Stuff like this is why I mostly put the USCCB's political "guidance" on ignore years ago. These guys are so willing to forgive child molesters, law breakers, legislators and presidents who support abortion, everybody in prison, everybody in an illicit relationship, etc but if you take a different view than them on a political matter they want to kick you out of "their" church.
Many years ago, when I was a youth, I asked my father how do you reconcile the criticism of capitalism by the Vatican and Catholic belief (not asked as succinctly). He said there is a part of religion that is made by God and another by man. You need to be able to tell the difference. It was was some of the best advice I ever received. This is the bishops being men, unwise men at that.
A fair amount of that criticism is correct, it just doesn't stop capitalism from being the best option we have. Capitalism itself is corrupted if the people in it prioritize making money over everything else, not just in the sense of 'greed is bad', but also in the sense of creating perverse economic incentives, including employing cunning or government force to get money, rather than employing smarts, work, cooperation, and competition to make money.
While there’s some truth to that, it seems like people usually decide which part is created by man in a way that conveniently lines up with their own opinions. Is the church’s condemnation of Communism also an optional teaching created by men or does Catholic Social Teaching suddenly become binding in that case?
Thanks for covering ice! I would be really surprised if this happens although I do think it would be a reality check for the (many, I assume) agents that are Catholic. After seeing 20-100 agents a day terrorize my small city and completely operate outside the law and basic human decency, I agree it is impossible to be a part of this agency/ies and not be in grave sin.
I'm sure many regular people joined immigration enforcement in the past with good intentions but I do not see how anyone can remain employed by DHS where human suffering is treated with apathy or glee, agents are encouraged to detain those here legally, the employer lies regularly about what they are doing and why, and not be in grave sin.
I prayed with my Catholic sisters in the Dorothea Project for a conversion of the hearts of ice agents in the spirit of Saul's conversion this weekend. St. Paul, pray for these men and women to see Jesus in those they are persecuting!
I checked the Dorothea Project website, I might be missing it but I couldn’t find a single thing on the sin that migrants are likely to be in regarding failure to pay taxes, illegally residing in a country, lying on forms, stealing identities, aiding cartels through transportation funding and remittances etc. Care for souls is care for souls, and I’ve found the complete omission of the Bishops and others commenting on these sins to be odd, given the aforementioned care for souls.
If you think that people living here illegally necessarily do any or all of these things you are profoundly mistaken. There are innumerable situations where people are here without a proper legal status but are in no way morally culpable.
If you think that ICE agents et al. ought to be similarly dispensed from blame, you again are wrong. Those here illegally and non-culpably must make a nearly impossible and potentially immoral choice to fix their situation. Whereas ICE agents simply need to find a new line of work.
If only the ICE agents used their fervor for catching immigrants who do not commit felonies to catching true criminals, the U.S. would be a much safer country. But ICE agents have a lot easier job than other police by catching the low lying fruit and not catching the real violent and drug dealing criminals, immigrants and Americans alike, who might give them a more difficult time.
Border crossings are at an all time low. About 8,400 attempted crossings were detected in September 2025, 84.4% fewer than in September 2024. This means there were 52,500 in 2024.
Estimates suggest that as many as 6 in 10 (60%) to 8 in 10 (80%) women and girl migrants experience sexual violence during their journey to the United States. Other studies have indicated that roughly 1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted on the trek through Mexico.
In 2025, at the 1/3 rate thats 14,553 sexual assualts prevented. At the 80% estimate level that is 35,280 girls and women who were not sexually assualted because we didn't allow them to be trafficked in one year alone. ICE might not be perfect, but I'd say they are dealing with real violence more than any other law enforcement officer sans the US Marshalls.
Arrow, First off, please don't misunderstand what I said there is a large difference between all as you imply and what I truly said which is "likely to be in". You immediatly act as if I condemned every illegal. I agree some people are here without being in grave sin, but that doesn't mean many aren't.
Third, it's not true to think because I point out this hypocrisy it means I think no ICE agent has ever done something sinful. However, ICE Agents like all local, state and federal law enforcement are to be prayed for to live up to the being rightly called peacekeepers.
It really seems you are very ready to care for souls, yet you are blind to their sin and the reality of their actions. We are not called to ignore sin, but to remove both the splinter and plank in our own eyes, and assist others in the same.
If only Trump had the same bishop deal the Vatican gave China. Then he’d have bishops taking public MAGA loyalty pledges and calling the ICE hotline themselves.
It won’t because we have the 1st amendment protecting us, but it doesn’t feel great knowing the bukwark against that is the constitution and not the Vatican.
I guess China also has little incentive to guarantee religious freedom and give up that privledge.
It is staggering to read this lengthy condemnation of the President and find not a sliver of an answer to the question confronting the President when he assumed office.
What questions?
The ‘open borders’ policy that the President’s political opponents championed, and still do.
Questions national security and health are dismissed.
Our immigration system currently works if it is enforced. The problem is that we have had 4 years under Biden with lax enforcement, now the current admin is trying to make up for that.
It works if you have on average the 24 years it takes to navigate the current system. It works if you aren't fleeing violence and hunger. Lots of people don't have the luxury to wait so long under the current law, but if you have five million dollars, the door is open.
That's one of the big episcopal talking points. That we need to "reform" our "broken" immigration system with the implied conclusion in the meantime that gives folks carte blanche to ignore the laws entirely and makes any enforcement of them illegitimate.
