USA
We Need Faith-Based Immigration Reform
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
As a Catholic-educated youth from the Midwest, now in my eighties, I am appalled by the President’s current policy of mass deportation. I view the nationwide ICE raids and harsh treatment of detainees as sorely lacking in the social justice of religious teaching.
Operating without moral limits, the indiscriminate deportation of undocumented immigrants proceeds apace, with cruel and humiliating treatment of those apprehended and deported. Young men handcuffed and shackled are forced onto planes heading to the Guantanamo prison or to third countries, where they are incarcerated under undisclosed conditions. Others are held in one or another of the many for-profit “detention centers” scattered about the United States. The ICE roundups target not only criminals and gang members, but also undocumented foreign-born residents who have resided peacefully and productively in the U.S. for years or even decades.
ICE raids, detentions and mass deportations now underway utterly disregard religious principles regarding the treatment of migrants and immigrants. In the Old Testament, Leviticus Chapter 19 enjoins followers to “treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you.” In the New Testament, Matthew, Chapter 25, God says to the righteous “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” In the Holy Quran, Verse 17:70 asserts that everyone’s God-given human dignity must be respected.
In his February 10 letter to the Bishops of the United States. Pope Francis stressed the “infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.” Referring to the mass deportations in America, he said, “The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to …express its disagreement with any measure that… identifies the legal status of some migrants with criminality.” While acknowledging a nation’s right to “keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes,” the Pope warned that an immigration policy “built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly.”
In its January 2025 Statement, which draws from Catholic social teaching on migration, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) proposed the following six elements of immigration reform:
1. Enforcement efforts should be targeted, proportional, and humane.
2. Humanitarian protections and due process should be ensured.
3. Long-time residents should have an earned pathway to citizenship.
4. Family unity should remain a cornerstone of the U.S. system.
5. Legal pathways should be expanded, reliable, and efficient.
6. The root causes of forced migration should be addressed.
Based on such principles and especially on the inherent dignity of every human person, faith-based immigration reforms would limit deportations to convicted criminals, drug traffickers, and gang leaders; and assure humanitarian protections for detainees, expand pathways to legal status or citizenship (especially for long-term residents), promote family unity, and address the root causes of forced migration (such as violence or economic crisis). As the Bishops Conference document states, “a country’s rights to regulate its borders and enforce its immigration laws must be balanced with its responsibilities to uphold the sanctity of human life, respect the God-given dignity of all persons and enact policies that further the common good.”
Faith-based immigration reform would also relieve the terrible fear and anxiety that now afflict our immigrant population–anxieties that keep children out of school, prevent their parents from reporting crime, and discourage medical and court appointments.
Fortunately, there is in the legislative pipeline a bill that would address at least three important principles of faith-based reform: legal pathways, asylum reform, and humanitarian concerns. The bipartisan Dignity Act of 2023 would greatly strengthen enforcement efforts at the U.S.-Mexico border. At the same time it would create new options for obtaining lawful status for many or most of the 12 million documented immigrants now in our country. The bill’s Dignity Program would offer deferral from removal for seven years and employment and travel authorizations for those who comply with the conditions. Some elements of the program would even create a pathway to citizenship.
The Dignity Act of 2023 falls short of some biblical principles in its emphasis on immigration ceilings, its strict application requirements, and its failure to define humanitarian standards for the so-called “Humanitarian Campuses.” Despite the bill’s shortcomings, the USCCB called the Dignity Act of 2023 “a welcome step in the right direction.”
Let’s hope that a more welcoming Dignity Act will one day replace today’s cruel ICE raids and mass deportations. Faith-based immigration reform would recognize the dignity of each person, whether immigrant or asylum-seeker.
(RNS) — Since he was inaugurated in January, President Donald Trump has faced virtually constant pushback from faith groups, including in the courts.
President Donald Trump waves to the media as he leaves the U.S. Capitol on March 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
March 18, 2025
WASHINGTON (RNS) — President Donald Trump remains locked in at least five major lawsuits filed by religious groups during the first two months of his new administration, showing tensions between the White House and the faith-based organizations challenging his agenda.
The latest chapter in the ongoing legal battles unfolded on Monday (March 17), when a legal report announced the federal government had paid Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Worth more than $47 million for refugee resettlement work — funds frozen since Trump halted the federal refugee program in January.
The case highlights a sustained faith-based pushback to Trump’s actions that began almost immediately after he took office. His efforts to reshape the federal government and dramatically alter immigration policy have been met with religious resistance almost every step of the way — including in the courts.
