Pope blasts Trump admin over mass deportation plan, directs ire at Vance's religious defense for policies

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Pope Francis on Tuesday issued a major rebuke of the Trump administration’s plans for the mass deportations of migrants, stressing that the forceful removal of people simply for their immigration status deprives them of their inherent dignity and "will end badly."

Francis wrote a letter to U.S. bishops, in which he appeared to criticize Vice President JD Vance's religious argument in defense of the deportation policies.

U.S. border czar Tom Homan responded to the pope, saying that the Vatican is a city-state surrounded by walls and that Francis should leave immigration enforcement to him. Homan, a Catholic, also said Francis should focus on fixing the Catholic Church rather than U.S. immigration policies.

"He wants to attack us for securing our border. He's got a wall around the Vatican, does he not?" Homan told reporters. "So he's got a wall around that protects his people and himself, but we can't have a wall around the United States."

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Pope Francis presides over a mass for the jubilee of the armed forces in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican on Sunday Feb. 9, 2025. (AP)

As the first Latin American pope, Francis has long held the position of caring for immigrants, pointing to the biblical command to "welcome the stranger" in calling on countries to welcome, protect, promote and integrate people fleeing conflicts, poverty and climate disasters.

Francis and President Donald Trump have long butted heads over the issue of immigration, including prior to Trump's first term, when Francis said in 2016 that anyone who builds a wall to keep migrants out was "not a Christian."

In his letter, Francis acknowledged that governments have the right to defend their countries and keep their communities safe from criminals, but he added the deportation of people who fled their countries due to various difficult circumstances damages their dignity.

"That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness," he wrote.

Pointing to the Book of Exodus in the Bible and Jesus Christ's experience, Francis emphasized the right of people to seek shelter and safety in other lands and said the Trump administration's deportation plan was a "major crisis."

Anyone educated in Christianity, he said, "cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality."

"What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly," he continued.

POPE FRANCIS CALLS TRUMP'S DEPORTATION PLAN A 'DISGRACE'

Pope Francis at his weekly audience in the Vatican on Feb. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Broglio, thanked the pope for his letter.

"With you, we pray that the U.S. government keep its prior commitments to help those in desperate need," Broglio wrote. "Boldly I ask for your continued prayers so that we may find the courage as a nation to build a more humane system of immigration, one that protects our communities while safeguarding the dignity of all."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week that more than 8,000 people had been arrested since Trump took office Jan. 20 as part of the president's plan to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally, although hundreds of those arrested have since been released back into the U.S. Others have been deported, are being held in federal prisons or are being held at the Guantánamo Bay Cuba, detention camp.

Vance, a Catholic convert, has defended the administration's deportation plans by citing a concept from medieval Catholic theology known in Latin as "ordo amoris," which he has said describes a hierarchy of care: prioritizing the family first, then the neighbor, community, fellow citizens and lastly those from other regions.

However, Francis sought to fact-check Vance's understanding of the concept.

"Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups," Francis wrote in his letter. "The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan,’ that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception."

Then-Sen. JD Vance walks into the Senate Chamber on Capitol Hill on April 23, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

As Homan referenced, the Vatican is a walled-in, 108-acre city-state inside Rome, and it recently increased sanctions for anyone who enters illegally. The law, approved in December, calls for people to face up to four years in prison and a fine of up to 25,000 euros, or $25,873, if they enter with "violence, threat or deception," including by evading security checkpoints.

The U.S. bishops conference had already released a statement condemning Trump’s immigration policies after his first executive orders.

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Anyone "focused on the treatment of immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, expansion of the death penalty, and the environment, are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us," the statement said.

Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago praised Francis' letter, telling Vatican Media that it showed the pope viewed "the protection and advocacy for the dignity of migrants as the preeminent urgency at this moment."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.