The reform the majority of the country wants is a total end to illegal immigration (which would make any de jure or de facto amnesty impossible) and a reduction to legal migration. Harry Enten was on CNN this week discussing those poll numbers.
I'd prefer a total end to illegal immigration and an increase in legal migration, including into permanent residency and citizenship rather than the temporary work visas politicians seem to favor.
A lo of people objecting to immigration are the non-college-educated who object to being unable to get a job in certain areas due to being undercut by illegals. Legal immigrants who aren't on special work visas have the same minimum wage laws everyone else does.
Our immigration system really ought to be able to give immigrants a yes/no answer rather than stringing them through bureaucracy for 2 decades. Part of the reason for that is the system getting bogged down by fraudulent applications. Part of it is simply that the system is a tad Byzantine. Although one could claim that it is merely ensuring that immigrants will be capable of handling annual income tax forms...
Part of it is that the number of people who would like to come to the US (and would happily do so legally) dramatically exceeds the number of legal immigrants the median American voter would like to see, and that part is the very tough nut to crack (and, for transparency, an area where I am not confident I understand the Church's teaching on yet).
Sometimes I think some of the vitriol around the immigration debate stems from people trying not to acknowledge the real debate around that core issue, and so it gets fought out as a proxy war on other things that *seem* like they should be relatively easily fixable problems (like, how do we get asylum hearings into a reasonable timeframe + prevent the system from being clogged with spaghetti-wall claims)
Good point on the core issue(s). Because it is prudential rather than black and white, and has a lot of variables to balance, it gets rather murky about the right way to do it, and I think people do not want to talk about it for fear of getting accused of being meanspirited or racist for having an opinion that is not directly traceable to moral law. But that is actually the nature of the beast.
I do not believe the Church anywhere teaches that the number of immigrants admitted must come anywhere close to the number of immigrants requesting admission. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of one of the factors limiting immigration being the right of each country and culture to maintain that culture (which should include *local* cultures). I think the right of citizens to be able to get a job and provide for their families with dignity goes with that. There are jobs where it is practically impossible for a citizen to work. It gets murkier in the US then in other countries, due to our history of waves of immigration, but there's still a right to our own cultures. A limit based on the country's practical ability to process all of the applications in a timely fashion should also exist. We have a limited number of qualified lawyers and judges, and plenty of other jobs for them to do, so it's not a matter of throwing more money at the problem.
I don't like the solution of restricting immigration to the higher class/wealthier immigrants. I kinda toy with the idea of a stratified system with a lottery for each level, with the rich/educated people at the top level and the ones whose sole benefits are not being a criminal, terrorist, unemployable, or having a communicable disease at the bottom, so we will always be getting some of each, and also so that there is a clear yes/no answer for the immigrant in a reasonable time and without a ton of fuss.
I’m tired of the shell game so many bishops play where they say "oh no no we’re not pro open borders don’t you dare say that!" then they tutt tutt every bit of border/immigration enforcement.
Putting a blanket interdict on ICE they won’t even put on Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi would make them lose what little moral authority they have left.
From Archbishop Hebda: 'The Catholic tradition insists on holding together truths that politicians prefer to separate. Nations have the right and duty to secure their borders and enforce their laws. Immigrants are human beings with natural rights that must be respected. Authentic justice requires both the rule of law and mercy, both accountability and hospitality.'
Can we see past the false dichotomy of 'if bishops speak on X they are against Y' for the fullness of Catholic truth?
So we need to secure our border, deport people that break our just immigration laws, and treat those people with dignity and respect? Sounds good to me.
Maybe they should interdict politicians that make it impossible for us to "secure our borders and enforce our laws".
And that’s the thing. Immigrants by and large get an enormous amount of due process and significant leeway (even when ordered to leave the country, they are frequently released on their own and even legally allowed to work(!!!)).
It often sounds as though “dignity and respect” means no deportations allowed. That, of course, is not tenable.
They give the game away when they say we have "the right and duty to secure their borders and enforce their laws" but never ever criticize any politician for refusing to enforce immigration law or de facto throwing open the border.
In fact after Trump made it practically impossible for the drug and human traffickers to cross the border he was criticized by some bishops who said now the border has been "militarized" (whatever that means) so it's actually bad it's now secured. I thought people no longer dying of thirst in the desert, kids being trafficked, or drugs moving here would be a good thing.
The problem isn't that he's secured the border, it's the how. Fear mongering is not a humane way of doing things. The current approach is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A person who overstayed their visa, but has otherwise been a productive member of the community is treated with the same level of violence and hatred as a human trafficker. Coupled with Trump's rhetoric, people become angry and treat ICE agents with hostility. ICE agents then escalate and we end up with the tragedies of the past few weeks. It's hard for bishops to express support for Trump's way of doing things when people are too scared to go to church, are unable to receive the sacraments when detained, and people are being killed. The ends don't justify the means.
Ask yourself why is most of the drama and tragedy isolated to blue states? Because their governments will not cooperate with the federal government, and progressive groups are organizing resistance to law enforcement operations. This problem has been created by political liberals and not the administration. Your response is their goal.
