United States President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration plans to rescind a long-standing policy preventing immigration and customs agents from making arrests at sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals. Source: OSV News.
Mr Trump, who has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation program in American history,” plans to scrap the longstanding policy – which prohibits immigration enforcement arrests at such locations, as well as other sensitive events like weddings and funerals without approval from supervisors – as soon as the first day he is in office, according to an NBC News report.
Hardline immigration policies, including his call for mass deportations, were a core tenant of the platform Mr Trump campaigned on.
Since his election, Mr Trump has also indicated his willingness to involve the military to carry out a mass deportation program.
While Mr Trump has not yet offered specifics on how he would carry out such a program, mass deportations more broadly run contrary to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in Gaudium et Spes condemning “deportation” among other actions, such as abortion, that “poison human society” and are “supreme dishonour to the Creator”, a teaching St John Paul II affirmed in two encyclicals on moral truth and life issues.
“It is clear that local parishes and pastors will need to be prepared for enforcement activity both near and on church property, and should at least require that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents have a warrant before entering a church,” J. Kevin Appleby, senior fellow for policy at The Centre for Migration Studies of New York and the former director of migration policy for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, said.
“This certainly is an infringement on religious freedom and will deter immigrant families from attending Mass and receiving the sacraments,” Mr Appleby said.
Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the USCCB, said the US bishops “remain committed both to following the law and assisting in humane solutions to the challenges in our immigration system”.
FULL STORY
No sanctuary? Trump reportedly plans to reverse policy, permit ICE arrests at churches (By Kate Scanlon, OSV News via Catholic Review)
