Pope Leo, Catholic bishops come out against ‘vilification’ of immigrants in U.S.

Pope Leo has come out in support of a rare special message released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in recent days that lamented a “climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement.”

Without mentioning U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration by name, 216 of 224 bishops voted in favour of releasing the message that condemned the “vilification” of migrants and expressed concerns over the fear and anxiety immigration raids have sown in communities, as well as the denial of pastoral care to migrants in detention centres.

Speaking to reporters late Tuesday as he left the papal country house south of Rome, Leo urged Catholics and all people of goodwill to listen to what they said.

“I think we have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have,” he said. “If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts, there’s a system of justice.”

Leo, from Chicago, acknowledged there are problems in the U.S. migration system and said that a humane system does not have to entail “open borders.”

“But when people are living good lives, and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years, to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful to say the least — and there’s been some violence, unfortunately — I think that the bishops have been very clear in what they said,” he said.

“I would just invite all people in the United States to listen to them.”

‘The Catholic Church is wrong’

The bishops had not penned such a single-issue statement at one of their meetings since 2013, according to an Associated Press report. There were five votes against releasing the statement and three abstentions in the vote at their assembly, held in Baltimore.

“Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants,” the bishops said in the statement. The statement was also read on camera in an Instagram video featuring several bishops.

Tom Homan, whom Trump appointed to a “border czar” role within the White House, criticized the bishops’ statement last week, pointing to migrants losing their lives trying to make dangerous crossings between U.S. points of entry.

“Secure borders save lives. I wish the Catholic Church would understand that,” said Homan.

“The Catholic Church is wrong, I’m sorry,” he added. “I’m a lifelong Catholic, but I’m saying it not only as a border czar, but I’m also saying this as a Catholic.”

In its first days, the second Trump administration rescinded guidance that for more than a decade had restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from carrying out immigration enforcement in sensitive locations such as schools and churches.

“We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools,” the bishops said.

Bishops call on ‘people of good will’

The bishops in their statement said that both human dignity and national security could be achieved “if people of good will work together.”

But Republicans and Democrats have failed on multiple occasions to agree to a comprehensive immigration law what would provide legal status to many law-abiding residents, particularly those who arrived in the U.S. as minors.

According to a Pew Research Center report in August, there are about 14 million unauthorized immigrants in the country, an increase from about 8.6 million immigrants in 2000.

In 2012, President Barack Obama announced the Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) policy to protect from deportation undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children — sometimes known as Dreamers. Legal wrangling over that executive action has ensued for years, and the U.S. Supreme Court has not decided on its merits.

In the aftermath of Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential loss to Obama in the 2012 election, senior party officials and conservatives talked of the need to attract non-white voters and recent arrivals. Influential host Sean Hannity said he had “evolved” on undocumented immigrants and favoured a pathway to citizenship for them.

Trump rejected that approach when he launched his first presidential campaign in 2015 and stressed the need for a border wall.

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Amanda Trebach, an ICU nurse and activist with Harbor Area Peace Patrols, says migrants from local communities are avoiding hospitals because masked agents have been known to patrol around them and other public institutions, looking for people to arrest, detain and deport.

While Trump in his first presidential administration said he had been moved by the stories of Dreamers, no deal resulted from immigration talks with Democrats on a bill that would have seen the president receive considerable funding for his desired border wall. Each party blamed the other for the collapse of talks.

On the campaign trail that capped his political comeback, Trump said migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.”

In August, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security urged DACA recipients to self-deport, saying they don’t enjoy “any form of legal status in this country.”

The bishops in their statement and video said they were “saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants” in the U.S.

In an interview earlier this year, Leo expressed concern that “sometimes decisions are made more based on economics than on human dignity” in the U.S.

Leo, born Robert Prevost, has not met or spoken to Trump since being elevated to the papacy.

He did meet at the Vatican on Wednesday with J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. Pritzker has been been vociferous in his criticism of the Trump administration, which deployed 300 Illinois National Guard troops and hundreds more from Texas to the Chicago area without seeking permission from the governor.