I don't think anyone should ever be treated with "violence and hatred" even the felons. As mentioned in the article ICE wasn't involved in the latest shooting incident. The previous shooting incident with Renee Good was ICE but she tried to run the guy over with her car. I'm all for the bishops holding Trump accountable if/when he steps over a line but I can't help but see their double standard. Did the USCCB have much to say about the violent protesters that stormed the Baptist church in MN? They want to give violent felons Mass dispensations but it seems perhaps ICE agents and their families are the ones at risk at church.
Is it cruel to pursue known criminals when that makes them too scared to go to church and receive the sacraments? If not, then why is it cruel to pursue illegal aliens?
Agree, it is now known that ngo 's advertised for an immigrant surge from S/Cen America to coincide with the start of the Biden Admin. The result was unwanted immigration, kidnapped children used as asylum ploys, and assaults. Where was the outrage then by the clergy? Their silence contributed to this, and now they pretend to possess moral high ground.
I think, for the sake of accuracy, it's important to note that many of the people Catholic charities received funding to help had active asylum cases, and many (yes, not all) had entered legally: for example, by declaring their intent to seek asylum to a border guard at a point of entry, or by making a CBP-one app appointment to do the same. It would not make moral or legal sense for NGO's to tell those people "you broke our just laws now you need to go home". In fact, some of the funding was specifically for legal services *so that* asylum seekers could fill out all the paperwork/understand the restrictions/comply with the law correctly!
Something like 4 million people have open asylum claims. Many of these are bogus and will likely be denied (whenever we can clear the huge backlog). If someone has been here say 10 years and they get their bogus asylum claim denied will Catholic Charities or any bishop say "you had your due process now it's time for you to head home"?
I'm trying to find one example of Catholic Charities and/or a bishop telling migrants that if they don't have a pending asylum claim and they crossed illegally they are violating our just laws and need to return home forthwith.
I also can't find any examples of the blanket migrant Mass dispensations that except violent felons with valid deportation orders nor can I find any Mass dispensations for ICE agents and their families post MN Baptist church storming.
We can read between the lines. These guys are showing where they stand.
The Supreme Court not only allowed, but mandated, legal abortion on demand nationwide for 50 years, resulting in tens of millions of deaths. The Supreme Court was not placed under interdict.
The Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly sued nuns for years trying to force them to pay for birth control and abortifacient pills. DHHS was not placed under interdict.
The Food and Drug Administration green-lighted abortion pills that directly kill hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings every year. Then they allowed them to be prescribed via telehealth to make it easier. Now they have approved a generic version to make it cheaper. The FDA has not been placed under interdict.
A cynic might say they would interdict ICE before the FDA because interdicting one would get the plaudits of the media and all the "beautiful people" and interdicting the other one would only get them condemnation and ostracization.
Interesting article / discussions, though as others had pointed out, the bishops' own discussions have lacunas big enough to steer the Death Star through.
I totally get the concern about separating families, and this seems an area that legislation and enforcement protocol can assist in improving. But I point out that this is already acceptable in cases of incarceration. While it's true that repatriation is a stronger form of separation than domestic incarceration, no [serious & sane] person is coming out against incarceration, or canonical penalties for lawmakers writing sentencing guidelines, judges imposing them, or LEOs enforcing them. So my hunch is this will not get off the ground.
One possible minor exception to my last thesis is for individual cases of agent/LEO behavior towards families which goes beyond incompetent and into transparently callous and cruel. This I could get behind. And fortunately, for individuals with such documented behavior, it would be easy to enforce the canonical action (unlike say for a blanket group), and easy for the disciplined to repent and clear the sanction. The obvious drawback to this is, of course, there are thousands of types of behavior that could deserve a canonical sanction, and the USCCB can't even agree to support those who support laws making baby murder legal. </sigh>
Tom Homan’s response in his Congressional Hearing absolutely one-shots the initial idea of canonical penalties for Law Enforcement officials “involved in family separation”:
“We separate children from their parents all the time. When a cop pulls over a parent drunk driving with a kid in the backseat, they’re gonna be charged with a DUI, arrested, and immediately separated from that child.”
These are people that live in a curated boomerite bubble, and do not know or understand the full extent of the situations upon which they repeatedly comment with public statements. The bishops don’t really know what ICE or CBP are actually doing. They don’t know what state local LE agencies are actually doing. They don’t know what leftist organizers are actually doing. They don’t know what foreign illegal immigrants are actually doing.
If I told any bishop in the US right now that the Lt Gov of Minnesota is in a clandestine Signal chat directing terrorist operations where and ICE agent’s flesh was literally bitten off, it would explode his head - something totally beyond their cognitive capacity to process.
These bishops have no clue what’s going in our current moment, they’re just utterly flummoxed that we somehow can’t “all just get along”
You hit the nail on the head. It's hard not to notice when some of these guys comment on current events they sound like they get all their info from the nightly network news and the Heather Cox Richardson newsletter.
Why do you think it is boomerite to be ignorant of the fact that if one is arrested one is immediately separated from one's children, and if one must stay in jail one continues to be separated from one's children? I really get tired of some of the agist garbage I occasionally read on this site.
A majority of voters approve deportations of all illegal immigrants. 40% of voters approve the current way that deportation are being handled. So what does this mean?
"the government’s immigration enforcement efforts have increasingly fewer defenders, as the Minnesota events have seemed to begin shifting public opinion on ICE’s methods."
If anyone wants to start using canonical penalties against politicians, they had better apply them equally to people who support abortion. A statement that someone cannot receive Communion if they support enforcing immigration law would be disastrous.
