US Catholic Bishops: Nations have a Legal Right, and a Moral Duty, to Regulate Borders and Enforce a Just, Orderly Immigration System for the Common Good, By Peter West
At long last, a whisper of sanity echoes from an unexpected quarter: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. In a statement adopted at their Fall Plenary Assembly in Baltimore on November 13, 2025, the bishops finally acknowledged what any clear-eyed observer has known for years, nations have not just a legal right, but a moral duty, to regulate borders and enforce a just, orderly immigration system for the common good. "We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good," the document declares, adding that without such processes, immigrants themselves risk trafficking and exploitation, and that safe, legal pathways are the true antidote to chaos. This isn't some radical manifesto; it's a modest course correction, buried amid broader laments about detention conditions, family separations, and a "climate of fear" under the Trump administration's renewed enforcement. Yet in the fevered discourse of endless open-borders advocacy, it lands like a thunderclap, a rare admission that sovereignty isn't sin, and that charity without boundaries is cruelty in disguise.
For context, this comes at a pivotal moment. President Trump's second term, underway since January 2025, has slammed the brakes on the migrant free-for-all of the Biden era, where over ten million encounters overwhelmed the southern border, turning the Darién Gap into a graveyard of drowned dreams, thousands dead from cliffs, floods, mudslides, robbery, and rape, their bodies littering the jungle like grim milestones. Under Trump's policies, crossings have plummeted, migrant deaths have dropped, and the human smuggling cartels that prey on the desperate have lost their biggest market. The bishops' nod to border controls isn't blind to this; it implicitly endorses the very curbs that have saved lives by channelling migration through legal channels rather than lethal gambles. Without fanfare, they've aligned with reality: Unfettered flows don't liberate; they endanger. And in doing so, they've quietly repudiated the one-sided moralism that has dominated Catholic commentary for years, the endless jeremiads from figures like Pope Francis, who once likened walls to snakes, while ignoring the serpents of human trafficking that slither through porous frontiers.
This shift, subtle as it is, marks a fracture in the church's long march toward de facto abolition of borders. For decades, the U.S. bishops have been the intellectual vanguard of pro-migration activism, framing enforcement as tantamount to heresy and migrants as latter-day holy innocents beyond reproach. Their statements routinely excoriated ICE as a modern Gestapo, demanded blanket amnesty, and equated national security with xenophobia, all while glossing over the fiscal haemorrhage — schools strained, hospitals overwhelmed, wages suppressed — and the cultural collision of importing millions who arrive not as guests but as conquerors in waiting. Remember the 2018 caravan crises, when bishops decried "zero tolerance" as child abuse, even as coyotes abandoned toddlers in the desert for ransom? Or the sanctuary city sanctimony that shielded felons while American victims buried their dead? That era's rhetoric wasn't theology; it was theatre, a performative piety that prioritised globalist optics over gritty gospel truths like subsidiarity, the principle that problems are best solved closest to home, by those who bear the immediate burdens.
The new statement doesn't erase those sins, but it tempers them with balance. It frets over "vilification of immigrants" and "arbitrary loss of legal status," nods to pastoral care in detention centers, and urges moral conviction in enforcement — fair enough, as humane application matters. Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose, a Mexican-American voice, wished it had gone further, decrying assaults on dignity in Trump's deportation push. Chicago's Archbishop Blase Cupich, ever the progressive bulwark, amended the text for "improvement" and hopes it sparks deeper study of church teachings on dual rights: those of nations to protect their people, and migrants to seek refuge. The compromise even shows in the bishops' leadership election: Conservative Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City as president, paired with the immigrant-advocate Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville as vice president, a split ticket to placate the duelling factions within the collar. The Associated Press sniffs at it as "doubling down on conservative priorities" amid Trump's term, but polls tell a different story: A majority of American Catholics, like most citizens, oppose mass migration and favour secure borders. The laity has long sensed the disconnect; now, even the hierarchy is catching up.
Predictably, the outrage machine whirred to life. Pro-migration outlets like The New York Times, Axios, and The Washington Post zeroed in on the bishops' rebukes of Trump's campaign, framing the whole affair as a moral indictment of "aggressive enforcement" while conveniently burying the endorsement of border controls. It's the same playbook: Amplify the empathy porn, mute the prudence. But this selective blindness only underscores the statement's quiet power. By affirming the "common good" in regulation, the bishops have cracked open a door to genuine dialogue, one where compassion doesn't negate consequences, and mercy doesn't mandate madness. Imagine a church that champions legal immigration reforms: Expanded guest-worker programs for needed labour, streamlined asylum for true refugees, and ruthless crackdowns on visa overstays and cartel pipelines. That would be Catholic social teaching at its best, rooted in human dignity, not ideological drift.
But at last, some sanity. In an age where elites from Davos to the Vatican peddle borderless utopias that drown in their own excess, this statement is a lifeline. It reminds us that true charity builds houses, not caravans; that the Good Samaritan paid the innkeeper, he didn't burn the village down or knife village folk. The bishops haven't fully redeemed their institution's migration muddle, but they've taken a step toward intellectual integrity. For that, even a sceptic can offer a hesitant amen. The common good demands borders, not as walls of hate, but as gates of grace — welcoming the worthy, repelling the wicked. If the church can embrace that, perhaps the nation can too. Sanity, after all, is the first step back from the brink of the destructive force of mass immigration.
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