Jesus was an immigrant too, says Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez.
In his Angelus News weekly column to Catholics, the leader of the sprawling Catholic Archdiocese of L.A. took a hard stance against federal immigration enforcement, amid President Donald Trump’s ramped-up mass deportation plan.
“Here in Los Angeles, I have been deeply disturbed by the reports of federal agents detaining people in public places, apparently without showing warrants or evidence that those they are taking into custody are in the country illegally,” Gomez wrote on June 17. “These actions are causing panic in our parishes and communities… it is time that we start talking again and stop fighting in our streets.”
Last week, the Archbishop joined other faith leaders in a peaceful prayer rally near the L.A. Cathedral, calling for an end to immigration enforcement. He told the crowd then that it is “about more than politics — it’s about what kind of country America is meant to be.”
A joint study, published earlier this year by the U.S. Catholic bishops and some Protestant groups, found that one in 12 Christians in the U.S. are vulnerable to deportation or live with a family member who could be deported.
Gomez said that growing ICE activity, reported in places from churches and hotels to public parking lots and workplaces, is causing people to stay home, behind locked doors.
Immigration advocates and leaders against Trump’s mass deportation campaign — once thought to be more focused on targeting violent criminals and terrorists — say these actions have instead shifted to meet an arrest and deportation quota, targeting innocent immigrants and tearing apart families.
Trump says his campaign of mass deportation will make the nation safer.
On Sunday, he added that to reach the goal of mass deportations, officials ”must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside.”
His declaration comes after weeks of increased enforcement, and after Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said ICE officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first five months of Trump’s second term.
That enforcement has led to dozens of workers detained by ICE officers in a series of raids that include in LA’s fashion district and at Home Depot parking lots in Southern California, including Whittier, Santa Fe Springs, Irvine and Downey.
Instead of trying to fulfill arrest quotas, Gomez called on the administration to “take the time and care to make distinctions and judge” each immigrant’s case. He offered six proposals that are based on the principles of Catholic social teaching, which emphasize human dignity and uplifting the common good.
The proposals take both a pro-enforcement and immigration reform stance, and are “not new,” Gomez said. But they are the start of a “new, realistic conversation” on immigration reform,” that “makes necessary moral and practical distinctions about those in our country illegally.”
Among his ideas that echo Trump’s plans to protect the nation was for the government to deport known terrorists and violent criminals, while respecting the right to due process. He also urged tighter border security, which “went too far” unchecked during the previous presidential administration, and suggested officials verify employees’ legal status through technology.
At the same time, Gomez pushed for legal immigration policies to ensure “that our nation has the skilled workers it needs while continuing our historic commitment to uniting families.” He urged the government to renew its “moral commitment” to providing asylum to “genuine refugees and endangered populations.” And he suggested offering legal status to people who have been in the U.S. for years — beginning with the Dreamers, those who came to the U.S. as children and through the renewable Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy.
Those Dreamers, Gomez said, “as many as two-thirds of those in the country illegally, have been living here for a decade or more… this is the only country they have ever known.”
The vast majority of undocumented people are “good neighbors, hardworking men and women, people of faith; they are making important contributions to vital sectors of the American economy: agriculture, construction, hospitality, health care, and more,” the Gomez continued. “They are parents and grandparents, active in our communities, charities, and churches.”
Gomez also called out the lack of immigration reform laws since the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 — which legalized most undocumented immigrants before 1984, passed under the Reagan administration.
“That is two generations of neglect by our political and business leaders. It is not fair to punish only ordinary working men and women for that neglect,” he said.
Finally, calling out President Trump by his own catchphrase, Gomez said that ideals of freedom and equality, long expressed in the Declaration of Independence, “have always been what make America great.”
“Ours is the first nation founded on principles rooted in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, the truth that all men and women are created equal, with God-given dignity and rights that can never be denied by any government.”