Can we agree that the hypocrisy has been the only constant. All those catholic politicians that have supported abortion, birth control, etc.etc. and not one was held to account by the bishops.
“I have never been a canonist that wanted to rush in with a sledgehammer with penalties, I don’t think that reflects the canons well, or the theology behind them,” the bishop said.
His record of sackings across multiple dioceses without following canon or civil law demonstrates this statement is false.
There is no way this could happen without the USCCB being accused of hypocrisy with regards to abortion, and the critics would have a valid point.
If bishops who argued against the whole "Eucharistic coherence" thing several years ago support penalties against Catholics for being ICE agents, they will be called out (and rightly so) for the double standard.
If the bishops had stood firmer against abortion back then, I could see there being a valid argument for looking closer at the situation with ICE. But they passed on that chance years ago, so calling for action here will only fuel critics that the USCCB is an arm of the Democratic party (I don't agree with this view) and that they are calling for open borders (I don't agree or disagree with this view; I think it's very unclear what the USCCB or individual bishops actually think border/deportation policy should be).
Immigration is also more nuanced than issues like abortion. What constitutes "treating immigrants with dignity?" Does that mean immigrants can never be deported? Does it depend on how long they have been here? An immigrant that has been here thirty years and can't remember their home country because they came over as a baby is different than someone who snuck over the border last week. Or do we have to let the second person stay too in the name of human dignity?
Without trying to open a debate over these specific questions, how do you determine how culpable Catholics in ICE are? How do you interdict a whole government agency? Is the implication that everyone is morally obliged to quit en masse, therefore dissolving the whole agency and ceasing all immigration enforcement? This doesn't sound like a serious proposal to me (not that I think JD was actually proposing this be done in reality). It's an interesting thought exercise but there's no possibility of any of this happening unless the USCCB wants to tarnish itself and its reputation for a large portion of Catholics beyond recovery.
Yeah, I agree that a wholesale attempt to prohibit ICE agents from receiving the sacraments is very, very unlikely to happen - both because actual moral complicity is complex and varies, and because of the very clear disparity with the treatment of abortion supporters.
If anything along these lines happens, my money is much more on targeted canon 915 enforcement on a few specific ICE leaders or politicians who are directly responsible for giving unethical orders, and likely led by only a few bishops (Ie. very similar to the status quo with pro abortion politicians).
Mayyyybe I could see an argument for something like "joining ICE is like joining the freemasons, you can't do it, repent & submit to the Pope; until then, 916" but I think we'd need to actually see more clarity and consistency about what ICE policy actually is to get there. Like if they updated the oath federal workers take to include "and I'll use maximum force wherever possible because I hate immigrants" there'd have a case. Part of the difficulty with the present administration is that the stated policies and reasoning change daily/hourly - and include a mix of morally acceptable & unacceptable reasons & actions.
Yeah, a statement that Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion if they do not believe in the Real Presence and every single dogmatic definition of the Church might be a better place to start then a complex prudential issue. Bishops could have it read at all the Easter Sunday Masses.
As I understand it, the 5-year-old was temporarily cared for by ICE after his father ran and left him behind, and his mother wouldn't open the door to ICE to take him in even though they promised not to arrest her. He was ultimately held with his father, according to his father's decision.
The general policy is to let the parents decide. I'm not particularly surprised that parents would prefer to have their child with them in detention rather than in foster care.
It seems like there's too much recourse to (often accurate) accusations of hypocrisy in these comment sections. "How can you critique the morality of X when the other guys have been tacitly supporting something more grave than X?" That critique has its place in some narrow settings, sure, BUT even if the USCCB has burnt some credibility in important areas of public morality, that isn't a particularly substantial case to just ignore what they are saying right now. I'm particularly proud of my own Archbishop Hebda and the way he has handled this crisis in his own city. He's borderline prophetic, and that means he'll likely get ignored or scoffed at by at least half of his flock.
The convenient thing about immediately turning the conversation to hypocrisy is that you then don't have to actually defend X.
This is how whataboutism has always worked, whether practiced by Soviet fellow travelers back in the day, or MAGA stalwarts in our day, or anyone in between.
I'm curious what narrow settings you think pointing out hypocrisy has its place. It feels to me like it always puts a persons actions in a more understandable light knowing what actions they have or haven't done compared to what they are currently doing or not doing.
*starts popping popcorn and dons bullet-proof vest*
The whatabout game is especially strong today.
Pointing out the hypocrisy of religious leaders? Not very Christlike.
I guarantee you if the Bishops did this as a body they would lose what little legitimacy is left in the USCCB.
After the Eucharistic coherence imbroglio, I’d be appalled.
Stuff like this is why I mostly put the USCCB's political "guidance" on ignore years ago. These guys are so willing to forgive child molesters, law breakers, legislators and presidents who support abortion, everybody in prison, everybody in an illicit relationship, etc but if you take a different view than them on a political matter they want to kick you out of "their" church.
Many years ago, when I was a youth, I asked my father how do you reconcile the criticism of capitalism by the Vatican and Catholic belief (not asked as succinctly). He said there is a part of religion that is made by God and another by man. You need to be able to tell the difference. It was was some of the best advice I ever received. This is the bishops being men, unwise men at that.
