Washington D.C., Feb 24, 2017 / 12:24 pm
The Trump administration's new border and immigration enforcement rules needlessly endanger the vulnerable, militarize the border and will cause many other problems, the U.S. bishops warned this week.
"They greatly expand the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border," said Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, chair of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration, who wrote the bishops' Feb. 23 response.
On Feb. 20, the Department of Homeland Security issued two memoranda to implement President Donald Trump's executive orders regarding immigration enforcement on the border and in the U.S. interior.
"Taken together, these memoranda constitute the establishment of a large-scale enforcement system that targets virtually all undocumented migrants as 'priorities' for deportation, thus prioritizing no one," Bishop Vasquez said.