The USCCB and the Trump border czar, Tom Homan, in a war of words

 

Trump ‘border czar’ calls US bishops ‘wrong’ after immigration statement 

written by Kate Scanlon 

A woman bows her head in prayer during a Nov. 13, 2025, prayer vigil and Eucharistic procession for immigrants outside of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office in Philadelphia. The U.S. bishops on Nov. 12 approved a "special pastoral message on immigration," voicing "our concern here for immigrants" at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore. (OSV News photo/Gina Christian)

WASHINGTON (OSV News) — The White House “border czar” Tom Homan called the U.S. Catholic bishops “wrong” Nov. 14, two days after the body of bishops in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly to issue a rare group statement voicing “our concern here for immigrants” at their annual fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.

The statement, which the conference approved Nov. 12, did not name President Donald Trump, but it came as a growing number of bishops have acknowledged that some of the Trump administration’s immigration policies risk presenting the church with both practical challenges in administering pastoral support and charitable endeavors, as well as religious liberty challenges.

‘Indiscriminate mass deportation’

“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement,” the bishops’ statement said, adding, “Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants. We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.”

But in comments to reporters at the White House, Nov. 14, Homan said, “The Catholic Church is wrong.” 

Homan argued that “A secure border saves lives. We’re going to enforce the law and by doing that we save a lot of lives,” and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is sending a message to the whole world.”

‘I’m a lifelong Catholic’

“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, I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church,” he said.

Homan has made similar comments in the past. In January, when Pope Francis, who has since passed away, called Trump’s planned mass deportation campaign a “disgrace,” Homan said, “The Pope ought to stick to the Catholic church and fix that. That’s a mess.”

Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the USCCB, said in written comments shared with OSV News, “The bishops of the United States have spoken together and in unity with Pope Leo XIV.”

“The position of the Catholic Church is clear: ‘Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.’ We invite all Catholics and people of good will to reflect on the Special Pastoral Message,” she said. 

According to “Lumen Gentium,” the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the church, “Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ, and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.”

At the bishops’ plenary assembly, the message was approved by all but a handful of voting bishops and was met with a standing ovation.

‘Our immigrant brothers and sisters’

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, newly elected president of the USCCB, spoke in favor of the statement from the floor, saying, “I’m strongly in support of it for the good of our immigrant brothers and sisters.” 

He added that the statement sought “balance” in “protecting the rights of immigrants but also securing and calling upon our lawmakers and our administration to offer us a meaningful path of reform for our immigration system.” 

Catholic social teaching on immigration seeks to balance three interrelated principles: the right of persons to migrate in order to sustain themselves and their families; the right of a country to regulate its borders and immigration; and a nation’s duty to conduct that regulation with justice and mercy.

‘Rests on foundational concern’

The church’s teaching, the bishops’ special message noted, “rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27).” 

The bishops’ condemnation of “indiscriminate mass deportation” also has a reference point in existing magisterial teaching. St. John Paul II’s  1993 encyclical “Veritatis Splendor” (“Splendor of Truth”) and 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”) both quote the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes,” that names “deportation” among various specific acts “offensive to human dignity” that “are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator.”

The papal teaching in “Veritatis Splendor” states that these acts are examples of “intrinsic evil” incapable of being ordered to God or the good of the human person.

Speaking as body of bishops

According to a USCCB news release issued with the text of the statement, the bishops’ special message “marked the first time” in 12 years the bishops’ conference “invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops.” The last time was in 2013, when the U.S. bishops issued their response to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, stating, “we bishops stand united in our resolve to resist this heavy burden and protect our religious freedom.”

Across the U.S., Christians account for approximately 80% of all of those at risk of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort, with the single largest group of affected Christians being Catholics, according to a joint Catholic-Evangelical report published by the USCCB and World Relief.

The report found one in six Catholics (18%) are either vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is. 

4 out of 10 Catholics are immigrants

According to a Pew Research Center data analysis from March 2025, more than four out of 10 Catholics in the U.S. are immigrants (29%) or the children of immigrants (14%). But eight out of 10 Hispanic Catholics are either born outside the U.S. (58%) or are the children of an immigrant (22%), while 92% of Asian Catholics are either immigrants (78%) or are the children of an immigrant (14%).

Only 15% of white Catholics share this immigrant experience: just 6% were born outside the U.S., with another 9% born in the U.S. to at least one immigrant parent. 

Pew also noted Hispanic and Asian Catholics — populations closely related to the first generation immigrant experience — constitute the more youthful part of the church: 59% of Hispanic Catholics and 46% of Asian Catholics are under 50. Less than 3 in 10 white Catholics (29%) are under 50.

Pew reported there are 53 million Catholic adults in the U.S.: 54% white, 36% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 2% Black.

Trump administration and Pope Francis tying up over immigration

 ORLD

Trump's "border czar" tells Pope Francis to "stick to the Catholic Church" as pope slams mass deportations

By Anna Matranga

Updated on: February 11, 2025 / 2:56 PM EST / CBS News

Rome — President Trump's U.S. "border czar" Tom Homan lashed out Tuesday at Pope Francis after the leader of the Catholic Church strongly criticized the mass deportation of migrants that Mr. Trump has initiated in his second term.

