Over the past several months, numerous prominent Catholic bishops in the U.S. have been stridently critical of President Donald Trump’s proposed immigration policies and his plans for mass deportations. This episcopal outrage may have less to do with the Catholic Church’s age-old teachings on immigration and more to do with lucrative government contracts paid to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for “refugee resettlement services.” A recent move from the White House, however, may expose the real motivation behind the bishops’ immigration activism.
Which of the bishops … will drive down to the southern border himself to pick up border-crossers and put them up in hotel rooms.
Late last week, the U.S. State Department terminated USCCB “refugee resettlement” contracts, according to a report from The Pillar, telling the bishops in a letter that the well-funded program “no longer effectuates agency priorities.” The decision represents a substantial blow to the USCCB. Since 1980, the bishops’ organization has been paid to handle such refugee and immigrant “services,” netting a substantial paycheck. In fact, the vast majority of the USCCB’s operating budget comes from taxpayer funds funneled through such refugee and immigrant “services.”
Up until 2015, the USCCB and its affiliate organizations, like Catholic Charities, have collected over $2 billion in government funds for refugee and immigrant “services.” Just in the past four years, under then-president Joe Biden, the USCCB was paid nearly $635 million for these “services,” and Catholic Charities was paid a staggering $1.7 billion. Trump’s first administration, meanwhile, awarded the USCCB less than $215 million in government contracts and Catholic Charities a paltry $130 million.
It’s more than possible that many U.S. bishops spoke out against Trump’s immigration agenda — both while he was campaigning and after his historic election — out of fear that their funding would once again shrivel and shrink under his watch. Given the presence of such massive sums of money, it’s not likely that the bishops were boldly speaking up in defense of Church teaching, especially since much of their blithering on the subject actually ignores or contradicts key aspects of the Church’s immigration teachings.
This is coupled with the fact that the leaders of the USCCB over the years have not been the most diligent stewards of the American taxpayers’ surreptitiously-given dollars. Since Biden took office in 2021, over 300,000 “unaccompanied migrant children” have gone missing at the border, with many having been blithely handed over to “sponsors” who have no relation — familial or legal — to the children.
Many, it is suspected, have been sex trafficked. As The American Spectator previously observed, the USCCB has played a role in overseeing the disastrously-inept handling of “unaccompanied migrant children,” earning over a quarter billion dollars since 2008.
This is not to mention the fact that the USCCB and its affiliates have facilitated the invasion of the U.S. by a horde of illegal immigrants. When illegal immigrants were caught and released at the border, it was Catholic Charities that would collect them, furnish them with hotel rooms and cell phones, and shuttle them further into the U.S. and farther from the border. When federal authorities, under the second Trump administration, initiated mass deportation operations, it was Catholic Charities that urged illegal immigrants to resist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Immigrant Funding Cut Off
What the U.S. bishops perhaps did not count on was their cash flow being entirely cut off, rather than merely diminished. When the president halted federal funding for the USCCB’s refugee and immigrant program earlier this year, the bishops quickly filed a lawsuit. Now, funding has not only been frozen but denied entirely. That lawsuit may not even proceed further through the courts, since there is no longer a contract which promises funding.
Once U.S. bishops realize that their funding spigot has been turned off and will not be turned back on, it will be interesting to see which of them continues to speak so loudly about the “rights” of illegal immigrants. Which of the bishops, one cannot help but wonder, will drive down to the southern border himself to pick up border-crossers and put them up in hotel rooms. Trump’s decision to end federal funding for the USCCB’s immigration-related initiatives may, eventually, reveal which of the bishops actually practices what he preaches, and which have only been in it for the money.
However, those who genuinely believe what they have been saying on the subject of immigration may be the greater evil. Those who contradict, distort, dilute, and subvert the teachings of the Catholic Church without a fat paycheck waiting at the other end are not hired hitmen but fanatics. Both pose a threat to America’s sovereignty, but the fanatic poses a far graver threat to the Catholic Church and the millions of Americans who call the Church their home.
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