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.
While new border measures from President Joe Biden’s Administration expand legal pathways for migrants to enter the country, the U.S. bishops’ chair on migration warns they also simultaneously expand expulsions — which, he said, isn’t really progress.
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily stopped the Biden administration from ending a pandemic-related border restriction with a one-page order Dec. 19.
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.
Catholics working with migrants have mobilized to assist Venezuelans who are arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in record numbers but are being expelled back to Mexico under pandemic-era health restrictions.
Faith-based groups are voicing worries that lawmakers will extend already existing provisions to further prevent immigrants from entering the U.S. as legislators haggle over what will be included in a historic $260 billion spending bill focused on health care and the environment.
The much-anticipated May 23 deadline on Title 42 came and went at the U.S.-Mexico border without any changes allowing migrants in, including asylum-seekers, after a federal judge blocked the government from lifting the health measure instituted during the pandemic.
A Mexican border diocese has issued an urgent appeal for assistance as hundreds of Haitian migrants arrive in the oft-violent city of Nuevo Laredo, hoping to apply for asylum in the United States.
A federal judge at an April 25 hearing said he would grant the requests of three states to force the federal government to keep in place a public-health order at the U.S.-Mexico border that has increased the number of expulsions of immigrants trying to cross into the United States.
Catholic Charities DC is trying to give a “welcoming, Christ-like response” to migrants arriving in the nation’s capital on buses from Texas, but the head of the organization says there are concerns about a lack of leadership and assistance from the government, and what will happen if the buses arrive through the summer.
