Bishop Mark Seitz delivers letters to Pope Leo XIV from immigrant families

 

El Paso bishop brings Pope Leo XIV desperate letters from migrants in crosshairs of US crackdown

AP Photo/Silvia Stellacci 

By  NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Texas bishop on the front lines of the U.S. immigration crackdown met Wednesday with Pope Leo XIV, bringing him a packet of letters from immigrant families “terrorized” by fear that they and their loved ones will be rounded up and deported as the Trump administration’s tactics grow increasingly combative.

El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz also showed Leo a video detailing the plight of migrants, and told The Associated Press afterward that Leo vowed to “stand with” them and the Catholic leaders who are trying to help them.

“He had a few words for us, thanking us for our commitment to the immigrant peoples and also saying that he hopes that the bishops’ conference will speak to this issue,” said Seitz, chair of the migration committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Catholic leaders in the U.S. have denounced the Trump administration’s crackdown, which has split up families, incited fears and upended life in American churches and schools that serve migrant communities. The administration has defended the crackdown as safeguarding public safety and national security.

“We don’t want to get into the political fray, we’re not politicians, but we need to teach the faith,” and especially the Gospel message recognizing the inherent dignity of all God’s children, and to care for the poor and welcome the stranger, Seitz said.

“They’re terrorized. And it is a fear that has a long-term impact on people, on their lives,” he said.

The letters and video Seitz brought to Leo detail the fear that even legal migrants are facing every day. U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status and children have been among those detained in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounters by federal agents. In Leo’s hometown of Chicago, immigration agents have stormed apartment complexes by helicopter as families slept, deployed chemical agents near a public school and put handcuffs on a city official at a hospital.

“They can’t go out. They are afraid to shop, to go to church and so they stay home,” wrote Maria in one of the letters delivered to Leo. Originally from Guatemala, she has lived in San Francisco for a quarter-century and qualified for asylum years ago, but has relatives in the U.S. who are not legal.

“The pope needs to talk to Trump and ask Trump to think about what he’s doing to immigrants,” she wrote. “The pope needs to plead with Trump and Trump needs to listen to him. Trump has to change what he’s doing.”

Just before he died, Pope Francis strongly rebuked the Trump administration’s plans for mass deportations, warning that the forceful removal of people purely because of their illegal status deprives them of their inherent dignity.

History’s first U.S. pope has followed in Francis’ line. Last weekend, Leo celebrated a special Holy Year Mass for migrants, denouncing the “coldness of indifference” and the “stigma of discrimination” that migrants desperate to flee violence and suffering often face. Asked by reporters this week about the crackdown in Chicago, Leo declined to comment.

On Wednesday, Leo was running late for the audience with Seitz and the delegation of around a dozen people, including members of the Hope Border Institute, an advocacy group formed in partnership with the El Paso diocese. The delegation members assured Leo that they would stand with him as they chatted in a Vatican reception room.

“Later on in the meeting he said, ‘I will stand with you,’ so it was a beautiful little exchange,” said Seitz.

There are rumors in the Vatican that the pope may be considering a trip to the United States as early as next year, when the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Trump has invited him.

Francis famously celebrated Mass on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border in 2016, in Ciudad Juarez, with the liturgy beamed live into a stadium across the border in El Paso.

Seitz was noncommittal when asked if Leo might visit the U.S. side of the border.

“Well, you know he’d be welcome,” he said

El Paso Bishop raises concerns for migrants post election

 

Following Trump’s election, El Paso bishop expresses concern for migrants in the U.S.

By John Lavenburg

Nov 15, 2024

Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso poses in his office in El Paso, Texas, on Monday, April 4, 2022. (Giovanna Dell’Orto/AP.)

BALTIMORE – While Bishop Mark Seitz has said that he doesn’t want to “get ahead” of President-elect Donald Trump in criticizing potential immigration policies, he has also acknowledged an increased level of concern for the undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

Trump, as part of a hardline approach to immigration, has pledged mass deportations.

Seitz, who is chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration recently said that the conference will “raise [its] voice loudly” if that comes to fruition. He told Crux, however, that the fear among undocumented immigrants is already heightened.

“Their level of fear and insecurity has been raised a great deal even before new policies come into play,” Seitz told Crux. “The Biden administration’s actions primarily affected those who were in the sending countries or enroute, but the new administration will also focus on people who are already here. …

“They’re in great danger of having their family divided or being sent back to a place they don’t even know because they’ve grown up in the United States, so there’s a lot of insecurity right now even before the new administration enters,” he said.

