A Trump administration official is accusing Pope Francis of hypocrisy for speaking out against mass deportations of illegal immigrants in the United States while living at the Vatican, which is surrounded by a wall.
When speaking to reporters Tuesday, Border Czar Tom Homan reacted to Pope Francis’ letter criticizing the Trump administration’s policies. Identifying himself as a baptized and confirmed Catholic, Homan responded, “I’ve got harsh words for the pope.”
Calling on the pope to “fix the Catholic Church,” Homan suggested that Francis’ move to “attack us for securing our border” was hypocritical: “He’s got a wall around the Vatican, does he not? So, he’s got a wall around to protect his people and himself but we can’t have a wall around the United States?”
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“I wish he’d stick to the Catholic Church and fix that and leave border enforcement to us,” Homan concluded. Homan’s comments come after Francis wrote a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Tuesday condemning the “major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations.”
Trump border czar Tom Homan knocks Pope Francis’ criticism of deporting criminal illegal immigrants: ‘Fix the Catholic Church’ pic.twitter.com/tNvCtXHiEV
— Melissa Barnhart (@MelBarnhart) February 12, 2025
While Francis acknowledged that “one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” he wrote that “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.”
“An authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalized,” the pope added. “The true common good is promoted when society and government, with creativity and strict respect for the rights of all — as I have affirmed on numerous occasions — welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates the most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable. This does not impede the development of a policy that regulates orderly and legal migration.”
Francis asserted that the establishment of such an immigration policy “cannot come about through the privilege of some and the sacrifice of others,” adding, “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 delivered a message to the bishops, thanking them for their “valuable efforts” to “work closely with migrants and refugees proclaiming Jesus Christ and promoting fundamental human rights.”
“God will richly reward all that you do for the protection and defense of those who are considered less valuable, less important or less human!” he exclaimed. Francis also urged “all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”
Francis is not the only religious leader who has spoken out against the Trump administration’s immigration policies in recent weeks.
The Rev. Jim Wallis, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Faith and Justice and founder of the Sojourners social justice nonprofit, strongly criticized the Trump administration’s move to eliminate the Department of Homeland Security’s designation of churches as “sensitive” locations where the federal government would not carry out immigration enforcement, in a statement to The Christian Post.
“The Trump administration threatens to violate sacred places of worship from living out their commandments to welcome ‘the stranger’ as instructed by our scriptures,” he asserted in a Tuesday morning email. “To do so is an egregious assault on free exercise of religion in violation of both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
Wallis also praised a lawsuit filed by over two dozen progressive religious organizations challenging the policy change as indicative of “a new chapter in the historic legacy of faith communities standing up for their scriptural obligations in defense of religious liberty and justice for the most marginalized and vulnerable.”
Kelsi Corkran, who serves as lead counsel for the plaintiffs, offered similar analysis in a statement about her clients’ legal action.
“Traditions offer irrefutable unanimity on their religious obligation to embrace and serve the refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status,” she explained. “The Department of Homeland Security’s abrupt decision to rescind the sensitive locations policy and subject places of worship to immigration enforcement action is a clear violtaion of Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”
The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Chrisitan Leadership Conference, pushed back on the idea that churches would emerge as mass deporation hotspots in a previous interview with The Christian Post. “I do not foresee any circumstances where [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] agents in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies go guns-a-blazing on a Sunday morning service,” he said.
“They’re not going to come into churches, but they might be outside the parking lot area. Not in the parking lot, but outside in the premises, outside the church property, looking for that criminal element to maybe come out of a church service — that gang banger or that person who has a record. That’s a possibility.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
