Trump Border Czar Scolds Catholic Bishops’ Public Protest of ICE’s Mass Deportation Tactics

President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan scolded U.S. Catholic bishops for a message condemning the administration’s “indiscriminate mass deportation” – warning them to “spend time fixing” the church instead.

The “special message” published Wednesday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, approved by more than 95 per cent of members at their fall assembly in Baltimore, delivered a harsh rebuke of immigration policies

“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement,” the bishops said in a video recording, adding that they were “saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants.”

“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” they added, arguing that Christian teaching demands compassion for migrants.

The intervention followed guidance from Pope Leo XIV, who urged the bishops to speak candidly about their concerns.

In an interview with reporters outside the White House on Friday, however, Homan roundly rejected the criticism:

So according to [the bishops] the message we should send to the whole world is: ‘If you cross the border illegally, which is a crime, don’t worry about it. If you get ordered removed by a federal judge, that’s due process, don’t worry about it, because there shouldn’t be mass deportations.’

If that’s the message we send the whole world, people are still going to put themselves in harm’s way to come to the greatest nation on earth. They’re going to spend their life savings on a criminal cartel – we saw during the Biden administration, when there was no immigration enforcement, over 4,000 aliens died making that journey and 40 million Americans died from fentanyl.

Secure borders saves lives and I wish the Catholic Church would understand that.

Homan insisted the administration’s approach is both legal and humane, jibing that the “penalities” for illegally entering the Vatican was “much worse”:

We have the right to secure our borders and they have the right to secure their facility. The penalties for entering their facilities are much worse than ours so by enforcing the law we’re saving lives by doing that.

We’re going to enforce the law, and by doing that, we’re saving a lot of lives. One of the reasons no one talks about why we have the most secure border in the history of this nation is because [of] exactly what ICE is doing.

Homan added that he was a “lifelong Catholic” before landing a further jab at the church: “I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church, from my point of view.”

Watch above via CSPAN.

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