Remembering
James Robison

You are viewing a page from our archive site. To browse the latest Christian TV content on The Stream, click here.

Pharisaical Advocates of Open Borders Already Have Their Reward

By John Zmirak Published on July 24, 2025

The story and its carefully staged photos are blasting everywhere in Catholic media: The Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, joined by two dozen bikers from the Knights of Columbus — a Catholic fraternal group committed to American patriotism to which I belong — gathered outside the Florida immigrant detention center nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz.

They gathered to pray the rosary. Nothing wrong with that. However, they’re also complaining that no chaplain services have been provided to detainees. And that’s a concern worth addressing.

I Almost Lost My Lunch

So why does my stomach turn when I read about this vigil? Several important reasons. First of all, the U.S. bishops have chosen to pretend that our church teaches de facto open borders — despite our Catechism, which clearly affirms governments’ right to control immigration and migrants’ duties to respect local cultures and obey national laws.

Starting in 2017, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops protested virtually every measure the Trump administration took to enforce our country’s just, democratically enacted, widely flouted immigration laws. When Trump’s team tried to protect unaccompanied minors by separating them from alleged “relatives” and conducting DNA tests, the bishops joined the media outcry about “putting children in cages.”

Please Support The Stream: Equipping Christians to Think Clearly About the Political, Economic, and Moral Issues of Our Day.

Of course, when the Biden regime took over, such separations and tests were suspended — and 300,000 migrant children went missing, some into the clutches of sex traffickers. What did Biden offer such children by way of protection? A hotline that nobody answered.

When all that child exploitation was happening on a mass scale, which U.S. bishops denounced it? Not one of whom I’m aware. How many Knights of Columbus chapters did those bishops summon to pray outside the facilities that were shipping kids off to traffickers? Again, not one I’ve seen reported. But with the return of law enforcement to our chaotic, cartel-controlled borders, U.S. bishops have started appearing at immigration hearings, wringing their hands about “xenophobia,” and in some cases equating deportation to abortion. (Which, if you think about it for three seconds, means equating countries like Guatemala with medical waste dumpsters, but never mind.)

How Good People Get Gaslit

In an online exchange with a well-meaning, naive Catholic who found the prayer vigil an inspiring example of public Christian witness, I found myself asking tough questions, and was fascinated by his answers. It gave me a window into the worldview of the kind of high-minded, low-information Christian the bishops are trying to manipulate on the immigration issue. The exchange went a lot like this:

JZ: Did the Knights do this for January 6 detainees? Do they do it for Operation Rescue detainees? If so, then FANTASTIC, they’re prayer warriors who don’t cherry-pick fashionable causes that make the bishops billions.

Naive Catholic (NC): None of those guys were denied the sacraments under the typical rules that prisons employ, unlike these folks. They also weren’t held in one specific location. But we do have a moral duty to visit the imprisoned, regardless of whether they deserve it, and most of us don’t give them a thought.

JZ: Dozens of J6 prisoners were held in solitary confinement for MONTHS for nonviolent offenses BEFORE trial. From our bishops: crickets.

NC: I think there was one J6 guy who was held for months in solitary, which is outrageous. I’m sure others had some stints, and I’m confident that there was abuse, since there often is, whether someone is guilty or not. But they weren’t in any concentrated location, they were spread over dozens of normal jails and prisons, which typically permit Catholic priests to visit to say mass and administer the sacraments on a regular schedule. The thing that many Catholics are upset with here is that they’re denying access for priests to come say Mass.

JZ: Dozens of them were held in the DC gulag, subject to horrible abuses, thrown in with violent felons. Really you need to follow Julie Kelly, who documented the hideous abuse of these CITIZENS, fellow AMERICANS, not just random foreigners abusing our hospitality.

NC: Well that sounds terrible, maybe I’m insufficiently informed on that point. Not sure why it justifies denying other people access to a priest and the sacraments of grace.

JZ: I’m just inquiring about whether there’s a political motive here, given the bishops’ mercenary obsession with flouting our just immigration laws.

NC: These are just some Knights of Columbus bikers, I don’t know what they have to do with the bishops.

JZ: The Knights regularly do things at the suggestion of their bishops. I’m not criticizing them, but inquiring. It would be GREAT if Knights were to advocate for Americans oppressed by the government, wouldn’t it?

NC: I’m sure, but a significant majority of Americans were pretty horrified by the Jan 6 events, including Republicans. That opinion shifted somewhat over the years as nothing worse came of it, but public opinion was heavily condemnatory, and they had much less support than illegals immigrants do now. I doubt it occurred to many to think of it as a moral wrong. It also didn’t have anything to do with Catholicism specifically.

JZ: And neither does illegal immigration, except insofar as our bishops made $3 billion in 15 years from the federal government “resettling” people. If bishops cashed a check whenever a mom kept her baby, they’d be a lot more actively pro-life.

The Sheep Need to Grow Sharper Teeth

The guy I’m here calling naive wasn’t some woke ex-Catholic radical. He is a decent fellow believer, but one who only saw the shiny scarf our bishops are waving and missed their sleight of hand. What I felt I needed to drum into his head was the sick hypocrisy of our bishops’ selective outrage on topics popular with our elites such as mass immigration.

Our fellow citizens the Biden gang imprisoned for trespassing (either in the Capitol or D.C. abortion clinics) didn’t have heirs of the apostles leading prayer vigils outside. That wouldn’t have gotten the bishops sympathetic stories on MSNBC or in the Washington Post. It might have been countercultural, even apostolic. So it didn’t happen.

Meanwhile the bishops have three billion excellent reasons to keep blowing trumpets as they dispense the alms collected from the taxpayers. They already have their reward.

 
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.