Seitz, the bishop of El Paso, spoke with Crux at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops fall general assembly that took place in Baltimore from Nov. 12-14. Trump aside, Seitz that the present immigration situation both inside and beyond the nation’s border has the conference concerned.

Seitz explained that many immigrants are “fearful to stay” but also “fearful to leave” their home countries because the route to the United States has become so dangerous. He said that people have told him and others who work along the border that Mexico is now more perilous than any part of the 3,000-mile route from the northern part of South America to the Texas border.

Migrants are preyed upon at every point by both organized crime and security forces, he explained.

“These people are facing these militarized kind of responses. Already they’re in very difficult straits and there’s very few legal pathways for them to follow, especially when they’re already in a condition where they have to move,” Seitz said. “We’re very concerned about all of them.”

Seitz said that the United States bears culpability in the situation beyond its border because it has “outsourced its border actions to these countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, and Panama, and so on.” He added that as lawmakers at every level consider immigration policies going forward, they need to consider the actual human impact the policies will have.

Seitz noted that too often modern political discourse talks about policies in abstract ways, and therefore often ignores the real impact on human beings a policy could have. He said that good policies take into account the likely impact it will have, and the intended and unintended consequences that might come.

“[Policy] has to be rooted in real human beings, and for us Christians it has to be rooted in the teachings of Christ. Sorry. No exceptions,” Seitz said. “We have to root what we do in the teaching of Jesus Christ, otherwise it is not good human action and not good policy.”

Seitz was installed as the bishop of El Paso in 2013, which means he has worked with local, state, and federal officials on immigration through former-President Barrack Obama’s second term, Trump’s first term, and President Joe Biden’s current term that concludes in January. He also worked with the Biden administration – and even met with the president in 2023 – in a more national capacity in his role leading the USCCB Committee on Migration, which he assumed in 2022.

Over time, Seitz said he has realized that no matter the administration the Church brings to the conversation a perspective others can’t, considering they’re motivated solely by their sincerely held religious beliefs. He said that allows them to “transcend the political chaos, and in-fighting,” which he said they will continue to do under the second iteration of the Trump administration.

“We’re not going to just be some shrill voice adding to the fray,” Seitz said. “We’re going to be talking to people and trusting that the ones we’re talking to, even if they have a different view, will be able to recognize the reason behind what we’re saying and to come to a deeper appreciation of the impact of our positions, as well.”

The Church also, he added, has an important perspective because they work at the ground level.

“We are present. We’re at the ground level, the grassroots level, in the lives of people,” Seitz explained. “Not only do we have the support of the teachings and action of the Church throughout the world, but we’re there, and that means beyond our countries borders, so we can share the impact of proposed policies in a way that others couldn’t begin to.”

Judge shuts down Texas Attorney General assault on Catholic shelter called Annunciation House

Court blocks Texas Attorney General’s move to shut Catholic migrant shelter

By John Lavenburg

Mar 13, 2024

Migrant parents including Iris, from Honduras, left, Gustavo, from Guatemala, standing in green, Wilson Romero, from Honduras, standing, and Christian, from Honduras, seated in gray, socialize outside the Annunciation House, Tuesday, June 26, 2018, in El Paso, Texas. (Credit: Matt York/AP.)

NEW YORK – A district judge in Texas has temporarily blocked an attempt by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to shut down a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso, allowing the shelter to operate as normal while the standard civil process plays out.

Paxton announced his lawsuit against the shelter, Annunciation House, which has operated in El Paso since 1978, on Feb. 20. Paxton sought to revoke the shelter’s registration to operate in the state, alleging that it “engaged in legal violations such as facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.”

In response, Annunciation House called Paxton’s claims “unfounded,” and his attempt to shut the organization down “illegal, immoral and anti-faith.”

On March 10, El Paso District Judge Francisco Dominguez questioned Paxton’s intentions.

“The Attorney General’s efforts to run roughshod over Annunciation House, without regard to due process or fair play, call into question the true motivation for the Attorney General’s attempt to prevent Annunciation House from providing the humanitarian and social services that it provides,” El Paso District Judge Francisco Dominguez wrote in a March 10 order, obtained by Crux.

“There is a real and credible concern that the attempt to prevent Annunciation House from conducting business in Texas was predetermined,” Dominguez continued.

