Catholic Bishops Benefiting from Illegal Immigration Threaten to Oppose Trump’s Mass Deportations
Texas Attorney General accuses Catholic charity of smuggling migrants from Mexico into USA
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued a thinly veiled warning to President-Elect Donald Trump, threatening to oppose the deportation of illegal aliens and defend migrants under the forthcoming administration.
Addressing the plenary assembly of the bishops in Baltimore, Maryland, on Tuesday, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the USCCB, designated the issue of immigration as “the clear teaching of the Gospel” stating that the bishops, as “successors of the apostles,” would “never backpedal or renounce” their mandate to protect human dignity “from womb to tomb.”
Commenting on the new post-election milieu, Broglio emphasized the bishops’ efforts to combat “the evil of racism,” to “seek Christ in those who are most in need” and “to encourage immigration reform while we continue to care for those in need who cross our borders.”
“We certainly do not encourage illegal immigration,” the archbishop noted, “but we will all have to stand before the throne of grace and hear the Lord ask us if we saw him in the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, stranger, or sick, and responded to his needs.”
Conscientious Objection?
When asked at a press conference how he would respond if Trump used the military to carry out mass deportations, Broglio said he has a responsibility to “ensure pastoral care” for the service members.
“Unfortunately, the way the military is set up, you cannot conscientiously object to a policy or to a certain war; you have to conscientiously object to war in general, and so that doesn’t really provide an avenue out of the service,” he explained.
“No one can be obliged to go against his or her conscience,” the archbishop noted, insisting that chaplains would work to defend conscience rights as best as they could within the system. Mass deportations would not be economically sound given the number of open jobs, he added.
In 2021, Broglio, who was archbishop for the military services at the time, timidly supported service members’ right to conscientiously object to the abortion-tainted COVID-19 vaccine.
“The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith examined these moral concerns and judged that receiving these vaccines ‘does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion,’ and is therefore not sinful,” he stated.
“This circumstance raises the question of whether the vaccine’s moral permissibility precludes an individual from forming a sincerely held religious belief that receiving the vaccine would violate his conscience. It does not,” he said.
Catholic Charity Smuggles Aliens
Earlier this month, the New York Post broke the story that Annunciation House, a prominent Catholic charity supported by the USCCB, has been “planning and facilitating” illegal border crossings from Mexico into the US.
The charity has been investigated over the last year by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for “systemic criminal conduct.” In May, Paxton said his office had “obtained sworn testimony indicating that Annunciation House’s operations are designed to facilitate illegal border crossings and to conceal illegally present aliens from law enforcement.”
The charity refused to release documents Paxton requested. Instead, it sued the Office of the Attorney General (OAG).
“Annunciation House’s own sworn testimony has shown that Annunciation House operates as a criminal enterprise,” an OAG statement noted. “It knowingly shelters illegal aliens who evaded border patrol when crossing. It even goes into Mexico to retrieve aliens who border patrol denied.”
Paxton’s office revealed that the charity “operates as a criminal enterprise” and has not only admitted concealing illegal migrants in its shelters from law enforcement but even bragged on its website that it houses people who crossed the border with “help from a coyote.”
A court filing by the OAG’s office states that Annunciation House operates as a “stash house” and has been at “the epicenter” of smuggling illegal immigrants across the border “systemically violating multiple criminal statutes” using two buildings owned by the Catholic diocese of El Paso, which it later “gifted” to the charity for $10 each.
According to the court filing, the Catholic Church includes Annunciation House in the national Catholic directory, which bestows upon it tax-exempt status.
“Annunciation House contracts with a local company once or twice a week to transport migrants in passenger vans in groups of approximately 15,” the court filing states. The charity’s “transportation of those aliens presents a very significant likelihood of human smuggling.”
Bishops to Oppose Mass Deportations
Meanwhile, at a press conference during the bishops’ plenary assembly, Bishop Mark Seitz, who heads the diocese of El Paso and chairs the USCCB migration committee, stressed that the bishops would speak up for migrants in the event of mass deportations.
The left-leaning bishop, who became infamous after kneeling at El Paso’s Memorial Park while holding a Black Lives Matter sign on June 1, 2020, said the bishops would raise their “voice loudly if those basic protections for people that have been a part of our country from its very beginning are not being respected.”
“This is going to be a test for our nation,” he said. “Are we in fact a nation based on law, on the most fundamental laws about the rights of the human person? We’re very, very concerned about the impact of all this.”
A source at the USCCB conference told The Stream that several bishops had said they were not happy with Trump’s nomination of Tom Homan as the “border czar.” Homan, a committed Catholic, served in Trump’s first administration as the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
In his book Defend the Border and Save Lives: Solving Our Most Important Humanitarian and Security Crisis, Homan explained how his Catholic faith informs his views on immigration.
“I was raised in a Catholic family in Upstate New York, and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my career,” he told Fr. Robert McTeigue on the Catholic Current podcast in May 2020. “Securing the border not only saves lives in this country. It saves lives of the most vulnerable people that are enticed to come to this country with promises that can’t be kept.
“I’ve seen many children who died making that journey,” Homan lamented. “Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.”
Bishops Make Billions from Immigration
Catholic Charities USA (CCU), the largest social safety net provider in the country outside the federal government, has received nearly $1 billion from taxpayers via the Biden administration to facilitate illegal immigration, The Stream reported in September.
Financial documents show that government grants for the domestic charity wing of the USCCB nearly quadrupled since Biden took office in 2021, with most of the funds directed to the charity’s immigration services — especially its operations near the southern U.S. border.
Critics say Trump’s victory will severely cripple the flow of funds into the bishops’ coffers.
The USCCB candidly admits on its website that it “engages with the federal appropriations process to obtain the maximum amount of funding needed to support the U.S. refugee program, which provides both overseas assistance and resettlement services to refugees.”
Each year, it advocates for “funding levels that maximize the number of refugees assisted overseas and resettled in the U.S., and that provide resettlement agencies sufficient resources to serve refugees in a comprehensive manner,” it states.
In February, the USCCB wrote to Senate leaders expressing “serious concerns” about the government’s new bipartisan border deal, urging them to reject portions that would “further restrict access to asylum.”
“Rather than sustainably reducing migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, consistent with the common good and the good-faith intentions of many lawmakers,” wrote Bishop Seitz, the bill would “pave the way for avoidable and potentially life-threatening harm to be inflicted on vulnerable persons seeking humanitarian protection in the United States.”
Apart from benefiting from the cash flow from taxpayers, the bishops also have been greatly bolstered by Pope Francis’s repeated calls for open borders.
While addressing his general audience in August, Francis declared opposition to mass immigration a “grave sin” and called for a “global governance of migration,” even as Italy’s bishops defied Italian law by financing a ship ferrying illegal immigrants in the Mediterranean.
The pontiff warned that “restrictive laws” and the “militarization of borders” would not help curb the tidal wave of illegal immigrants, who are predominantly Muslim men of military age flooding into Europe from Africa and Asia.
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.