(RNS) — After immigration enforcement officials shot several people and killed two U.S. citizens, U.S. Catholic bishops have used increasingly urgent language in opposing the Trump administration’s immigration policies in recent days.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, called on U.S. members of Congress to oppose a funding bill that includes money for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We ask — for the love of God and the love of human beings, which can’t be separated — vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization,” Tobin said in a webinar hosted by Faith in Action on Sunday (Jan. 25).
Tobin also used stark language to describe immigration enforcement actions, saying, “We mourn for our world, for our country, that allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered.”
One of the three senior clerics currently leading U.S. archdioceses, the cardinal called on webinar attendees to contact their congressional representatives: “How will you say no, in this week, when an appropriations bill is going to be considered in Congress?” he asked.
Several other Catholic organizations and leaders have mobilized supporters to contact Congress and urge them to vote against DHS funding, with some citing Tobin’s comments.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin attends a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, April 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
Bishop Anthony B. Taylor of Little Rock, Arkansas, penned an op-ed in his diocesan newspaper on Monday, warning against the “dehumanization of mass, indiscriminate deportation,” drawing on his own family’s history during the Holocaust. Taylor wrote that his grandfather lost 20 first cousins in the Holocaust after they were turned back at the border when they tried to leave German-occupied Poland for the Russian-occupied section.
“This sealed their fate,” he wrote. “In July of 1943, they were all caught up in a mass deportation and shipped to the extermination camp at Belzec, where they were gassed and cremated.”
Taylor, appointed bishop by Pope Benedict XVI, wrote, “the current times are not identical, and Trump is no Hitler. But the moral decline of our country is real.”
“ … Polarization and partisanship are poisoning the social fabric of our country. In this, there are many obvious parallels with the 1930s, and that should give us pause,” he said.
Taylor highlighted several dynamics in Nazi Germany that he deemed relevant, including Adolf Hitler’s “demonization of those who were different racially or religiously or didn’t share his views”; a lack of sufficient checks and balances in government; the silencing of political opponents, initially through intimidation and threats before concentration camps; the weaponization of the legal system; and Hitler’s lack of respect for the sovereignty of other nations. He also noted that the refusal of other nations to accept refugees led to their deaths.
Federal immigration officers confront protesters outside Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Jan. 15, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
He clarified: “These tragic examples are not what is happening here today. But these are the kinds of atrocities to which the dehumanization of mass, indiscriminate deportation can naturally lead,” adding that the U.S. experienced its own atrocities, such as the forced displacement of Native Americans, the transatlantic slave trade and Japanese American internment camps.
Taylor served on the board of directors for Catholic Relief Services, which was the top recipient of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has been largely dismantled by the Trump administration. He warned against “largely” closing U.S. borders to those fleeing persecution and poverty at the same time as cutting foreign aid. “This is a pro-life issue. And it will remain a pro-life issue so long as millions of people continue to live lives trapped in desperate circumstances, where countries with means refuse to help,” he wrote.
Before intensive-care nurse Alex Pretti, 37, was shot and killed by immigration agents on Saturday in Minneapolis, Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, wrote that the deaths earlier this month of Renee Good, a U.S. citizen shot as she attempted to drive away while observing immigration agents in Minneapolis, and Geraldo Lunas Campos, a Cuban migrant who died in Texas after detention guards held him down and he stopped breathing, had crossed a line. Lunas Campos’ death was ruled a homicide by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“When did we become a bully state, in which might is equated with right?” Seitz, former migration chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, asked in a Jan. 16 statement. “When did we betray the founding principle of this country that all persons are ‘endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?’”
Demonstrators protest outside the White House in Washington, Jan. 10, 2026, against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Quoting Pope Leo XIV’s call for respect for migrants’ rights, Seitz wrote, “I make an urgent plea today that the government and immigration enforcement pull back from the edge and respect the sanctity of every human life, the constitutional and civil rights guaranteed to all in this country.”
Referring to his role as the pastor of many who work in El Paso immigration enforcement, Seitz wrote, “I urge you to obey the dictates of conscience and to respect the sanctity of every human life. No one can be compelled to violate conscience or obey an immoral order.”
After Good’s killing, Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling for comprehensive immigration reform. And this Sunday, after Pretti’s killing, Hebda wrote “the loss of another life amidst the tensions that have gripped Minnesota should prompt all of us to ask what we can do to restore the Lord’s peace.”
“While we rightly thirst for God’s justice and hunger for his peace, this will not be achieved until we are able to rid our hearts of the hatreds and prejudices that prevent us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters created in the image and likeness of God,” Hebda wrote. “That is as true for our undocumented neighbors as it is for our elected officials and for the men and women who have the unenviable responsibility of enforcing our laws. They all need our humble prayers.”
The USCCB’s president, Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, also called for peace in a statement Sunday. Citing Leo’s Angelus message, he wrote, “It is with this in mind that I prayerfully urge calm, restraint, and respect for human life in Minneapolis, and all those places where peace is threatened. Public authorities especially have a responsibility to safeguard the well-being of people in service to the common good.”
“As a nation we must come together in dialogue, turning away from dehumanizing rhetoric and acts which threaten human life,” Coakley wrote. “In this spirit, in unity with Pope Leo, it is important to proclaim, ‘Peace is built on respect for people!’”
In calling on Catholics and other people of faith to “say no” in this moment, Tobin, during the webinar, drew on a story from Ignazio Silone’s “Bread and Wine,” a novel set in 20th-century fascist Italy, where a priest tells a young woman that, in response to “the machinery of death,” empires are toppled and dictators are scared by even just one person writing “no” on the piazza wall at night.
“How will you scrawl your answer on the wall? How will you help restore a culture of life in the midst of death?” Tobin asked.
