Pax Christi USA is deeply concerned about and vigorously condemns the recent Executive Orders on immigration issued by the new Trump administration, which enable mass deportations, militarizes immigration enforcement, expands detention infrastructure, and effectively ends asylum, violating not only the rights and dignity of millions of immigrants and their families, but also the very traditions that have made our country a beacon to refugees fleeing violence and persecution the world over. – January 2025 Pax Christi USA statement on immigration-related executive orders

Across the world, migrants and refugees flee debilitating poverty and hunger, horrendous violence and war, and environmental devastation due to climate change and resource extraction, seeking a safe place for their families.

Throughout our nation’s history, the United States has been both a beacon of welcome to refugees fleeing violence, as well as a nation that demonizes migrants and refugees through racist fear-mongering dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1924. In more recent times, the failure of Congress to pass immigration reforms and policies of both Democratic and Republican administrations have led to openly racist and cruel practices of detaining children, separating families, militarizing our borders, and dismantling our refugee resettlement and asylum system under the first and second Trump administrations.

White House rally, August 2014

The US government and US corporations have contributed to the root causes of migration, creating conditions of political violence and economic insecurity by supporting authoritarian governments and a global extractive economy that impoverish people, destroy the natural environment, and create the conditions that drive global migration.

Pax Christi USA, rooted in Catholic social teaching and Gospel nonviolence, stands in solidarity with our immigrant sisters and brothers, and fully supports the right of people to migrate and seek refuge in the United States with a path to citizenship. Pax Christi USA also supports the right of people not to migrate and to live in their communities and countries of origin, by supporting just, equitable, and sustainable political, economic, and environmental policies that promote and protect human dignity and the global common good.

Statements from Catholic religious leaders on immigration

  • Pope decries “major crisis” of Trump’s mass deportation plans, rejects Vance’s theology (National Catholic Reporter): Pope Francis has written a sweeping letter to the US bishops decrying the “major crisis” triggered by President Trump’s mass deportation plans and explicitly rejecting Vice President Vance’s attempts to use Catholic theology to justify the administration’s immigration crackdown. 
  • Letter from Pope Francis to the US Catholic bishops on mass deportation: “I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations … The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
  • USCCB: Executive actions will subject vulnerable families and children to grave danger: “We urge President Trump to pivot from these enforcement-only policies to just and merciful solutions, working in good faith with members of Congress to achieve meaningful, bipartisan immigration reform that furthers the common good with an effective, orderly immigration system.”
  • USCCB: Human dignity is not dependent on a person’s citizenship or immigration status: “We recognize the need for just immigration enforcement and affirm the government’s obligation to carry it out in a targeted, proportional, and humane way. However, non-emergency immigration enforcement in schools, places of worship, social service agencies, healthcare facilities, or other sensitive settings where people receive essential services would be contrary to the common good.”
  • Justice for Immigrants: Catholic bishops’ statements on immigration: In the wake of the recent US election, Catholic bishops from across the country have reiterated their support for vulnerable migrant populations.
  • Bishop Seitz responds to Vance on immigration: “He clearly doesn’t know me” (Crux): Pope Francis’s recent letter to the US bishops on immigration, where he criticizes the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans only came up briefly during the dialogue, with El Paso’s Bishop Mark Seitz simply saying the pontiff “has once again come forward and spoken in a certain way on our behalf, with an eloquence that few of us can.” Throughout the dialogue, Seitz, and other participants, highlighted the fear the Trump administration’s policies and rhetoric on immigration have created.

How much risk are we willing to take as a movement?” To continue working for the dismantling of the white supremacy systematically embedded in our nation just became more difficult. To stand with immigrants and refugees, recognizing that we are all sojourners with no lasting home, will be more costly in many ways. To uphold the dignity of women, made in the image and likeness of God with full and equal dignity and rights just became unpopular. Even to simply listen to each other becomes counter-cultural. – A post-election message from Pax Christi USA Bishop President John Stowe

Videos

Prayer

Study

Action

Catholic and faith-based organizations working on immigration

Catholic publications and resources on immigration

Frontera Dispatch Newsletter (Hope Border Institute): Bilingual weekly newsletter from the US–Mexico border, full of analysis and border perspectives on immigration. Edited by the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, TX.

Know Your Rights Cards (CLINIC): All people in the United States, including undocumented immigrants, have Constitutional rights and protections. Neither immigration nor the police will assume you want to exercise your rights. You are in charge of asserting them by showing your Know Your Rights card or by telling the officer you are exercising your rights. This wallet-sized card can be printed in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

Know Your Rights Flyers (CLINIC): Consolidated outreach flyer that includes links to CLINIC’s top resources on avoiding immigration services scams, Know Your Rights materials, and emergency planning for immigrant families at risk for deportation.

Social Justice Resource Center: “Persons have the right to migrate to support themselves and their families. The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of security and the means of livelihood which he or she cannot find in his or her country of origin.” – Catechism of the Catholic Church

Resources on detention