The payment in Texas was part of a broader outcry against Trump’s decision to effectively freeze the refugee program and, in turn, abruptly halt funds — including for work done before Trump became president — for the groups that partner with the government to resettle refugees once they’ve arrived in the United States.
According to The Dallas Morning News, the millions paid to Fort Worth’s Catholic Charities agency, which has overseen Texas’ refugee resettlement services since Gov. Greg Abbott pulled the state from the federal program in 2016, was part of a suit filed in early March against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which supplies some funds related to refugee resettlement.
In the lawsuit, Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Worth demanded it be paid millions in withheld funds it typically distributes to various partner organizations in the state, alleging Trump’s funding freeze was unlawful and led to widespread layoffs.
People protest near the White House in Washington, Jan. 28, 2025, against a funding freeze of federal grants and loans after a push from President Donald Trump to pause federal funding. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
The Texas result follows another legal victory for faith groups involved in a similar case, Pacito v. Trump, filed by national faith-based refugee resettlement agencies Church World Service and HIAS, alongside Lutheran Community Services Northwest and individual refugees and their families, against the Trump administration for suspending the refugee program. In late February, U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, the federal judge overseeing the case in Seattle, blocked the president’s executive order halting the suspension of the refugee program.
However, the day after the ruling, the government sent out “termination orders” regarding federal contracts, also known as cooperative agreements, to all 10 refugee resettlement groups working with the government. The administration then argued in court that the organizations, seven of which are faith-based, no longer had standing to sue. The move resulted in a tense court hearing March 4, in which Whitehead questioned the timing of the termination orders.
Resettlement groups also argued they had yet to see evidence of the refugee program restarting to comply with the judge’s order, prompting Whitehead to order the government to produce a status report released last week. In it, federal authorities acknowledged a “significant deterioration of functions” of the refugee program.
In that same March 4 hearing, lawyers for the government suggested the abrupt contract cancellations were part of ongoing litigation in yet another case, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops v. U.S. Department of State, filed in Washington, D.C. Unlike Pacito v. Trump, the suit filed by the USCCB — which also partners with the federal government to resettle refugees — was narrower in scope: The bishops focused primarily on the government’s contracts with the USCCB in the U.S., alleging the government had violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
The USCCB’s request for a preliminary injunction was denied by a judge in early March, who argued the case should be resolved by the Court of Federal Claims. In response, the USCCB asked the D.C. Circuit appeals court to issue an emergency injunction — the only feasible way to recoup the withheld funds within a relevant timeline. The USCCB, like other resettlement agencies, offers refugees 90 days of assistance upon arrival into the U.S., but the Trump administration froze the program on Jan. 24, meaning the bishops have until April 23 to offer refugees still under their care any funds traditionally provided by the government.
The D.C. Circuit is expected to respond by the end of next week.
“The USCCB continues to advocate for refugees and we are doing what we can to ensure that the newly arrived refugees and their families, who were assigned to our care by the State Department, are not deprived of assistance promised to them by the United States,” Chieko Noguchi, a USCCB spokesperson, told RNS in a statement.
Meanwhile, the federal government is also embroiled in two lawsuits centered on the Trump administration’s decision to rescind a 2011 government rule that discouraged immigration raids at “sensitive locations,” such as houses of worship.
Although the two cases differ slightly, they both allege the government’s actions violated both their right to free association and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, arguing rescinding the rule reduced worship attendance and the use of services provided by the religious communities. The federal policy change has already resulted in at least one immigration arrest at a church and diminished worship attendance among immigrants, including those with legal status and U.S. citizens, RNS previously reported.
The first of the lawsuits, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was initially filed on Jan. 27 by a slate of Quaker groups and later joined by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a Sikh temple in Sacramento, California. They already won a narrow legal victory: In late February, the plaintiffs received a preliminary injunction restricting immigration raids at their houses of worship as the case proceeds, although it applies only to the groups involved with the case.
The second lawsuit, filed on Feb. 11, had a more expansive list of plaintiffs, with 27 religious groups, including entire denominations such as the Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, signing on. Those religious groups have also requested a preliminary injunction, but the case is ongoing.
Religious groups and faith leaders are also part of at least three other lawsuits against the Trump administration. HIAS — a Jewish organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees — is among the plaintiffs in a suit focused on the administration’s halt in global aid funding. The interfaith environmental justice organization Faith in Place recently joined a lawsuit regarding the freezing of Inflation Reduction Act grant funds, and a Lutheran minister is part of a filing challenging the administration’s decision to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
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