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U.S. 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 instilling, 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 in safety and without fear of random deportations,” Coakley said during an appearance on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”
Coakley, archbishop of Oklahoma City, called on the administration “to be generous in welcoming immigrants” while acknowledging: “We certainly have the right and duty to respect our nation’s borders.”
“There is not necessarily a conflict between defending secure borders and treating people with respect and dignity,” Coakley said. “We always have to treat people with dignity, the dignity that God has given us. The State does not grant it and the State cannot take it away.”
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Archbishop Paul Coakley urged the Trump administration to “be generous in welcoming immigrants.” (Getty Images)
“This is a fundamental principle in Catholic social teaching regarding immigration and migrations: people have the right to remain in their homeland, but they must also be allowed to migrate when conditions in their homeland are unsafe and they need to move to a place where they can find peace and security,” he added.
Coakley, although frequently aligned with social conservatives in the church, has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Coakley is one of many Catholic leaders who have criticized Trump’s mass deportation plan, as 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” criticizing Trump’s mass deportation agenda and the “vilification” of immigrants, expressing concern about the fear and anxiety that immigration raids are stoking in communities, as well as the denial of pastoral care to immigrants in detention centers.
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Pope Leo XIV has invited local bishops to speak on issues of social justice. (Alessandra Tarantino/AP)
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around issues of profiling and immigration enforcement,” the bishops’ statement read. “We are saddened by the state of the contemporary debate and by the defamation of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care,” reads the statement from the bishops, who also oppose “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
The special message was endorsed by Pope Leo Dolan, who announced earlier this year that he would retire upon turning 75, as required by Catholic law.
“I think we have to look for ways to treat people humanely, treat them with the dignity that they have,” Leo said last month. “If there are people in the United States illegally, there are ways to deal with it. There are courts, there is a justice system.”
The Pope has previously invited local bishops to speak about social justice concerns and has suggested that people who support the “inhumane treatment of immigrants in the United States” may not be pro-life.
Archbishop Paul Coakley has been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP/Getty Images)
Coakley defended Sunday’s special message, saying the bishops were seeking to “reassure people” amid growing anxiety over immigration raids in cities across the country.
“In communities with a denser migrant population, there is a lot of fear and uncertainty, anxiety because of the level of rhetoric that is often used when addressing issues related to migration and threats of deportation,” he said.
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Coakley said immigration policy must include respect for human dignity, noting, “I don’t think we can ever say that the ends justify the means.”
“That is something fundamental for us: that people should be respected and treated with dignity, whether they are documented or undocumented, whether they are here legally or illegally, they do not lose their human dignity,” he said Sunday.