CNA Staff, Feb 28, 2025 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
A group of U.S. and Mexican bishops from dioceses along the southern border said this week that migrants can be assured of the Church’s continued support and compassion, and that lawmakers on both sides of the border have a duty to reform their respective country’s immigration system.
The bishops issued the statement while participating in the biannual Tex-Mex Border Bishops meeting this week in San Antonio, which for 40 years has brought together priests, religious, and laypeople as well as invited representatives from other border dioceses in the U.S. and northern Mexico.
The bishops emphasized the Catholic Church’s commitment to aiding vulnerable populations and reiterated the Church’s willingness to work with governments in these efforts. The bishops had convened this week in San Antonio to discuss the growing migrant and refugee situation in light of new federal administrations in both the U.S. and Mexico.
“We are all together responsible in promoting the common good, simultaneously safeguarding the dignity of all by finding the right balance between various human rights, such as the right of workers and their families to have their situation regularized, the right not to be exploited, the right to migrate, the right not to need to migrate, and the right of all to have their government guarantee security in their own country,” the Feb. 28 joint statement reads.
“For decades, we have expressed our concern that in the United States we have a broken immigration system, which does not correspond to the present reality. We hope and strongly urge our political leaders to fulfill their duty to reform it.”
“In this task that concerns us all, we need God’s help and we count on the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” the statement concludes.
The statement was signed by 10 bishops from Texas including Mark Seitz of El Paso and Daniel Flores of Brownsville. Five Mexican bishops — the shepherds of Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Saltillo, and Matamoros-Reynosa — also signed.
The bishops’ statement comes amid a major dispute between the federal government and the bishops over the Church’s efforts to aid migrants and refugees. Earlier this month, the USCCB sued the Trump administration over what the bishops say is an unlawful suspension of funding for refugee programs in the United States after Trump directed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance funds and grants.
Just this week, the federal government canceled a contract with the U.S. bishops for refugee resettlement. In 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, the USCCB spent nearly $131 million on migration and refugee services, with nearly $130 million of that cost being covered by government grants.
The bishops had already laid off dozens of staff members in its migration and refugee services office amid funding uncertainty.
Pope Francis has long made care and concern for immigrants and refugees a major part of his papacy, regularly calling on wealthy nations to extend sanctuary and resources to those driven out from their homelands or migrants seeking a better life.
Trump, meanwhile, has run his presidential campaigns with a hard-line immigration enforcement message, vowing to expel millions of recent immigrants who entered the country illegally or with invalid asylum claims as well as through parole programs started under the previous administration.
Both Pope Francis and numerous American bishops in recent weeks have called for more generous U.S. immigration policies, urging leaders and advocates to support laws and regulations that allow immigrants in the United States to remain here whenever possible.
In a Feb. 10 letter, Pope Francis urged the U.S. bishops to stay the course in their support for generous immigration policies and called on Catholics to consider the justness of immigration laws and policies in light of the dignity and rights of people.
Following the letter, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) thanked Pope Francis for his “prayerful support” and asked for the Holy Father to pray for the U.S. to improve its immigration system.
“Boldly I ask for your continued prayers so that we may find the courage as a nation to build a more humane system of immigration, one that protects our communities while safeguarding the dignity of all,” the archbishop wrote to the pope.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
“Reform”??? Do they mean by that a continuation of the open border policies of the Democrats? Responsible for the drug and crime deaths of so many Americans? Because I dont recall hearing them making such calls for reform while 20 million unidentified illegals poured into the country.
Bishops lead sheltered lives in many respects. Do they understand that AMERICANS are struggling to make ends meet while our tax dollars go to provide luxury hotel rooms, food gift cards and free cell phone to illegals? That until Trump took office and closed the border, there were not any rooms in homeless shelters for AMERICAN families and veterans because they were stuffed to the gills with the poor of other nations? Along with creating a massive tax burden, illegals arriving in uncontrolled numbers create a compromised and overburdened school system and a medical system which is starting to resemble those in socialist nations. Limited facilities providing limited treatment by necessity because they are overburdened with TOO MANY PEOPLE. There are too many demands on the medical system and not enough doctors or facilities to treat them. Of course Americans HAD an adequate medical system, until illegals arrived by the millions in a short time frame. I have heard medical personnel tell me that illegals arrive at our US hospitals directly from the airport carrying their luggage, as our US hospitals legally cannot refuse them service. Those hospitals CAN however, go bankrupt, depriving some small communities of their only hospital.
I dont imagine that the Bishops have any sense of reality about this, fixated as they appear to be on conflating Catholicism with some Marxist fantasy of equity. I would enjoy hearing them take to task the HOME NATIONS of these illegals, whose GENIUNE responsibility they are. Maybe they should concentrate on fixing the problems within the church ( like getting more folks in the pews) before they start telling our politicians how to run the country.
LJ, my sentiments exactly.
U.S. and Mexican bishops think we have a “duty” to revise our border policy? I think the bishops should stop talking about revising the law and get back to saving souls. I am now 80 years old and do not not recall any effort in my lifetime to revise immigration law. Perhaps the bishops should propose something specific, and then we can see if the American people agree.
Are they going to beat a dead horse until the opposition to open borders relents? Bishops, don’t you have flocks that need tending to?
VERY well said, LJ. Would that the collective USCCB would read your comments and deeply reflect on them.
Imagine this group of U.S. and Mexican bishops, standing there together, believing that they are exercising influence and clout over the United States government on the subject of immigration. I don’t know enough about the Mexican bishops to say much about them. But the U.S. bishops who have gotten themselves deeply enmeshed in immigration-related federal grants, contracts and massive “cooperative agreements” have been compromised by their decades of involvement in these worldly matters. They have focused on “helping the strangers” by attempting to solve their problems by “fixing” their material conditions. Occasionally, a bishop will also address their spiritual needs, such as Archbishop Joseph Naumann, but most of what I see focuses on supporting their material needs by allowing them to move to a more prosperous country. That, I believe, is a sign of the corrupting influence of relying on federal funding for years and years, because of the numerous restrictions placed on how funds can be used.
I suppose their thinking is that, as they speak out, the members of their dioceses, along with Cathollics at large, will rally around them and contact their Senators and Representatives to demand a change in immigration policy and law. I’m sure that some American Catholics, such as the ones who ardently supported Joe Biden, are doing that, but they won’t be enough.
At some point, the bishops of the United States need to realize that over the course of tbe past few decades, many Catholics have come to mistrust many of them, especIally when they are acting as a group. (And I won’t go into the many reasons for that, because they are familiar by now.) Yet they keep behaving as though most American Catholics do trust them, such as when they gather together to make these declarations.