Vice President JD Vance questioned the motives of the U.S. bishops’ criticism of President Donald Trump’s new immigration policies in a Jan. 26 interview — including raids on churches and schools — asking if they are actually concerned about receiving federal resettlement funding and “their bottom line.”
Executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on issues including migration, the environment and the death penalty are “deeply troubling,” Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a Jan. 22 statement, while praising another on gender policy.
The Trump administration said Jan. 21 it would rescind a long-standing policy preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at what are seen as sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals.
President Donald Trump was sworn in for a second, non consecutive term in the White House Jan. 20, becoming the nation’s 47th president four years after he left office as its 45th.
President Donald Trump is preparing a wave of executive orders for his first day in office, including what could constitute dramatic action on deportations as well as other policy items on his agenda.
Deportation is often seen as a last resort in enforcing immigration laws. It is not considered a punishment but rather an exercise of a government’s sovereign right to exclude from its nation whomever its laws dictate.
When the federal government increased its deportation efforts in the mid-1970s, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, then a priest in the Archdiocese of Newark, recalls the harm it caused by forcing many undocumented immigrants into situations that led to injury, even death.
Rosemarie Vaquero fondly remembers that whenever she walked through the neighborhood with her friend, Father Ruskin Piedra, C.Ss.R., people would stop them to thank him and shake his hand.
Recent comments from New York City Mayor Eric Adams that he supports deporting undocumented immigrants who commit crimes will not receive pushback from Catholic Charities of New York executive director Msgr. Kevin Sullivan. Msgr. Sullivan does, however, urge Adams to be very careful in how he implements any such policy.
Although U.S. Catholics are concerned about climate change, most of them do not see it as a high-priority issue, according to a recent survey.
