Tipping point: ICE murders and kidnapping of children
Aleja
Hertzler-McCain, Religious News Service
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.
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.
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?’”
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.
