WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Trump’s immigration czar, Tom Homan, fired back at U.S. Catholic bishops after they issued a “special pastoral letter” denouncing the administration’s deportation policies following their annual fall meeting last week.
“A secure border saves lives. We’re going to enforce the law, and by doing that, we save a lot of lives,” Homan, who is Catholic, said while standing outside the White House on Friday.
Tom Homan reacts to Catholic Bishops on immigration: “I’m saying it not only as the Border Czar, I’ll say it as a Catholic, I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church.” pic.twitter.com/6kIQCAVJBj
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 14, 2025
Homan was responding to a statement the bishops released denouncing what they called the administration’s complicity in creating “a climate of fear and anxiety” in immigrant communities.
“We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” the message stated, while ignoring the fact that deportation numbers under Trump are not as “record breaking” as they are made out to be in comparison to years past.
The bishops’ statement was the first “special pastoral letter” the USCCB has issued in 12 years, with the previous one coming in 2013 to denounce President Obama’s contraception mandate.
The statement was released on the heels of the USCCB’s new “You Are Not Alone” initiative, which is aimed at supporting illegal immigrants. Liberal El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz is spearheading the program.
Seitz is the chairman of the bishops’ committee on migration. During the 2020 presidential campaign, he participated in a Black Lives Matter protest where he was photographed kneeling. He also said he was “encouraged by the Biden campaign’s promises to address climate change.”
During his remarks to the media on Friday, Homan accused the bishops of being negligent in Church governance.
“I’m a lifelong Catholic, but I’m saying it not only as a border czar, but I’m also saying this as a Catholic, I think they need to spend time fixing the Catholic Church,” he said.
“According to them,” Homan added, “the message to the world is: if you cross the border illegally, which is a crime, don’t worry about it.”
Homan is not the only Catholic to push back against the USCCB. Lepanto Institute founder Michael Hichborn and commentator Matt Walsh have done so as well.
“Where was their ‘concern’ about the ‘climate of fear’ created by the Biden administration when it targeted pro-lifers with lawfare? When were they ‘troubled’ by the FBI targeting Traditional Catholic parishes? Were they ever ‘grieved’ by the Biden administration’s war on preborn children?” Hichborn wondered in an X post that was re-shared by over 500 users.
This scripted video opens with a declaration that the bishops are “disturbed” by a “climate of fear and anxiety” regarding “profiling and immigration enforcement.” These bishops expressed “sadness,” “concern,” “lament,” being “troubled,” and “grieved” all causing them to “feel… https://t.co/RrHoFKSybk
— Lepanto Institute (@LepantoInst) November 15, 2025
“I don’t recall the bishops making any sort of video like this to condemn the Biden White House for supporting, funding, and facilitating the mass slaughter of children in the womb. I also can’t remember seeing any video with solemn condemnations of the Biden White House and its support for the castration and sexual mutilation of children,” Walsh exclaimed.
I don’t recall the bishops making any sort of video like this to condemn the Biden White House for supporting, funding, and facilitating the mass slaughter of children in the womb. I also can’t remember seeing any video with solemn condemnations of the Biden White House and its… https://t.co/0OfetWdGNs
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 14, 2025
The USCCB previously came under fire for its stance on immigration from Vice President JD Vance, a convert to Catholicism.
“When they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?” Vance wondered during an interview in January.
The timing of the bishops’ statement coincides with comments made by Pope Leo XIV at Castel Gandalfo earlier this month.
“Jesus says very clearly: At the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?” the pontiff said when asked to weigh in on current U.S. immigration policy.
Seitz told heterodox America magazine last month that Leo supports him speaking out.
“You stand with me, and I stand with you,” Leo told Seitz and several other clergy during a meeting he had with a U.S. delegation at the Vatican on October 8.
Seitz’s meeting with Leo was the third time the two have crossed paths. While he was prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, then-Cardinal Robert Prevost invited Seitz to speak to newly consecrated bishops “about the ministry of bishops to immigrants.” They also met at the papal audience for the Jubilee for Missions and Migrants in September.
In 2018, Bishop Athanasius Schneider told an interviewer from Milan’s Il Giornale that “the phenomenon of so-called ‘immigration’ represents an orchestrated and long-prepared plan by international powers to radically change the Christian and national identities of the European peoples.”
During his speech at the United Nations in September, President Trump declared “climate change” to be the biggest “con job ever perpetrated on the world,” dismissing it as a “hoax made up by people with evil intentions.” He proceeded to label it, alongside illegal immigration, as part of the “double-tailed monster” of the 21st century.
