Vice President JD Vance’s fragile relationship with his own church has exploded in a furious brawl over migrants.
A day after Pope Leo XIV publicly called on President Donald Trump and Vance to “allow pastoral workers to assist” detained migrants, one of the administration’s most combative mouthpieces went to war with the Vatican.
Vance appears caught between the administration’s hardline immigration policies and the new pope speaking out on migrants.
Tricia McLaughlin—who as assistant homeland security secretary is Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s senior communications official—publicly attacked Pope Leo, the first American-born pontiff.
Despite her own long history of making false statements about immigration raids, McLaughlin insisted in a post on X that “religious organizations have ALWAYS been welcome to provide services to detainees” and that clergy can request access through “proper channels,” adding that ICE “does not separate families.”
In response, Christopher Hale—a Democratic Catholic activist who raised awareness of the pope’s comments, was one of dozens of social media users who criticized McLaughlin.
“Calling the pope a liar is beyond the pale, Tricia,” he wrote.
McLaughlin’s incendiary statement is unlikely to go down well with Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, either.
The vice president had been enraged by Hale’s revelation hours earlier that a White House spokesperson had responded to Pope Leo’s comments by stating that “the pope doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Vance asked for the name of the staffer who put the statement out.
The back and forth arose after Illinois clergy said they were blocked from bringing Communion to migrants at a federal detention facility—even after giving more than a week’s notice. Pope Leo, a Chicago-born Augustinian elected in May, amplified those allegations and urged “deep reflection” in the United States over the treatment of migrants under Trump.
All of this has put Vance, 41, who has styled himself a “baby Catholic” and has previously tangled with the Vatican, in a sticky spot.
He is caught between a popular new pope, speaking plainly about migrants’ rights, and his employer, trashing the pope’s claims while being hardline on immigration.
The Daily Beast approached the DHS and McLaughlin, as well as the White House, to ask if McLaughlin’s attack on the pope had been approved by the department and whether it was the official government stance.
In response, McLaughlin said, “I’m a Catholic.”
Vance was also asked what he thought about the DHS’ lead spokesperson calling the pope a liar on social media.
McLaughlin’s “no separations” statement is yet another of her claims that doesn’t stand up under scrutiny. The Trump administration’s 2018 “zero tolerance” crackdown separated thousands of children from their parents.
In Trump’s second term, since January 2025, ICE officers have referred more than 400 children to federal shelters as arrests ramped up—often telling parents to either self-deport with their kids or be separated, according to The Washington Post.
The New York Times in August documented at least nine “interior separation” cases in which ICE detained parents who refused deportation flights and sent their children to federal custody or foster care.
And in October, a Guardian investigation found separations revived nationwide, with children misclassified as “unaccompanied” and placed in shelters or foster care while parents remained detained—part of a system that moved nearly 44,000 people, including 1,000 children, in the first months of the term.
McLaughlin’s combative online posture has already drawn scrutiny. In October, she posted about the brutal ICE detention of a teenage girl. She then said, possibly in breach of the law, that a 13-year-old detained in Everett, Massachusetts, had “an extensive rap sheet,” and that he had been in possession of a gun when he was detained, which police denied.
She also put her name on a DHS “fact check” that falsely portrayed a grieving mother who lost a baby in ICE detention as a “wanted killer,” a claim proved false by a Beast investigation.
The post JD Vance Lands in an Unholy Mess as ICE Barbie Goon Trashes the Pope appeared first on The Daily Beast.
