Bishop Mark Seitz writes:

Since Inauguration Day, the Trump administration has taken aggressive and extensive actions to restrict migration and to target immigrants already living in our country. These actions include the effective and total suspension of asylum and international protection at our border, the ending of U.S. commitment to refugees around the world, and the suspension of key areas of humanitarian assistance, both at the border and abroad, including aid intended to mitigate forced migration. These actions are accompanied by a disturbing rhetoric of criminality when speaking about immigrants in our country.

Consistent with campaign promises to enact the largest deportation in American history, the administration is laying down key infrastructure to make these promises a reality. The groundwork being laid for this campaign of forced removal is significant and should give us pause. We’ve seen the erection of an offshore detention site at the symbolically charged Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. We’ve also seen the agreement with El Salvador to imprison migrants without regard for essential due-process protections as well as a reckless willingness to test the limits of judicial authority….

Leading the pack, however, is my home state of Texas, which has spent billions of taxpayer dollars to deploy the National Guard and state police to the border, has passed legislation to criminalize migration, has constructed border walls, and is readying still another bevy of troubling anti-immigrant bills in the current legislative session.

These state efforts are also part of the infrastructure of a national deportation campaign. The administration will depend heavily on local police and sheriff departments to collaborate in deportations, particularly through what are known as 287(g) agreements, which essentially deputize local law enforcement to perform immigration-
enforcement functions. These agreements vitiate community trust. When one segment of the population feels they cannot count on law enforcement not to deport them or a close relative or friend, victims will not call the police and everyone will be less safe. In Texas, just recently, such an agreement was troublingly established with the Texas National Guard. These agreements will be key to supercharging the administration’s deportation efforts.

And finally, I must mention the current budget negotiations in Congress, which will nearly certainly end in a substantial increase to appropriations for detention and deportation, the last element of the groundwork necessary for a campaign of mass deportations to proceed….

But in the case of this administration, the speed with which these actions are being carried out, the dystopian rhetoric and sharp attitude, the unapologetic belligerence towards neighboring states in the region, the elevation of self-interest as the criterion of legitimacy, and the disregard for the rule of law and due process are without precedent….

People are far more valuable than things. Human beings are God’s creation of greatest beauty and worth. Anything of great value also has the potential to do harm if misused, but human beings present far more potential for good. What we have learned over the centuries is that migration need not be a threatening reality, but can be an enriching one, when the movement of people is embraced conscientiously as an opportunity for human encounter. This crossing of paths is deeply fulfilling and charged with meaning. This is the culture of encounter that our previous Holy Father underlined so forcefully from the beginning of his pontificate. What Pope Francis taught us is that there is a deeply religious dimension to this work of encounter and building human fraternity….

But we must also find a solution that goes beyond the technocratic, the political, the economic, one that recognizes the historic debt we have as a country that has generated and generates migration, that has benefited and benefits from the work of migrants, and that is part of a global community.

Of course, we’ve failed to do this for generations now. And there are repercussions for our economy, both our political economy and our moral economy. In recent years, our inability to reach comprehensive immigration reform has opened up a space for a racialized politics of exclusion, a recurring and dangerous dynamic in our nation’s political history.

In the social tinderbox of our country right now, there must be a credible response of faith. Our Christian faith must give us something to say to the world at this moment. Our Christian faith must make a difference, be capable of generating an alternate history to the dystopian one that is presently being enacted….

To state it clearly, the actions that I have described to close the border to the vulnerable, to deprive hundreds of thousands of persons of legal status, to broaden the state of exception and deny due process, and to move in the direction of mass deportations, are all morally indefensible from a Catholic perspective. These actions will divide families, divide communities, undermine the rule of law, and increase the numbers of those dying at borders….

The suspension of the refugee program is an inflection point, too, because it is clearly part of a broader attack on civil society and the role of civil-society organizations in our democratic life. Our federal government has long been able to meet social and humanitarian needs by partnering, in a healthy spirit of subsidiarity, with faith-based and community organizations that are closer to affected populations and capable of engaging their members in the broader task of working for the common good. This gives citizens a stake in their communities, respects their agency, and is a check on big government. Subsidiarity, effective partnerships with faith communities, and a vibrant civil society are all quintessential characteristics of American identity. We should all be troubled by an administration taking action to hollow out this important democratic space at the same time that it is governing more and more by cultural diktat, executive orders, and actions that erode constitutional due-process protections. Perhaps we did not expect a rapid slide into a post-religious authoritarianism from the right. All this raises critical questions about the health of our democracy….

People need to see Jesus, visible and concrete. They need to feel his compassion. In the wasteland of this frightening political moment, when everything is reduced to manipulable appearance, they need to see concrete, credible reasons for hope. This is why, despite all the challenges and obstacles, the Catholic Church in the United States continues to call our nation to be true to the best of our heritage and to continue pursuing the vision that a nation with liberty and justice for all is indeed possible with the help of God. We continue to believe that immigration reform is possible, and that one day it will happen, and this is why we keep working for it.