Catholic leaders acknowledge tension between Trump immigration policy and religious liberty

WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- The same week President Donald Trump spoke at a hearing of the Department of Justice's Religious Liberty Commission in Washington, a key Catholic bishop said some of his immigration policies risk presenting the church with religious liberty challenges.

"It is interesting that since the administration has put a large amount of emphasis on all kinds of liberty right, including religious liberty, that we find ourselves in this conflict on some of these court cases recently," Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, told reporters before a roundtable discussion on migration issues hosted by the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.

Trump in May signed an executive order creating a religious liberty commission, which includes Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York and Bishop Robert E. Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota. Bishop Seitz noted their presence on the commission, saying, "a couple of our bishops belong to it; and there's also an advisory committee, more bishops belong to it."

"So we're happy for the opportunity to dialog about these issues and to point out where we see inconsistencies that are damaging to an effort to really preserve those First Amendment rights," he said. "And we hope, maybe, we'll have a hearing."

The church has faced a number of recent situations where religious liberty challenges have intersected with immigration issues.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has waged an attempt to shut down El Paso's Annunciation House, a Catholic nonprofit serving migrants.

Another flashpoint occurred over the effort to ensure that detainees at "Alligator Alcatraz," a controversial immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades, have access to the sacraments.

Catholic entities also were among the nongovernmental organizations that appeared subject to a probe by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security about their work with migrants, although that suggestion was later walked back.

Additionally, the nature of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration has affected the participation of some Catholics in worship and seeking the sacraments, with Catholic churches reporting emptier pews as a consequence.

In May, the Diocese of Nashville, Tennessee, issued a reminder to the faithful that they are not required to attend Sunday Mass if they fear for their well-being according to the church’s own teaching and canon law. But in July, over in California, Bishop Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino issued a dispensation from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass for the faithful if they fear for their well-being amid concern over immigration enforcement raids in the area.

Additionally, a joint report issued in March by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Migration and Refugee Services, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and World Relief, found that more than 10 million Christians living in the U.S. would be vulnerable to deportation under Trump administration policies implemented in 2025, and that a majority of them were Catholic.

Ashley Feasley, the legal expert in residence at the Immigration Law and Policy Initiative at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law, noted there is bipartisan support for long-standing restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at what are seen as sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals.

But when the Trump administration tried to alter that policy, they changed it for a policy that is "less clear."

"I think this is an area, particularly if the Trump administration is talking about religious liberty, that would go a long way to talk to the bishops about, you know, what is this policy?" Feasley said. "What can be done, particularly as it relates to houses of worship and access to ... the sacraments?"

"I think there are decision-makers there who would understand it that way," she said.

At the roundtable discussion, Nichole Flores, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia who studies the relationship between Catholicism and democracy, said the principles that "guide our reflection on immigration are threefold, one that human beings do have the right to to migrate, but also that countries such as the United States have the right and even the duty to regulate our borders."

"But a third principle helps us to hold together those two principles that seem to some to be contradictory, that the work of immigration enforcement should be guided by justice and mercy," said Flores, who is the author of "The Aesthetics of Solidarity: Our Lady of Guadalupe and American Democracy."

Panelists discussed the policy and pastoral challenges presented by a mass deportation effort.
Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami discussed traveling with the Knights of Columbus by motorcycle to pray the rosary outside "Alligator Alcatraz."

"The Knights of Columbus was formed for immigrant Catholics, by the founder, Father Michael McGivney," he said. "So immigration is part of our Catholic story, and that's to our shame as Catholics that we forget that our grandparents, our great grandparents, were discriminated against precisely because they were Catholic."

Archbishop Wenski said immigration critics sometimes claim the bishops support immigration "because they want to fill up their emptying pews."

But he noted they have consistently advocated for comprehensive immigration reform, because "we have a problem in which we have people being broken by the law, not breaking the law."

"The administration can say that they are enforcing the laws, and they are," he said. "They are enforcing the laws, laws that are inadequate and antiquated."