A faith-based humanitarian organization in El Paso, Texas, is working with the local diocese to consider expanding its hospitality sites to accommodate 200 more migrants per night, as the head of the organization remains confident they can sufficiently respond to higher numbers.
El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, the U.S. bishops’ conference migration committee chair, applauded the federal government for its new migrant family reunification program, but simultaneously cautioned that comprehensive immigration reform from Congress remains the only sustainable path forward.
The day after Title 42 expired, lifting pandemic public health restrictions that had limited border crossings into the United States, a group of bishops along the southwest U.S.-Mexico border said they “remain committed” to the Church’s efforts to welcome migrants.
Two years into President Joe Biden’s term, Catholic immigration leaders wonder what happened to his campaign trail pledge to create a more fair and humane immigration system. They say while some positive steps have been taken, the administration has been slow to act, increasingly political, and reliant on recycled ineffective policies.
With the U.S. House of Representatives set to vote on sweeping immigration legislation this week, the U.S. bishops’ conference migration committee chair has urged legislators to oppose it, deeming it incompatible with Catholic social teaching and the nation’s commitment to humanitarian protection.
After a federal investigation, a Mexican court issued arrest warrants for six people on March 30 for their connection to a fire that killed at least 40 migrants at an immigration detention center in the border city Ciudad Juárez.
While hoping for the best amid an appeal by the Biden administration of a district judge’s decision to end a controversial Trump-era measure allowing immediate expulsion of immigrants, advocates for new arrivals along the U.S.-Mexico border say their focus remains on the migrants they encounter.
When Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso celebrated Mass from an altar erected over the Rio Grande River earlier this month, attended by parishioners on both sides of the river that marks the U.S.-Mexico border, he cried.
When President Joe Biden took office on Jan. 20, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso remembers that regardless of other policy disagreements the nation’s bishops were confident that immigration was an issue the two sides could work together to solve.
While Democrats and Republicans are trading accusations for who is to blame for the present crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, one U.S. bishop says enough is enough.
