Pope condemns Trump’s mass deportations as incompatible with Christianity and conscience

Pope Francis has issued a written condemnation of US president Donald Trump’s mass racist and ‘dehumanising’ deportation programmes, which are targeting legal migrants as well as refugees and asylum seekers and those in the naturalisation process.

In a letter to US Roman Catholic bishops this week, Francis condemned the new US regime’s abuse of migrants and refugees, which he says are a contravention of Christian values, including compassion, solidarity and the dignity of human beings – and recalled the flight of Jesus and his parents to Egypt as refugees from a murderous tyrant:

The family of Nazareth in exile, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, emigrants in Egypt and refugees there to escape the wrath of an ungodly king.

Pope Francis.

As the Genocide Watch website observed:

This message sharply counters the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been a hallmark of Trump’s administration, which has actively pursued policies that characterise migrants as criminals rather than victims of hardship and persecution.

The Pope’s words challenge the very core of Trump’s aggressive stance on immigration. Pope Francis asserts that the notion of associating migrants’ “illegal status” with criminality is not only morally wrong but a violation of basic human rights…

…The Pope insists that a nation’s true moral standing is reflected in how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, especially those who have no choice but to flee their homelands. “An authentic rule of law is verified precisely in the dignified treatment that all people deserve, especially the poorest and most marginalised,” he writes.

Whilst acknowledging that nations have a right to defend their borders, the Pope stresses that immigration policies must be guided by a sense of dignity and human rights. He argues that Trump’s approach, which has sought to prioritise security and exclusion over compassion, ultimately undermines the foundations of justice and equality.

“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 warns.

Francis’s letter, which is reproduced below in full, went on to say that agreement with Trump’s racist policies against those fleeing war and catastrophe is incompatible with a ‘rightly formed conscience’ and that nationalism and dog-whistle politics distort ‘social life’ and truth:

The rightly formed conscience 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…

Worrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth.

The Pope then called on all Christians and those of good will to reject division and exclusion and come together in brotherhood and solidarity.

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