A fair amount of that criticism is correct, it just doesn't stop capitalism from being the best option we have. Capitalism itself is corrupted if the people in it prioritize making money over everything else, not just in the sense of 'greed is bad', but also in the sense of creating perverse economic incentives, including employing cunning or government force to get money, rather than employing smarts, work, cooperation, and competition to make money.
While there’s some truth to that, it seems like people usually decide which part is created by man in a way that conveniently lines up with their own opinions. Is the church’s condemnation of Communism also an optional teaching created by men or does Catholic Social Teaching suddenly become binding in that case?
Thanks for covering ice! I would be really surprised if this happens although I do think it would be a reality check for the (many, I assume) agents that are Catholic. After seeing 20-100 agents a day terrorize my small city and completely operate outside the law and basic human decency, I agree it is impossible to be a part of this agency/ies and not be in grave sin.
I'm sure many regular people joined immigration enforcement in the past with good intentions but I do not see how anyone can remain employed by DHS where human suffering is treated with apathy or glee, agents are encouraged to detain those here legally, the employer lies regularly about what they are doing and why, and not be in grave sin.
I prayed with my Catholic sisters in the Dorothea Project for a conversion of the hearts of ice agents in the spirit of Saul's conversion this weekend. St. Paul, pray for these men and women to see Jesus in those they are persecuting!
I checked the Dorothea Project website, I might be missing it but I couldn’t find a single thing on the sin that migrants are likely to be in regarding failure to pay taxes, illegally residing in a country, lying on forms, stealing identities, aiding cartels through transportation funding and remittances etc. Care for souls is care for souls, and I’ve found the complete omission of the Bishops and others commenting on these sins to be odd, given the aforementioned care for souls.
If you think that people living here illegally necessarily do any or all of these things you are profoundly mistaken. There are innumerable situations where people are here without a proper legal status but are in no way morally culpable.
If you think that ICE agents et al. ought to be similarly dispensed from blame, you again are wrong. Those here illegally and non-culpably must make a nearly impossible and potentially immoral choice to fix their situation. Whereas ICE agents simply need to find a new line of work.
If only the ICE agents used their fervor for catching immigrants who do not commit felonies to catching true criminals, the U.S. would be a much safer country. But ICE agents have a lot easier job than other police by catching the low lying fruit and not catching the real violent and drug dealing criminals, immigrants and Americans alike, who might give them a more difficult time.
Border crossings are at an all time low. About 8,400 attempted crossings were detected in September 2025, 84.4% fewer than in September 2024. This means there were 52,500 in 2024.
Estimates suggest that as many as 6 in 10 (60%) to 8 in 10 (80%) women and girl migrants experience sexual violence during their journey to the United States. Other studies have indicated that roughly 1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted on the trek through Mexico.
In 2025, at the 1/3 rate thats 14,553 sexual assualts prevented. At the 80% estimate level that is 35,280 girls and women who were not sexually assualted because we didn't allow them to be trafficked in one year alone. ICE might not be perfect, but I'd say they are dealing with real violence more than any other law enforcement officer sans the US Marshalls.
Arrow, First off, please don't misunderstand what I said there is a large difference between all as you imply and what I truly said which is "likely to be in". You immediatly act as if I condemned every illegal. I agree some people are here without being in grave sin, but that doesn't mean many aren't.
Second, it's provable that you are wrong if you just look. Millions of illegals per government and non-profit entities commit identity theft. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/us/undocumented-worker-stolen-identity-dan-kluver.html#:~:text=His%20case%20was%20one%20version,circulate%20easily%20across%20the%20mainland.) Even leftwing sources believe illegals pay 100 billion a year in taxes, yet generally owe 140 billion, 40 billion in taxes seems a grave shortfall for somebody. (https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG-119-JU01-20250122-SD003.pdf) Smuggling immigrants at the border is a billion dollar business, and most report nobody crosses without cartel assistance. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/migrant-smuggling-evolution.html)
Third, it's not true to think because I point out this hypocrisy it means I think no ICE agent has ever done something sinful. However, ICE Agents like all local, state and federal law enforcement are to be prayed for to live up to the being rightly called peacekeepers.
It really seems you are very ready to care for souls, yet you are blind to their sin and the reality of their actions. We are not called to ignore sin, but to remove both the splinter and plank in our own eyes, and assist others in the same.
If only Trump had the same bishop deal the Vatican gave China. Then he’d have bishops taking public MAGA loyalty pledges and calling the ICE hotline themselves.
This would be bad for both the US and the Church, 0/10, we should pray it doesn't happen
It won’t because we have the 1st amendment protecting us, but it doesn’t feel great knowing the bukwark against that is the constitution and not the Vatican.
I guess China also has little incentive to guarantee religious freedom and give up that privledge.
I appreciate this article. Thank you.
It is staggering to read this lengthy condemnation of the President and find not a sliver of an answer to the question confronting the President when he assumed office.
What questions?
The ‘open borders’ policy that the President’s political opponents championed, and still do.
Questions national security and health are dismissed.
The political party in power has had an entire year to put forth immigration reform legislation. And ....
Trump has the southern border under much improved control
He’s implementing exactly what he proposed to the American people
Many being confronted by the programme ICE have implemented resist, often violently.
Our immigration system currently works if it is enforced. The problem is that we have had 4 years under Biden with lax enforcement, now the current admin is trying to make up for that.
