Catholic bishops reprimanded for ‘confusion’ over expulsion stance by group of lay leaders

EXCLUSIVE: After the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a statement against mass deportations, a major U.S. Catholic group chastised some of its colleagues for sowing “confusion” about the Church’s official position on law enforcement and called for a “fuller conversation on immigration.”

On Wednesday, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released a “special pastoral message on immigration” in which the bishops said they feel “compelled now, in this environment, to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.”

In the message, the bishops state unequivocally: “We oppose mass and indiscriminate expulsions of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed against immigrants or against law enforcement.

“We are troubled when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around issues of immigration profiling and control. We are saddened by the state of the contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”

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U.S. Catholic bishops pray together and federal law enforcement officials make an arrest. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters; Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu)

They also lamented that “some immigrants to the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are saddened when we encounter parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones.”

A day later, the conservative advocacy group CatholicVote released a report titled “Immigration Enforcement and the Christian Conscience.”

“Despite what some Church leaders in the United States have indicated, a faithful Catholic can support strong and humane enforcement of immigration laws – through means such as physical barriers, detention and deportation – without violating Church teaching,” the report said.

While the US bishops’ statement evokes the biblical verse “whatever you have done for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you have done for me,” in reference to the plight of migrants, the CatholicVote report states that “the implications of this passage apply to all, including those left in poverty, forgotten, unemployed and victims of crime.”

The report asserts that while “weak borders and lax law enforcement are often presented as ‘humane’ and ‘compassionate’ policies demanded by Christian love,” such policies “often have a terrible human toll – as when they enrich and empower criminal cartels, clearly harming Americans and foreigners in the process.” »

He also advocates for deportations even in cases that lead to the separation of families, saying: “In this regard, there is no essential difference between a prison sentence for other crimes and the deportation of illegal immigrants.

“If legitimate law enforcement disrupts family life, the responsibility lies with the family members who broke the law.”

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The southern border of the United States, near El Paso, Texas. (Photo by Fox News/Joshua Comins)

The report laments that “Catholics who advocate strict but humane enforcement of immigration are sometimes accused of disobeying their bishops or the pope, and even of violating Church teaching.” It also says that “statements by individual Church leaders in America and abroad have also added to the confusion, particularly when they draw a moral equivalence between President Trump’s immigration policies and, for example, the Democratic Party’s pro-abortion platform.”

Despite this, the report states that “strictly speaking, there is no official “Catholic position” on the practicalities of immigration policy. Instead, he presents individual Catholic positions on immigration enforcement as “a matter of prudent political judgment,” which he says is “an area of ​​responsibility that properly belongs to lay Catholics rather than bishops.”

CatholicVote President Kelsey Reinhardt told Fox News Digital that the group “wants to foster a fuller conversation about immigration and give moral standing and freedom of conscience to Catholics and Christians who recognize the need to secure the border and the importance of the rule of law.”

Reinhardt said that “pastoral accompaniment of bishops and Christian faithful, however necessary, does not exhaust the moral vocabulary of the Church.”

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ICE and several other federal, state and local agencies during a week-long immigration enforcement operation in the Houston, Texas, area that resulted in the arrest of 646 illegal immigrants. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)

“The responsibility to regulate borders for the common good is not a caveat added to an otherwise humanitarian manifesto; it is an integral part of Catholic doctrine,” Reinhardt said. “This is not a secondary or peripheral concern. As we argue, it is precisely the breakdown of the legal order – and not just private prejudice – that has created the conditions in which exploitation flourishes, cartels thrive, and millions of migrants are pushed into a dark world without legal recourse or clear prospects.

“The point, to put it bluntly, is this: A nation cannot honor the dignity of immigrants if it has effectively abandoned the rule of law under which immigrants could be protected.”

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CatholicVote made headlines in 2024 for issuing its first political endorsement of President Donald Trump. The group’s founder, Brian Burch, is the Trump administration’s ambassador to the Vatican.

Fox News Digital reached out to the USCCB for comment but did not immediately receive a response.