The case between Paxton and Annunciation House boils down to Paxton demanding Annunciation House provide him records related to the violations he alleges, and Annunciation House refusing to do so. Paxton then sued to shut the shelter down. Meanwhile, Annunciation House asked the courts to decide what documents Paxton can legally access.

Per Dominguez’s order, the dispute between the sides will now follow standard civil proceedings, and until it is resolved Annunciation House can maintain its status as a non-profit entity in the State of Texas. No further dates for the case have been set.

The attorney representing Annunciation House said they are pleased with the court’s decision.

“We’re very pleased with the Court’s ruling regarding Annunciation House. The Court demands that standard civil procedures be followed, which will mean a fair and orderly process for determining what documents the law allows the Attorney General to see,” Jerome Wesevich, the Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid’s lead counsel on the case said in a March 11 statement.

“Annunciation House needs to collect sensitive information, including health information, concerning its guests, and it is imperative for the safety and well-being of the community that the releasing of this sensitive information be handled with care and the law in mind,” Wesevich continued.

Attorney Robb Farquharson, who is representing Paxton, did not respond to a Crux request for comment.

Dylan Corbett, the executive director of the Hope Border Institute, an El Paso-based humanitarian organization, told Crux that Dominguez’s order keyed in on the true intent of Paxton’s actions – “to intimidate, to sow chaos and to politicize the essential humanitarian work done in El Paso every day.”

Corbett acknowledged, however, that the case is not over yet.

“That the court has stepped in provides a measure of due process and protection for Annunciation House,” Corbett said in a March 12 email. “But it doesn’t resolve key religious liberty concerns and we don’t know how far Paxton will go in attacking our community’s aid workers and migrant relief work.”

El Paso Bishop defends immigration shelter being attacked by Texas state attorney general

 

El Paso bishop defends migrant shelter under attack by Texas attorney general

By John Lavenburg

Feb 23, 2024

NEW YORK – From the perspective of the local bishop, the recent effort by the Texas Attorney General to close a Catholic migrant shelter in El Paso shows the impossible situation such organizations are in, balancing federal and state responses with their own mission to serve.

“On the one hand, we are challenged by serious federal neglect to provide a safe, orderly and humane response to migration at our southern border,” Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso said in a Feb. 22 statement.

“On the other hand, we are now witnessing an escalating campaign of intimidation, fear and dehumanization in the State of Texas, one characterized by barbed wire, harsh new laws penalizing the act of seeking safety at our border, and the targeting of those who would offer aid as a response of faith,” continued Seitz, who is the  U.S. Bishops’ Conference Migration Committee chair.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced his lawsuit against Annunciation House, a migrant shelter that has operated in El Paso since 1978 on Feb. 20. Paxton is seeking to revoke Annunciation House’s registration to operate in the state, citing public records his office has reviewed that show the organization is “engaged in legal violations such as facilitating legal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house.”

Annunciation House called the claims “unfounded,” and the attempt “illegal, immoral and anti-faith.”

“Annunciation House has kept hundreds of thousands of refugees coming through our city off the streets and given them food,” the organization said in a Feb. 21 statement. “The work helps serve our local businesses, our City, and immigration officials to keep people off the streets and give them a shelter while they come through our community.”

“If the work that Annunciation House conducts is illegal – so too is the work of our local hospitals, schools, and food banks,” the organization added.

Seitz also defended Annunciation House, saying that it has given an effective and compassionate response to the city’s immigration challenges; a response that is rooted in the Gospel.

“Its work is an example of our Catholic commitment to the poor, the Christian call to love one’s neighbor, and stepping into the breach to take action where many will not,” Seitz said. “Our Church, our city and our country owe Annunciation House a deep debt of gratitude.”

Seitz also made clear that the efforts of the Church at the border are not political, and instead about responding to the needs of those they encounter. And while he didn’t mention Paxton or the lawsuit directly, he emphasized that the Church will defend those who carry out this work, and not be intimidated.

“Let me be clear. For the Church’s part, we will endeavor to work with all in pursuit of the common good of our city and nation,” Seitz said. “We will vigorously defend the freedom of people of faith and goodwill to put deeply held religious convictions into practice.”

“We will not be intimidated in our work to serve Jesus Christ in our sisters and brothers fleeing danger and seeking to keep their families together,” Seitz added. “We will stand in solidarity with our community’s aid workers and volunteers, with our community non-profits assisting migrants, as well as with all those in the borderlands and throughout our state living under the weight of inhumane immigration policies.”

Follow John Lavenburg on X: @johnlavenburg