In an open letter to U.S. Catholic bishops sent Tuesday, the Argentinian pope criticized Mr. Trump's mass deportation program, saying those who entered the United States illegally should not be treated as criminals and that the overall plan could not be supported as it violates human dignity.

When asked Tuesday by a Fox News reporter to comment on the pope's "harsh words," Homan replied: "I've got harsh words for the pope: I say this as a lifelong Catholic. He ought to focus on his work and leave enforcement to us. He's got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?"

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth looks on as White House "border czar" Tom Homan gestures during a visit to the border area in Sunland Park, New Mexico, Feb. 3, 2025.

Homan reiterated that sentiment to other reporters at the White House, saying: "I wish he'd stick to the Catholic Church and fix that and leave border enforcement to us."

In his letter to the bishops, Francis said he was closely following the "major crisis" in the U.S., but that the "rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality."

• Fury in India over U.S. deportees seen leg-chained for long flight

Francis acknowledged that nations have the right to defend themselves against migrants who have committed crimes, but he said that was not incompatible with policies for orderly and legal migration.

Deporting people who fled extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious environmental deterioration in their home nations, regardless of how they enter the U.S., "damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness," the pope said.

"What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly," Francis warned.

The pope, 88, has made the defense of migrants and refugees a priority of his papacy since he was elected to lead the Catholic Church in 2013.  Still, it is rare for a pontiff to so directly critique a country's internal political debate.

The pope also rejected Vice President JD Vance's use of Catholic theology to justify the immigration crackdown.

In a January 29 appearance on Fox News, Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, described what he said was "a very Christian concept: You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world."

When critics responded that he had misunderstood the gospel, Vance took to social media to argue that a person's moral duties to their own children outweigh those, "to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away." 

"Just google 'ordo amoris,' Vance wrote, referring to a medieval Catholic concept on the "order of love" or "order of charity" to God, ourselves and our neighbors. 

While not mentioning Vance directly, Pope Francis directly contradicted the vice president's interpretation of Christian love in his Tuesday letter.   

"Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups," he wrote. "The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the 'Good Samaritan,' that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."

Francis also urged Catholics and others to, "not give in to narratives that discriminate and cause needless suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters." 

He said all nations' laws and policies should be crafted and considered, "in light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, and not vice versa."

The pope and Mr. Trump have clashed on immigration in the past. 

In February 2016, asked about Mr. Trump's vow to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, Francis said, "building walls instead of bridges is not Christian."

In January, Francis called Mr. Trump's plan to conduct mass deportations of undocumented migrants a "disgrace."

"It will be a disgrace," he said in an interview with an Italian talk show, "because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill… This won't do! You don't resolve things this way." 

The Border Czar, a lifelong Catholic, says Pope needs to fix the mess in the Church before criticizing Trump border policies

Tom Homan Fires Back at Pope Francis for Calling Mass Deportations a ‘Disgrace’

BY DAVID ZIMMERMANN

President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan fired back at Pope Francis on Friday for calling the new administration’s mass deportation program a “disgrace,” charging the pontiff to focus on problems within the Catholic Church instead.

The night before Monday’s inauguration, Pope Francis suggested Trump’s mass deportation operation will be inhumane for illegal immigrants and disgraceful “because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill.”

Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from 2017 to 2018, lambasted the pope for criticizing U.S. immigration policy.

The pope “ought to stick to the Catholic Church and fix that. That’s a mess,” Homan told Newsmax personality Rob Schmitt.

The Catholic Church has faced numerous problems in recent years, including its poor handling of the sexual abuse of children committed by clergy.

Trump made mass deportations a signature issue during his 2024 campaign, promising to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. The Trump administration is expected to deport about 1.4 million immigrants who have committed crimes or are otherwise staying in the U.S. illegally.

Nearly 600 aliens have been arrested by ICE agents as of Friday, and mass deportation flights to Mexico and Guatemala have already begun.

The head of the Catholic Church has repeatedly called for compassionate and humane immigration policies, calling on nations to accept immigrants within their means and to take down their barriers. Francis himself grew up in a family of Italian immigrants in Argentina.

The pope previously blasted Trump’s hardline stance on illegal immigration, particularly over the Republican’s 2016 campaign promise to build the border wall. Francis said anyone who builds a wall to shut out immigrants was “not Christian,” pointedly referring to Trump.

Homan, who described himself as a “lifelong Catholic” in the interview, pointed out the pope’s hypocrisy for criticizing the border wall when the religious leader has a 39-foot-high wall that encircles the Vatican.

“They have a wall around the Vatican. And if you illegally enter the Vatican, the crime is serious. You’ll be charged with a serious crime and be jailed,” Homan said Friday evening. “So he can protect the Vatican where he lives. He can build a wall where he lives, but the American people are not allowed that.”

The border czar went on to say that border security “saves lives,” and the pope “needs to understand that.”

“When less people come, less women get raped by the cartel, less children die in the river, less Americans die from fentanyl overdoses,” he continued.

Homan will be working closely with Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem on securing the southern border and providing resources to Border Patrol agents for the purposes of curtailing the record inflow of illegal immigrants under the Biden administration. Noem’s cabinet nomination easily passed the GOP-controlled Senate midday Saturday.