Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, signed an immigration bill into law Dec. 18 that makes it a state crime for unauthorized migrants to cross into Texas from Mexico. Catholic organizations including the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops have opposed the legislation.
When a van dropped off 16 migrants at the Diocese of Sacramento’s pastoral center on Friday, June 2, staff responded as the Church routinely does in emergency situations — help first, ask questions later. The migrants were brought to a parish and eventually given a hotel room.
A vehicle crashed into a crowd waiting at a bus stop outside a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 10 others, authorities said.
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.
A fire that killed more than three dozen migrants at the National Migration Institute in Ciudad Juárez — the city that borders El Paso along the U.S-Mexico border — on the evening of March 27 was reportedly started by migrants who set mattresses ablaze to protest their pending deportation.
Catholic leaders joined immigration advocates and representatives from other faiths on March 21 to protest at the U.S-Mexico border in Arizona, in front of the White House in Washington, and other locations around the country, speaking out against ongoing asylum restrictions at the U.S. border.
President Joe Biden said Jan. 4 he plans to visit the U.S.-Mexico border, which would be the first visit to the border of his presidency, when he travels to Mexico next week.
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.
