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United States Conference of Catholic Bishops President Paul Coakley said Sunday that the Trump administration’s mass deportations are sowing fear and uncertainty in immigrant communities across the country.
“It’s creating, as I said, fear in a pretty widespread way. So I think it’s something that concerns all of us, that people have a right to live safely and without fear of random evictions,” Coakley said during an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
Coakley, the archbishop of Oklahoma City, called on the administration to “be generous in welcoming immigrants,” while recognizing that “we certainly have the right and duty to respect the borders of our nation.”
“There is not necessarily a conflict between defending safe and secure borders and treating people with respect and dignity,” Coakley said. “We must always treat people with dignity, the dignity that God has given us. The state does not grant it and cannot take it away.”
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Archbishop Paul Coakley urged the Trump administration to “be generous in welcoming immigrants.” (Getty Images)
“It’s sort of a core tenet of Catholic social teaching regarding immigration and migration: people have the right to stay in their country of origin, but they should also be allowed to migrate when conditions in their country of origin are dangerous and necessitate moving to a place where they can find peace and security,” he added.
Coakley, while often aligned with church social conservatives, has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Coakley is one of several Catholic leaders who have criticized Trump’s mass deportation plan because fear of immigration raids has reduced Mass attendance in some parishes.
After Trump returned to the White House in January, Coakley issued a statement reaffirming that “the majority of undocumented immigrants in Oklahoma are upstanding members of our communities and churches, not violent criminals.”
Last month, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a “special message” in which it criticized Trump’s agenda of mass expulsions and the “vilification” of migrants, expressing concern over the fear and anxiety that immigration raids are stoking in communities, as well as the denial of pastoral care to migrants in detention centers.
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Pope Leo XIV has urged local bishops to speak out on social justice concerns. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)
“We are troubled when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around issues of profiling and immigration control,” read the bishops’ statement. “We are saddened by the state of the contemporary debate and by the defamation of immigrants. We are concerned by the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care”, they can read in the statement of the bishops, who also oppose “the mass and indiscriminate deportation of people”.
The special message was endorsed by Pope Leo Dolan announced earlier this year that he would step down at age 75, which is required by Catholic law.
“I think we have to look for ways to treat people with humanity, with the dignity that they have,” Leo said last month. “If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to deal with that. There are courts, there is a justice system.”
The pope has previously urged local bishops to speak out on their social justice concerns and suggested that those who support the “inhumane treatment of immigrants in the United States” may not be pro-life.
Archbishop Paul Coakley has sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/Getty Images)
Coakley defended the special message Sunday, saying the bishops were seeking to “reassure people” amid growing concern over waves of immigration in cities across the country.
“In communities where the migrant population is denser, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty, anxiety because of the level of rhetoric often used to address issues related to migration and threats of deportation,” he said.
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Coakley said immigration policy must include respect for human dignity, emphasizing: “I don’t think we can ever say that the ends justify the means.”
“It’s sort of a fundamental principle for us: people should be respected and treated with dignity, whether they have papers or not, whether they’re here legally or illegally, they don’t lose their human dignity,” he said on Sunday.
