(LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on December 21, 2025, where he once again criticized President Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts.
Among other things, the prelate fretted that the administration’s deportation campaign is “instilling fear in a rather widespread manner,” adding: “People have a right to live in security and without fear of random deportations.”
Archbishop Coakley provided no polling data and no scientific evidence to support his assertion, only anecdotal observations presumably relayed to him from fellow bishops.
While Archbishop Coakley’s concerns are not without some foundation, they fail to provide the nuance that is needed to understand the broader picture of what is unfolding across the U.S.
The bishops offer no solutions
Fear of consequences for breaking the law is not inherently unjust. In fact, instilling a looming sense of punishment for illegal behavior is the best way to deter certain actions in the future. Trump’s no-nonsense border czar Tom Homan made national news when he did precisely that while clashing with leftist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019.
During a congressional hearing that year, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that entering the U.S. illegally was not a crime, to which Homan responded that it actually is a violation of the law and that anyone who wants to claim asylum status needs to enter a designated port of entry, lest they risk being deported.
Archbishop Coakley further told CBS that the Trump administration should “be generous in welcoming immigrants” while acknowledging that the U.S. has a “right and a duty to respect borders of our nation.”
Fair enough. But what are the practical limits to this? When has any U.S. bishop ever hinted at what might constitute a cap on the number of persons – whether illegal or legal – who are allowed to enter the United States? Do they even have such a number in mind? At what point will they ever say the U.S. has no more room? My hunch is they will never state this publicly and that their comment about “respecting borders” is nothing more than lip service.
Similar ambiguity was found in remarks made by Pope Leo XIV last month, who, in a press gaggle outside Castel Gandolfo, said: “No one has said that the United States should have open borders.” Yet he gave no specifics about what the U.S.’s border policy should be, only boilerplate concerns about treating illegals with dignity.
What about the dignity of US citizens?
It is remarkable that for all the talk about respecting the dignity of illegal immigrants, Catholic clergy in the U.S. still fail to address the countless ways the dignity of actual citizens is being undermined.
American workers, for instance, are often displaced by cheap foreign laborers. This just happened with FedEx. In 2022, FedEx was awarded a $2.2 billion federal contract but almost immediately began hiring hundreds of foreign workers on H-1B visas. The company has rightly come under fire in recent days for doing this.
An article that appeared in Compact magazine titled “The Lost Generation” by Jacob Savage also highlights how DEI initiatives systematically sidelined white millennial men across multiple industries like academia, media, and entertainment over the past two decades. What about their dignity and their right to be treated with respect, Archbishop Coakley?
Furthermore, illegal immigrants who come to the U.S. often get paid under the table, paying no taxes while working for less than actual citizens. Some also often take advantage of subsidized housing while receiving food stamps at cost to the taxpayer and then flooding the public school systems.
The current stream of endless amounts of illegal Latin American immigrants into the U.S. ultimately risks perpetual class warfare. Eventually, this is going to cause the U.S. to devolve into an even more fractured country.
Bishops have failed to improve the common good
Later in his interview with CBS, Archbishop Coakley states that, “people have a right to remain in their homeland, but they also ought to be allowed to migrate when conditions in their homeland are unsafe.”
This comment suggests that Archbishop Coakley views every country in Latin America as a failed country, as it implies that every person who lives in Mexico, Guatemala, and the neighboring countries is entitled to asylum status in the U.S.
What does such a comment say about the Catholic Church’s effectiveness in those nations? At minimum it suggests that it has failed abysmally at ensuring persons can live meaningful lives there.
Tougher immigration laws save lives
President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has said 300,000 unaccompanied migrant children were lost under the Biden administration but, thanks to Trump’s efforts, more than 60,000 of them have been rescued.
“Many were in sex trafficking, many were in forced labor, many were being abused,” he recently said. “A secure border saves lives.”
It is crucially important to note that current deportation numbers under Trump are not as “record breaking” as they are made out to be by the media and by the bishops. In the first half of 2025, ICE deportations were estimated to be around 800 per day – far less than what they were under President Obama, who oversaw more than 400,000 removals in fiscal year 2012 alone.
At the end of the day, President Trump explicitly campaigned on strong immigration policies in 2016, 2020, and 2024 – he won each of those races convincingly. Yet the bishops are trying to swoop in at the 11th hour and stifle his mandate, seemingly in an effort to prevent the GOP from winning a majority in the House and Senate during the 2026 midterms.
Archbishop Coakley and the USCCB are increasingly detached from the views of the majority of laity in the U.S. A recent EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll found that over 50 percent of Catholic voters who attend Mass weekly support deportation policies. Catholics should continue to push back against the U.S. bishops on this issue lest their country be lost for good.
