The Trump administration is very into bragging about how much it protects and respects religion. That applies to conservative Christians most especially, of course—at least when President Donald Trump and his minions aren’t busy pretending to care about antisemitism.
However, the administration’s war on immigrants has really highlighted that when it comes to actual, practicing, devout Christians, Trump and company just aren’t feeling it. Can’t all of these bishops and pastors and priests yammering on about inhumane treatment of immigrants just shut up already?
The administration’s actions are so reprehensible that even the Catholic bishops who sit on Trump’s so-called religious liberty commission are criticizing officials’ refusal to give detained immigrants access to religious services.
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When you’ve lost even the conservative Catholic bishops, you have really lost.
The pesky new pope is saying the administration’s treatment of immigrants is inhumane and a grave crime. How dare he say, “Someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”
Of course White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt decided to push back on the pope, which is kind of a weird move for someone who purports to be such a faithful Catholic that she prays with her staff before press briefings.
According to Leavitt, there’s no inhumane treatment of immigrants under this administration, nosiree. You know who the real villain is here? Former President Joe Biden, because he let in heaps of violent undocumented immigrants, but now the administration is just “trying to enforce our nation’s laws in the most humane way possible, and we are upholding the law.”
Come. On.
The Rev. David Black, center, of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, joins dozens of protesters near an ICE detention facility in Broadview, Illinois on Oct. 17.
Is it humane to shoot a Presbyterian pastor—in liturgical garb, no less— in the head with pepper balls? Or how about shooting multiple pepper balls at a Methodist pastor who was pretty obviously a pastor because she was wearing her clerical collar?
Or shooting yet another pastor in the face point-blank with pepper balls? So humane!
Pope Leo is not going to let up. On Tuesday, he called for the spiritual rights of migrant detainees to be respected and to allow “pastoral workers” into ICE detention centers. Why would he do that? Because of course the administration is refusing to let priests and pastors into Illinois’ Broadview ICE facility to minister to the detainees, despite Department of Homeland Security policies requiring detainees to have access to religious services.
When a group of faith leaders made a Eucharistic procession to the Broadview facility to try to offer communion to detainees, federal officials refused them entry. Well, sort of. The ICE and CBP thugs somehow weren’t tough enough to turn away the clergy themselves, instead forcing the Illinois State Police to act as a go-between.
The Rev. Larry Dowling of the Archdiocese of Chicago pulled no punches about this.
“No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament,” Dowling said. “No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”
If you’d like that translated from Catholicism, what Dowling was saying is that the agents who are happy to torment migrants could not stand in the presence of the Monstrance, which is the sacred vessel that carries the Holy Eucharist. Dowling is basically saying that they are both evil and chickenshit for not coming out to talk to the faith leaders directly.
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The Trump administration also refused to allow pastors and priests to deliver communion to detainees on All Saints Day, even though they followed DHS’ new rule of asking pretty please a week in advance.
The administration’s protection of religion has always been a fig leaf, just a way to impose a particularly bleak version of Christian nationalism on the country. But Trump’s immigration crackdown has highlighted that he and his stooges loathe the values of the people they pretend to protect and uphold.
Maybe Leavitt and her staff could pray on that one day.