It works if you have on average the 24 years it takes to navigate the current system. It works if you aren't fleeing violence and hunger. Lots of people don't have the luxury to wait so long under the current law, but if you have five million dollars, the door is open.
That's one of the big episcopal talking points. That we need to "reform" our "broken" immigration system with the implied conclusion in the meantime that gives folks carte blanche to ignore the laws entirely and makes any enforcement of them illegitimate.
The reform the majority of the country wants is a total end to illegal immigration (which would make any de jure or de facto amnesty impossible) and a reduction to legal migration. Harry Enten was on CNN this week discussing those poll numbers.
Not so much "what" but "how." The "how" is what has caused so much contention.
I'd prefer a total end to illegal immigration and an increase in legal migration, including into permanent residency and citizenship rather than the temporary work visas politicians seem to favor.
A lo of people objecting to immigration are the non-college-educated who object to being unable to get a job in certain areas due to being undercut by illegals. Legal immigrants who aren't on special work visas have the same minimum wage laws everyone else does.
Our immigration system really ought to be able to give immigrants a yes/no answer rather than stringing them through bureaucracy for 2 decades. Part of the reason for that is the system getting bogged down by fraudulent applications. Part of it is simply that the system is a tad Byzantine. Although one could claim that it is merely ensuring that immigrants will be capable of handling annual income tax forms...
Part of it is that the number of people who would like to come to the US (and would happily do so legally) dramatically exceeds the number of legal immigrants the median American voter would like to see, and that part is the very tough nut to crack (and, for transparency, an area where I am not confident I understand the Church's teaching on yet).
Sometimes I think some of the vitriol around the immigration debate stems from people trying not to acknowledge the real debate around that core issue, and so it gets fought out as a proxy war on other things that *seem* like they should be relatively easily fixable problems (like, how do we get asylum hearings into a reasonable timeframe + prevent the system from being clogged with spaghetti-wall claims)
Good point on the core issue(s). Because it is prudential rather than black and white, and has a lot of variables to balance, it gets rather murky about the right way to do it, and I think people do not want to talk about it for fear of getting accused of being meanspirited or racist for having an opinion that is not directly traceable to moral law. But that is actually the nature of the beast.
I do not believe the Church anywhere teaches that the number of immigrants admitted must come anywhere close to the number of immigrants requesting admission. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of one of the factors limiting immigration being the right of each country and culture to maintain that culture (which should include *local* cultures). I think the right of citizens to be able to get a job and provide for their families with dignity goes with that. There are jobs where it is practically impossible for a citizen to work. It gets murkier in the US then in other countries, due to our history of waves of immigration, but there's still a right to our own cultures. A limit based on the country's practical ability to process all of the applications in a timely fashion should also exist. We have a limited number of qualified lawyers and judges, and plenty of other jobs for them to do, so it's not a matter of throwing more money at the problem.
I don't like the solution of restricting immigration to the higher class/wealthier immigrants. I kinda toy with the idea of a stratified system with a lottery for each level, with the rich/educated people at the top level and the ones whose sole benefits are not being a criminal, terrorist, unemployable, or having a communicable disease at the bottom, so we will always be getting some of each, and also so that there is a clear yes/no answer for the immigrant in a reasonable time and without a ton of fuss.
I’m tired of the shell game so many bishops play where they say "oh no no we’re not pro open borders don’t you dare say that!" then they tutt tutt every bit of border/immigration enforcement.
Putting a blanket interdict on ICE they won’t even put on Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi would make them lose what little moral authority they have left.
From Archbishop Hebda: 'The Catholic tradition insists on holding together truths that politicians prefer to separate. Nations have the right and duty to secure their borders and enforce their laws. Immigrants are human beings with natural rights that must be respected. Authentic justice requires both the rule of law and mercy, both accountability and hospitality.'
Can we see past the false dichotomy of 'if bishops speak on X they are against Y' for the fullness of Catholic truth?
So we need to secure our border, deport people that break our just immigration laws, and treat those people with dignity and respect? Sounds good to me.
Maybe they should interdict politicians that make it impossible for us to "secure our borders and enforce our laws".
And that’s the thing. Immigrants by and large get an enormous amount of due process and significant leeway (even when ordered to leave the country, they are frequently released on their own and even legally allowed to work(!!!)).
It often sounds as though “dignity and respect” means no deportations allowed. That, of course, is not tenable.
They give the game away when they say we have "the right and duty to secure their borders and enforce their laws" but never ever criticize any politician for refusing to enforce immigration law or de facto throwing open the border.
In fact after Trump made it practically impossible for the drug and human traffickers to cross the border he was criticized by some bishops who said now the border has been "militarized" (whatever that means) so it's actually bad it's now secured. I thought people no longer dying of thirst in the desert, kids being trafficked, or drugs moving here would be a good thing.
The problem isn't that he's secured the border, it's the how. Fear mongering is not a humane way of doing things. The current approach is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. A person who overstayed their visa, but has otherwise been a productive member of the community is treated with the same level of violence and hatred as a human trafficker. Coupled with Trump's rhetoric, people become angry and treat ICE agents with hostility. ICE agents then escalate and we end up with the tragedies of the past few weeks. It's hard for bishops to express support for Trump's way of doing things when people are too scared to go to church, are unable to receive the sacraments when detained, and people are being killed. The ends don't justify the means.
Ask yourself why is most of the drama and tragedy isolated to blue states? Because their governments will not cooperate with the federal government, and progressive groups are organizing resistance to law enforcement operations. This problem has been created by political liberals and not the administration. Your response is their goal.
