I had the privilege this past week to attend an interdisciplinary conference at Boston College on “Law, Conscience, and Migration Today.” Featuring plenary addresses by Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Tex., and Monique Tú Nguyen, executive director of the Boston Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement, the two-day gathering was a stark reminder of those areas in which the current immigration policies of the federal government are running head-on into the mandates of justice and Christian charity. It was also—thanks be to God—a confirmation that there are many voices in our church and society for whom those mandates remain not just operative but essential.

The conference was organized by three Boston College scholars: Kristin E. Heyer, Joseph Chair of Theology at Boston College (who wrote on the migration crisis for America in 2024), Matthew Cuff, a doctoral candidate in systematic theology, and Madeline Jarrett, a doctoral candidate in systematic theology and graduate research assistant at the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. (Stay turned for an essay from one of the graduate students at the conference in a future issue of America.) 

Bishop Seitz, who has written for America in the past on migration issues, was blunt in his opening plenary, noting that the current situation is intertwined with our nation’s other crises. “It is immoral to make the victims of forced migration pay the price of our political, social, economic and moral crises,” he said. “Mass deportation is a campaign of scapegoating. It is a gross distraction. And taking place as it does against the ideological bunting of ‘might makes right,’ I’m sorry to say, it is also violent.”

“How can we not recoil before the violence that is at the heart of this campaign? It is not accidental but structural,” he continued. The violence also raises other questions for us all:

When enforcement agents patrol our streets and neighborhoods decked out with more military kit and equipment than our soldiers who patrolled the streets of Fallujah and Kabul, when women are ripped from their cars, when tear canisters are fired into automobiles with infants, when playgrounds become battlegrounds, when people are slammed into walls with concussive force, when people are gunned down on our streets, when detainees are choked to death…at what point do we say ‘enough is enough’? At what point do we recognize that this is not just a bug, but a feature? Are we so incapable of moral discernment? Have we lost our spiritual equilibrium?

Emily Wollan, a senior at Boston College who attended the conference, noted that Bishop Seitz’s talk did not focus entirely on the negative, as he described the courageous and prophetic actions of those standing up to violence against migrants as “seeds of hope.” “I believe that Bishop Seitz’s raw, yet deeply profound message was one that was greatly needed, and I was moved by his passion and grit for justice,” she shared with America.

A painting reflecting ICE violence and the plight of migrants by a Boston-based artist with Cape Verdean roots, Miles Perry, was commissioned by Dr. Heyer and raffled off to raise money for Catholic Charities Boston Legal Services. The work, titled “Melting Point: a nation on ICE,” is pictured above.

Bishop Mark J. Seitz with Boston College scholars and conference organizers Madeline Jarrett, Kristin E. Heyer and Matthew Cuff. Photo courtesy of the Boisi Center at Boston College.

Of course, the scapegoating of immigrants (and violence against them) in the United States is not new, and often takes place simultaneously with attempts to valorize our history vis-à-vis the nation’s welcome of new arrivals. In his 2022 review of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Not “A Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion, frequent America contributor Tom Deignan noted that John F. Kennedy’s book A Nation of Immigrants came out in 1958—a time when the federal government was hardly welcoming our own foreign-born workers. “Just four years before Kennedy’s celebration of immigrants, President Eisenhower launched the deplorable ‘Operation Wetback’ to ‘round up and deport more than a million Mexican migrant workers,’” he wrote, quoting Dunbar-Ortiz. “It was merely the latest indignity along the southern U.S. border in the wake of the ‘military invasion and annexation of half of Mexican territory’ a century earlier.”

What does feel new these days is that some of the most prominent voices praising mass deportation and justifying the violence we have seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere are politicians and public figures who also proudly (and loudly) identify as Christians. Though the U.S. bishops have consistently spoken out against mass deportation campaigns—with Cardinal Robert W. McElroy calling President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts “incompatible with church doctrine” and Pope Francis calling them “a disgrace” in 2025—that has not stopped self-identified Catholics in our public life from defending them. 

A prime example: Just a few months ago, U.S. Vice President JD Vance argued that Renee Good, who was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis, was “part of a broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault and to make it impossible for our ICE officers to do their job” and claimed without evidence that Ms. Good “viciously ran over the ICE officer” who shot and killed her.

I thought of that moment when Bishop Seitz made another point in his talk at Boston College, while referencing violence against people like Renee Good: Because U.S. border patrol agents are also now participating in violent immigration interception events throughout the country, and not just against migrants but against those perceived to support them, “the border really is everywhere. And this should wake us all up.”

Some more good news came just today, when a group of 18 Catholic bishops repeated their endorsement of comprehensive immigration reform ahead of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address—which is expected to include some of the president’s signature rhetoric denouncing immigrants and defending his efforts to slam shut our nation’s doors.

Perhaps our politicians do not pay attention to academic conferences; perhaps they do not pay attention to bishops. But it is heartening and a sign of hope that our church—from top to bottom—still speaks for those who face this violence every day.

A final note: Out of curiosity, I went back to the first issues of America in 1909. Since its founding days, America has been a strong supporter of immigration to the United States; the magazine covered the topic in almost every issue, including regular reports on numbers and countries of origin. Here is an update from May of that year, a month after America’s founding:

In April 116,754 immigrants were landed. Of these 89,042 were male and 27,712 were females, and during April 1,283 aliens were turned away. Three times as many immigrants reached the United States in April of this year as in April one year ago. Southern Italy contributed the largest number of aliens, 34,856 from that section of Italy, while from Northern Italy came but 4,504. There were 10,798 Polish immigrants, 6,762 Scandinavians, 5,821 Irish and 4,817 English, other portions of the globe contributing varying numbers; Japan among others contributing 223. One Pacific Islander is recorded. 

Perhaps the editors recognized that a nation of immigrants wanted to hear about their new neighbors.

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Our poetry selection for this week is “Aubade at Eighty Five,” by Paul Mariani. Readers can view all of America’s published poems here.

Other recent Catholic Book Club columns:

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a Senior Editor at America.