Opinion: The U.S. bishops should pursue a new immigration strategy

The Trump Administration is still making good on the president’s campaign promise to deport an estimated 14 million foreign nationals residing in the United States without authorization.

Over the last year, 622,000 foreign nationals have been deported back to their home countries, along with an estimated 1.9 million self-deportations, and ICE currently holds about 73,000 foreign nationals in pre-removal detention, with a goal of reaching 100,000 detentions soon. In response to the exponential increase in immigration enforcement, some Catholic bishops have, thus far, engaged in fruitless condemnations and Eucharistic processions to detention centers, which result in unrealistic (and unmet) demands to be admitted on the spot to minister to detainees.

And now some bishops are considering “canonical penalties” (i.e., excommunication) for ICE agents.

We think that the bishops should revise their strategy to one that is both more constructive with the Administration and more beneficial to the non-criminal detainees and their families.

We begin by offering the reader several observations and then outline a more constructive strategy for the bishops to consider.

Observation 1: This situation is not going to get better anytime soon. As of September 30, 2024 (the end of the Federal Government’s fiscal year 2024), there were 1.4 million Final Orders of Removal against non-detained foreign nationals, and another 6.2 million foreign nationals with no final order of removal but cases on the immigration docket. It appears that ICE is working overtime to arrest those with final orders of removal, and those who are on the docket. To accomplish this mission, Congress allotted an additional $170.7 billion, $45 billion of which is allocated to detention center expansion alone.

Observation 2: The majority of 73,000 detained foreign nationals are not violent criminals. Of those in detention, about 34,000 (47%) have criminal charges or a conviction in the United States. Granted, included in the remaining 39,000 with no charges or convictions in the United States may be individuals with records in their home countries, or those who managed to commit crimes in the United States but avoided prosecution. However, in the United States, everyone enjoys the presumption of innocence until a conviction. Finally, around 6,000 of the foreign nationals detained are detained as part of a family unit.

Observation 3: The USCCB and Catholic Charities have financially benefited from federal contracts to resettle refugees. From FY 2010 through FY 2024, the USCCB earned almost $1.3 billion from contracts with the Federal Government to resettle migrants and care for unaccompanied children. The bulk of the $1.3 billion was then forwarded to local Catholic Charities, who do the hard work of resettling refugees, with the USCCB keeping a cut for administrative expenses.

Observation 4: The USCCB and many local Catholic Charities are in financial distress because they no longer receive federal funding to resettle migrants. Last July, the USCCB laid off 50 employees, citing the loss of federal refugee resettlement funding. Many local Catholic Charities have done the same. Things have gotten so bad at the USCCB that they are even considering the sale of their 200,000 square foot headquarters located in the “Little Rome” section of Washington, DC, across from The Catholic University of America, because only half the building is used.

Based on the four observations proffered above, we suggest that the bishops pivot from an antagonistic relationship with the Trump Administration in order to help the non-criminal detainees and erase the red ink pouring from their financial statements.

To accomplish this, the bishops should focus on the 39,000 non-criminal detainees, and especially the 6,000 detainees considered a family unit. Specifically, the Catholic bishops should work with DHS to secure a contract to house the 6,000 detainees considered a family unit. After securing those contracts, the Catholic bishops can work on contracts to house any of the remaining 39,000 not included in the 6,000 detainees considered a family unit. Just one contract could solve the USCCB’s fiscal woes. For example, DHS just announced a contracting opportunity for $100 million to house 1,635 detainees. Considering that DHS now has $45 billion for detention facilities, money appears to be no issue at DHS.

Where would these detainees be housed? We offer three options:

1. House the detainees in the unused rectories of the 3,674 parishes in the United States without a resident priest;
2. House the detainees in a closed Catholic college. Since 2020, 45 public or non-profit colleges have closed or announced their closures, and 37 have either merged or announced their mergers with other institutions. These institutions include the University of St. Katherine in California, Cabrini College in Pennsylvania, and schools in almost every state in between. Due to low birth rates and the declining percentage of traditional students opting for college after high school graduation, these facilities are no longer needed for educational purposes;¹
3. Lease the 100,000 square feet of unused space at USCCB headquarters to DHS.

As with most solutions, the ones proposed above are not without hurdles. We foresee at least three.

First, most Catholic colleges (open or closed) do not operate directly under the authority of the local bishop, so the religious orders that own the closed colleges may decline to participate. Second, parishioners may suffer from “Not in My Backyard” syndrome and protest the use of their closed rectories in this manner. Third, the construction costs required to modify the closed schools, rectories, and even the USCCB headquarters so as to be suitable for housing detainees may require upfront costs for which the bishops cannot cover. The last hurdle is the easiest to overcome. The Papal Foundation is Philadelphia, a nonprofit group made up of wealthy American Catholics who donate $1,000,000 to the pope’s private charity, has roughly $230 million in cash and investments, which could be loaned to the USCCB or local parishes to finance the initial construction costs.

Since the founding of the Church, bishops have had to make tough choices to abandon the politically expedient option in favor of what promotes the common good. But we think that public condemnations, threats of canonical penalties, and motorcycle processions to detention centers do nothing for the detainees who may need the Church’s support, both spiritual and material.

Strategy is all about perceptions of relevant time horizons. Thus far, the bishops have attempted to take the commendable path toward alignment with the arc of justice, which invariably bends toward the more humane treatment of immigrants by the Federal Government. In the short run—defined as a minimum of the three remaining years of a federal administration unlikely to compromise about this issue—such an approach abandons the humanitarianism of the most needy of today. It may also jeopardize its ability to have sufficient institutional resources to serve the needy of the future and thus may not be a good long-run strategy.

The alternative strategy advocated in this piece could be thought of as a broader operationalization of the “render unto Caesar” mantra. The good that can be done by cooperating with those with dubious values recognizes the imperfections inherent in politics and capitalism. Playing to win cooperatively in the short term preserves the ability to have a better and deeper impact in the long run.

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