I don't think anyone should ever be treated with "violence and hatred" even the felons. As mentioned in the article ICE wasn't involved in the latest shooting incident. The previous shooting incident with Renee Good was ICE but she tried to run the guy over with her car. I'm all for the bishops holding Trump accountable if/when he steps over a line but I can't help but see their double standard. Did the USCCB have much to say about the violent protesters that stormed the Baptist church in MN? They want to give violent felons Mass dispensations but it seems perhaps ICE agents and their families are the ones at risk at church.
Is it cruel to pursue known criminals when that makes them too scared to go to church and receive the sacraments? If not, then why is it cruel to pursue illegal aliens?
Agree, it is now known that ngo 's advertised for an immigrant surge from S/Cen America to coincide with the start of the Biden Admin. The result was unwanted immigration, kidnapped children used as asylum ploys, and assaults. Where was the outrage then by the clergy? Their silence contributed to this, and now they pretend to possess moral high ground.
As much as it pains me to say it they weren't silent. They actively helped facilitate it by taking gobs of cash from the feds to resettle folks.
Was there ever a message of "hey we will keep you fed and clothed while you are here but you broke our just laws now you need to go home"?
I think, for the sake of accuracy, it's important to note that many of the people Catholic charities received funding to help had active asylum cases, and many (yes, not all) had entered legally: for example, by declaring their intent to seek asylum to a border guard at a point of entry, or by making a CBP-one app appointment to do the same. It would not make moral or legal sense for NGO's to tell those people "you broke our just laws now you need to go home". In fact, some of the funding was specifically for legal services *so that* asylum seekers could fill out all the paperwork/understand the restrictions/comply with the law correctly!
Something like 4 million people have open asylum claims. Many of these are bogus and will likely be denied (whenever we can clear the huge backlog). If someone has been here say 10 years and they get their bogus asylum claim denied will Catholic Charities or any bishop say "you had your due process now it's time for you to head home"?
I'm trying to find one example of Catholic Charities and/or a bishop telling migrants that if they don't have a pending asylum claim and they crossed illegally they are violating our just laws and need to return home forthwith.
I also can't find any examples of the blanket migrant Mass dispensations that except violent felons with valid deportation orders nor can I find any Mass dispensations for ICE agents and their families post MN Baptist church storming.
We can read between the lines. These guys are showing where they stand.
I am not aware of any NGO's that advertised for an illegal immigrant surge - can you point me to your source for that?
The Supreme Court not only allowed, but mandated, legal abortion on demand nationwide for 50 years, resulting in tens of millions of deaths. The Supreme Court was not placed under interdict.
The Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly sued nuns for years trying to force them to pay for birth control and abortifacient pills. DHHS was not placed under interdict.
The Food and Drug Administration green-lighted abortion pills that directly kill hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings every year. Then they allowed them to be prescribed via telehealth to make it easier. Now they have approved a generic version to make it cheaper. The FDA has not been placed under interdict.
A cynic might say they would interdict ICE before the FDA because interdicting one would get the plaudits of the media and all the "beautiful people" and interdicting the other one would only get them condemnation and ostracization.
Thank you for writing on this important issue.
Interesting article / discussions, though as others had pointed out, the bishops' own discussions have lacunas big enough to steer the Death Star through.
I totally get the concern about separating families, and this seems an area that legislation and enforcement protocol can assist in improving. But I point out that this is already acceptable in cases of incarceration. While it's true that repatriation is a stronger form of separation than domestic incarceration, no [serious & sane] person is coming out against incarceration, or canonical penalties for lawmakers writing sentencing guidelines, judges imposing them, or LEOs enforcing them. So my hunch is this will not get off the ground.
One possible minor exception to my last thesis is for individual cases of agent/LEO behavior towards families which goes beyond incompetent and into transparently callous and cruel. This I could get behind. And fortunately, for individuals with such documented behavior, it would be easy to enforce the canonical action (unlike say for a blanket group), and easy for the disciplined to repent and clear the sanction. The obvious drawback to this is, of course, there are thousands of types of behavior that could deserve a canonical sanction, and the USCCB can't even agree to support those who support laws making baby murder legal. </sigh>
Tom Homan’s response in his Congressional Hearing absolutely one-shots the initial idea of canonical penalties for Law Enforcement officials “involved in family separation”:
“We separate children from their parents all the time. When a cop pulls over a parent drunk driving with a kid in the backseat, they’re gonna be charged with a DUI, arrested, and immediately separated from that child.”
These are people that live in a curated boomerite bubble, and do not know or understand the full extent of the situations upon which they repeatedly comment with public statements. The bishops don’t really know what ICE or CBP are actually doing. They don’t know what state local LE agencies are actually doing. They don’t know what leftist organizers are actually doing. They don’t know what foreign illegal immigrants are actually doing.
If I told any bishop in the US right now that the Lt Gov of Minnesota is in a clandestine Signal chat directing terrorist operations where and ICE agent’s flesh was literally bitten off, it would explode his head - something totally beyond their cognitive capacity to process.
These bishops have no clue what’s going in our current moment, they’re just utterly flummoxed that we somehow can’t “all just get along”
The bishops are making this worse, if anything.
