, and Trump’s pardoning of those same activists this week.

The Catholic view on illegal immigration is a topic that politicians on both sides of the aisle have long struggled with, given the often devastating plight of the migrant and the Catholic Church’s emphatic focus on respecting the dignity of every human person. But over the past century, leaders of the Church have frequently pointed out that migration cannot be unrestricted, and must be handled with prudence.

“As always the welfare of the country must be considered as well as the interest of the individual seeking to enter, and in the nature of things circumstances will at times dictate a law of restriction,” Pope Pius XII said in 1947 when addressing a Senate committee on immigration.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that “more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find his country of origin.” But it also states that “immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”

That’s a far cry from the situation at hand, conservative leaders argued to The Daily Wire.

“Two things can be true at once,” said The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts, in an early January interview shortly after McElroy’s appointment. “On the one hand … when we encounter, as individuals, anyone in need, including an immigrant, that of course we’re going to make sure that they’re taken care of.”

“But it’s also true that every single illegal alien who’s come into this country has broken the law, and you can’t continue America’s civil society without first securing the southern border,” he added. “And those of us who are lay Catholics think that. The Vatican’s making a mockery of church teaching and those of us who work in public policy in Washington by appointing [McElroy].” 

Progressives like Father James Martin, a Jesuit who pushes LGBTQ issues, argue that Jesus Christ and his mother were refugees and stress the importance of loving one’s neighbor to condemn Trump’s border policies. But commentators like Josh Mercer, the vice president of Catholic Vote, point to the duties that Catholics have to uphold the law.

“One problem with appealing to Christian love as a basis for lenient immigration policies, is that we must also have that same love for those who stand to be harmed by those policies,” explained Mercer.

“In His final judgment of the world, Christ may indeed identify Himself with an immigrant whose dignity we disregarded,” Mercer argued. “Yet by the very same principle, it seems equally true that He may hold some of us responsible for the lives and livelihoods we irresponsibly allowed some illegal immigrants to take. Matthew 25 suggests both possibilities — because it pertains to all kinds of injustice, regardless of what is politically fashionable.”

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, known in political circles for his defense of the unborn and his pastoral critique of former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, pointed The Daily Wire to “A Pastoral Letter Concerning Migration from the Catholic Bishops of Mexico and the United States,” written in 2003 to address immigration into the United States and how Catholic bishops should view the issue.

The letter lays out five principles that must be respected when dealing with issues surrounding immigration, Cordileone explained. The first is that people have a right to find opportunities in their homeland. The second is that people have a right to migrate to support themselves and their families for just reasons, which might include poverty, economic reasons, persecution, fear, lack of basic necessities, etc. Importantly, the third principle is that sovereign nations have a right to control their borders.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone (Scott Strazzante/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)

The archbishop notes that these have to be balanced off each other: “People have a right to immigrate for legitimate reasons, and the nations also have a right to control their borders.”

The fourth principle of the 2003 document is that refugee and asylum seekers should be afforded protections, and the fifth is that human dignity and human rights of undocumented migrants should be respected.  

Taking these factors into account, “indiscriminate deportations” would be a violation of those principles, Cordileone said.

“There has to be a vetting,” he explained. “Some people need to be deported, you know, criminals, felons, human traffickers, drug traffickers, terrorists, who are coming into the country clandestinely. Yes, they do need to be deported. Others who have come without proper documentation or overstayed their visas, especially in the first category, because many of them are unskilled laborers, but they’re fleeing dire conditions in their own country, and I think we favor them getting their legal status regularized and with the proper conditions to be put on a path to citizenship.”

Homan stressed to The Daily Wire that the Trump administration’s actions are not indiscriminate, but targeted. And he added: “Catholic charities have made millions of dollars over the last four years because of massive illegal immigration. They need to protect children.”

Catholic charities have repeatedly drawn fire for their assistance of illegal immigrants: an investigation by the Heritage Foundation found that non-governmental organizations, including Catholic charities, “operate as the final link in a vast, transnational human-smuggling operation.” One of these agencies is currently in the news over its video teaching migrants how to evade United States immigration law.

Asked if he’s investigating Catholic Charities specifically, Homan responded with a laugh, “I’m not. That’s all I’m gonna say.”