The New York Times

As the Trump administration escalates its aggressive deportation campaign, Roman Catholic bishops across the United States are raising objections to the treatment of migrants and challenging the president’s policy.

For years many bishops focused their most vocal political engagement on ending abortion, rarely putting as much capital behind any other issue.

But now they are increasingly invoking Pope Leo XIV’s leadership and Pope Francis’ legacy against Trump’s immigration actions, and prioritizing humane treatment of immigrants as a top public issue. They are protesting the president’s current domestic policy bill in Congress, showing up at court hearings to deter Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and urging Catholics and non-Catholics alike to put compassion for humans ahead of political allegiances.

The image in Los Angeles and elsewhere of ICE agents seizing people in Costco parking lots and car washes “rips the illusion that’s being portrayed, that this is an effort which is focused on those who have committed significant crimes,” said Cardinal Robert W. McElroy of Washington, in an interview from Rome.

McElroy, who has frequently spoken against Trump’s immigration policies, was named the archbishop of Washington as one of Francis’ final major actions in the United States, reflecting the Vatican’s desire to counter the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Immigration arrests are rising sharply, and ICE has a goal of apprehending 3,000 people a day.

It is not clear how much influence the bishops will have on the issue. In Congress, there has been little debate between the two chambers over the immigration portion of the policy bill.

On Thursday, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, implored Congress to “make drastic changes” to Trump’s domestic policy bill, despite its anti-abortion provisions.

He wrote that the bill failed to protect families including “by promoting an enforcement-only approach to immigration and eroding access to legal protections.”

Leading Catholic prelates including McElroy and Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, went even further in an interfaith letter to Senate leadership Thursday night, strongly urging them to vote against the bill entirely.

In their letter they claimed that the bill, which calls for billions of dollars to bolster ICE, would spur immigration raids, harm hardworking families and fund a border wall that would heighten peril for migrants.

“Its passage would be a moral failure for American society as a whole,” the letter states.

The Most Rev. José H. Gomez, archbishop of Los Angeles, urged a new national conversation about immigration and offered some starting proposals based on the principles of Catholic social teaching in a recent column.

Federal actions are causing panic and disruption in the daily lives of families, Gomez said.

“The current administration has offered no immigration policy beyond the stated goal of deporting thousands of people each day,” Gomez said. “This is not policy, it is punishment, and it can only result in cruel and arbitrary outcomes. Already we are hearing stories of innocent fathers and mothers being wrongly deported, with no recourse to appeal.”

The most recent reform of U.S. immigration laws was in 1986, Gomez added, adding that working families shouldn’t be punished for 40 years of neglect by political leaders.

“It is time for a new national conversation about immigration, one that is realistic and makes necessary moral and practical distinctions about those in our country illegally,” Gomez said. “Most importantly, we should find a way to offer legal status to those who have been in our country for many years, beginning with the Dreamers.”