You hit the nail on the head. It's hard not to notice when some of these guys comment on current events they sound like they get all their info from the nightly network news and the Heather Cox Richardson newsletter.
Why do you think it is boomerite to be ignorant of the fact that if one is arrested one is immediately separated from one's children, and if one must stay in jail one continues to be separated from one's children? I really get tired of some of the agist garbage I occasionally read on this site.
A majority of voters approve deportations of all illegal immigrants. 40% of voters approve the current way that deportation are being handled. So what does this mean?
"the government’s immigration enforcement efforts have increasingly fewer defenders, as the Minnesota events have seemed to begin shifting public opinion on ICE’s methods."
If anyone wants to start using canonical penalties against politicians, they had better apply them equally to people who support abortion. A statement that someone cannot receive Communion if they support enforcing immigration law would be disastrous.
Can we agree that the hypocrisy has been the only constant. All those catholic politicians that have supported abortion, birth control, etc.etc. and not one was held to account by the bishops.
Nancy Pelosi
By some bishops, at least.
“I have never been a canonist that wanted to rush in with a sledgehammer with penalties, I don’t think that reflects the canons well, or the theology behind them,” the bishop said.
His record of sackings across multiple dioceses without following canon or civil law demonstrates this statement is false.
There is no way this could happen without the USCCB being accused of hypocrisy with regards to abortion, and the critics would have a valid point.
If bishops who argued against the whole "Eucharistic coherence" thing several years ago support penalties against Catholics for being ICE agents, they will be called out (and rightly so) for the double standard.
If the bishops had stood firmer against abortion back then, I could see there being a valid argument for looking closer at the situation with ICE. But they passed on that chance years ago, so calling for action here will only fuel critics that the USCCB is an arm of the Democratic party (I don't agree with this view) and that they are calling for open borders (I don't agree or disagree with this view; I think it's very unclear what the USCCB or individual bishops actually think border/deportation policy should be).
Immigration is also more nuanced than issues like abortion. What constitutes "treating immigrants with dignity?" Does that mean immigrants can never be deported? Does it depend on how long they have been here? An immigrant that has been here thirty years and can't remember their home country because they came over as a baby is different than someone who snuck over the border last week. Or do we have to let the second person stay too in the name of human dignity?
Without trying to open a debate over these specific questions, how do you determine how culpable Catholics in ICE are? How do you interdict a whole government agency? Is the implication that everyone is morally obliged to quit en masse, therefore dissolving the whole agency and ceasing all immigration enforcement? This doesn't sound like a serious proposal to me (not that I think JD was actually proposing this be done in reality). It's an interesting thought exercise but there's no possibility of any of this happening unless the USCCB wants to tarnish itself and its reputation for a large portion of Catholics beyond recovery.
Yeah, I agree that a wholesale attempt to prohibit ICE agents from receiving the sacraments is very, very unlikely to happen - both because actual moral complicity is complex and varies, and because of the very clear disparity with the treatment of abortion supporters.
If anything along these lines happens, my money is much more on targeted canon 915 enforcement on a few specific ICE leaders or politicians who are directly responsible for giving unethical orders, and likely led by only a few bishops (Ie. very similar to the status quo with pro abortion politicians).
Mayyyybe I could see an argument for something like "joining ICE is like joining the freemasons, you can't do it, repent & submit to the Pope; until then, 916" but I think we'd need to actually see more clarity and consistency about what ICE policy actually is to get there. Like if they updated the oath federal workers take to include "and I'll use maximum force wherever possible because I hate immigrants" there'd have a case. Part of the difficulty with the present administration is that the stated policies and reasoning change daily/hourly - and include a mix of morally acceptable & unacceptable reasons & actions.
One way to treat immigrants with dignity is to allow them the sacraments while they are in the country.
Yeah, a statement that Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion if they do not believe in the Real Presence and every single dogmatic definition of the Church might be a better place to start then a complex prudential issue. Bishops could have it read at all the Easter Sunday Masses.
Probably not something that would be welcomed by the Byzantine Catholics who begin communing those without any such declaration by the communicant.
As I understand it, the 5-year-old was temporarily cared for by ICE after his father ran and left him behind, and his mother wouldn't open the door to ICE to take him in even though they promised not to arrest her. He was ultimately held with his father, according to his father's decision.
The general policy is to let the parents decide. I'm not particularly surprised that parents would prefer to have their child with them in detention rather than in foster care.
It seems like there's too much recourse to (often accurate) accusations of hypocrisy in these comment sections. "How can you critique the morality of X when the other guys have been tacitly supporting something more grave than X?" That critique has its place in some narrow settings, sure, BUT even if the USCCB has burnt some credibility in important areas of public morality, that isn't a particularly substantial case to just ignore what they are saying right now. I'm particularly proud of my own Archbishop Hebda and the way he has handled this crisis in his own city. He's borderline prophetic, and that means he'll likely get ignored or scoffed at by at least half of his flock.
The convenient thing about immediately turning the conversation to hypocrisy is that you then don't have to actually defend X.
This is how whataboutism has always worked, whether practiced by Soviet fellow travelers back in the day, or MAGA stalwarts in our day, or anyone in between.
I recall another example of "whataboutism" involving a gnat and a log in someone's eye.
I'm curious what narrow settings you think pointing out hypocrisy has its place. It feels to me like it always puts a persons actions in a more understandable light knowing what actions they have or haven't done compared to what they are currently doing or not doing.