The Trump administration has deported 400,000 people this year and detained some 60,000 others, part of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that has also swept up some who are in the country legally. Immigration enforcement officials have blocked priests from offering Communion to some incarcerated immigrants.
On Tuesday, Catholic bishops from around the country took their first step since President Trump retook office to act collectively in support of immigrants who could be affected by the campaign. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced “You Are Not Alone,” a program that lays out ways for Catholics across the country to provide direct aid and solidarity to immigrants.
The Trump administration has deported 400,000 people this year and detained some 60,000 others, part of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that has also swept up some who are in the country legally. Immigration enforcement officials have blocked priests from offering Communion to some incarcerated immigrants.
On Tuesday, Catholic bishops from around the country took their first step since President Trump retook office to act collectively in support of immigrants who could be affected by the campaign. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced “You Are Not Alone,” a program that lays out ways for Catholics across the country to provide direct aid and solidarity to immigrants.
The action, taken at the group’s first business meeting since Trump’s inauguration in January, goes beyond statements by many individual bishops calling for the dignified treatment of immigrants. A handful of bishops have participated in protests and directly challenged the White House’s crackdown as un-Catholic. Recently, many Catholics decried the refusal of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Chicago to permit priests to enter a detention facility to perform the Eucharist for detainees, prompting Pope Leo XIV to ask officials to respect the “spiritual rights” of detainees.
To some, Tuesday’s announcement was a sign that the bishops have begun to stiffen their resolve to support immigrants, who represent one-third of the U.S. Church, according to the Pew Research Center; another 14 percent of Catholics are the children of immigrants. (Pew does not ask about immigration status.) Others cautioned that the full body of bishops still hasn’t taken any votes related to immigration and took a more wait-and-see approach to the new program.
On Wednesday the bishops will consider a “special message” on immigration. Such messages are rare — the last one was in 2013 — and require two-thirds agreement.
The new program may signal the impact of two consecutive popes who — more than their immediate predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II — emphasize poverty and migration as much as abortion and sexuality.
Earlier in the day, the few hundred voting bishops at the meeting in Baltimore selected by a close margin Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, an experienced national administrator and a conservative, as their next president. They also picked Bishop Daniel Flores, of the Texas border diocese of Brownsville, known as extremely outspoken on behalf of immigrants, as vice president. Some church-watchers saw the election — and the rejection of other, more conservative bishops, including Trump ally Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota — as a sign that the conservative-leaning body is starting to move to the middle.
“Our immigrant brothers and sisters … are living in a deep state of fear,” El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, who leads the bishops’ committee on migration, told the ballroom of clerics in announcing You Are Not Alone. “I’ve been heartened by the statements of solidarity of so many of you and others in recent months. Of course as pastors devoted to the Gospel, we know statements are not enough.”
The nationwide program has four purposes: to provide emergency support for immigrants; to support them with pastoral care; to communicate the breadth of Catholic teaching on immigration (countries have the right to control their borders, but humans have a right to migrate for better circumstances and immigrants should be treated with dignity); and to demonstrate public solidarity with them.
In the weeks leading up to the USCCB meeting, Catholic leaders and immigrant advocates have been growing louder in their demands that the Church be more powerful, public and unified in its resistance.
“A key question is: Can the U.S. bishops meet the challenge of defending both Catholic teaching and the dignity of their immigrant parishioners — together, faithfully, pastorally, publicly, strongly and in unity with the first American pope? Will they take public action as a body and challenge the administration on what they are doing and how they are doing it?” asked John Carr, the USCCB’s former longtime public policy director on major domestic and international issues.
Bishop Adam Parker, of Baltimore, said bishops are becoming more active because they are “increasingly alarmed” as enforcement against immigrants has escalated. “That palpable sense of terror is what’s driving us … We keep hearing from our people about their fear.”
The very fact that so many are living in fear, he said, “is a grave violation of human dignity … and therefore we feel it’s important we speak collectively now as bishops.”
Parker and others pointed to a program in a small number of dioceses where bishops — including San Diego Bishop Michael Pham — and other clergy accompany immigrants into court.
“We’d like to see that on a greater level among bishops in the U.S. — and other actions that show our solidarity. Many bishops feel we should do more,” he said.
Dramatic enforcement has been escalating, from deportations and detentions to agents pressured to make more arrests and existing legal programs being wiped out.
“This unyielding commitment to deporting people and curtailing legal immigration plus the unprecedented funding for immigration enforcement has created a situation unlike anything we have seen previously,” Seitz, who recently visited Pope Leo to describe the conditions of migrants in the U.S., told the meeting. “We can’t abandon our advocacy for meaningful reform.”
Pope Leo has been blunt — more so than the U.S. bishops — in his criticism of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants. In late September he called the crackdown “inhuman,” and last week in impromptu comments to reporters in Italy he addressed a question about Trump’s immigration enforcement.
“Jesus says very clearly, at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, you know, how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not? And I think that there’s a deep reflection that needs to be made in terms of what’s happening,” said Leo, the first American pope.
On Tuesday, the meeting opened with a message to Leo from the bishops.
“As you so clearly stated,” the message read, “charity is not optional but a requirement of true worship.”
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