CNA Staff, Feb 28, 2025 / 17:45 pm

A group of U.S. and Mexican bishops from dioceses along the southern border said this week that migrants can be assured of the Church’s continued support and compassion, and that lawmakers on both sides of the border have a duty to reform their respective country’s immigration system.

The bishops issued the statement while participating in the biannual Tex-Mex Border Bishops meeting this week in San Antonio, which for 40 years has brought together priests, religious, and laypeople as well as invited representatives from other border dioceses in the U.S. and northern Mexico.

The bishops emphasized the Catholic Church’s commitment to aiding vulnerable populations and reiterated the Church’s willingness to work with governments in these efforts. The bishops had convened this week in San Antonio to discuss the growing migrant and refugee situation in light of new federal administrations in both the U.S. and Mexico.

“We are all together responsible in promoting the common good, simultaneously safeguarding the dignity of all by finding the right balance between various human rights, such as the right of workers and their families to have their situation regularized, the right not to be exploited, the right to migrate, the right not to need to migrate, and the right of all to have their government guarantee security in their own country,” the Feb. 28 joint statement reads.

“For decades, we have expressed our concern that in the United States we have a broken immigration system, which does not correspond to the present reality. We hope and strongly urge our political leaders to fulfill their duty to reform it.”

“In this task that concerns us all, we need God’s help and we count on the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” the statement concludes.

The statement was signed by 10 bishops from Texas including Mark Seitz of El Paso and Daniel Flores of Brownsville. Five Mexican bishops — the shepherds of Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Saltillo, and Matamoros-Reynosa — also signed.

The bishops’ statement comes amid a major dispute between the federal government and the bishops over the Church’s efforts to aid migrants and refugees. Earlier this month, the USCCB sued the Trump administration over what the bishops say is an unlawful suspension of funding for refugee programs in the United States after Trump directed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance funds and grants.

Just this week, the federal government canceled a contract with the U.S. bishops for refugee resettlement. In 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, the USCCB spent nearly $131 million on migration and refugee services, with nearly $130 million of that cost being covered by government grants.

The bishops had already laid off dozens of staff members in its migration and refugee services office amid funding uncertainty.

Pope Francis has long made care and concern for immigrants and refugees a major part of his papacy, regularly calling on wealthy nations to extend sanctuary and resources to those driven out from their homelands or migrants seeking a better life.

Trump, meanwhile, has run his presidential campaigns with a hard-line immigration enforcement message, vowing to expel millions of recent immigrants who entered the country illegally or with invalid asylum claims as well as through parole programs started under the previous administration.

Both Pope Francis and numerous American bishops in recent weeks have called for more generous U.S. immigration policies, urging leaders and advocates to support laws and regulations that allow immigrants in the United States to remain here whenever possible.

In a Feb. 10 letter, Pope Francis urged the U.S. bishops to stay the course in their support for generous immigration policies and called on Catholics to consider the justness of immigration laws and policies in light of the dignity and rights of people.

Following the letter, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) thanked Pope Francis for his “prayerful support” and asked for the Holy Father to pray for the U.S. to improve its immigration system.

“Boldly I ask for your continued prayers so that we may find the courage as a nation to build a more humane system of immigration, one that protects our communities while safeguarding the dignity of all,” the archbishop wrote to the pope.