In a pastoral letter released on March 15, Bishop Mark Seitz of the Diocese of El Paso implored immigration enforcement agents not to follow orders that violated their consciences. “No one has to obey an illegal order,” he wrote, asking those executing the mass deportation campaign at the behest of the Trump administration to “carefully discern the moral requirements of the Gospel at this moment with integrity and honesty.”

The bishop’s pastoral letter on mass detention and deportation was read during Sunday Mass across the diocese. It was the “first pastoral letter released by a Catholic bishop on this particular topic,” according to a diocesan press release.

“When we take off our masks and encounter each other as neighbors, we can reclaim our common dignity,” Bishop Seitz wrote. He also pledged “pastoral support” to immigration agents as they “navigate the demands of conscience with sincerity.”

Kevin Appleby, a senior fellow at the Center for Migration Studies, commended Bishop Seitz for highlighting the issue of immoral orders. He described most Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents as “honorable men and women who may disagree with the abusive tactics and inhumane policies being pushed by this administration.”

“They, too, may be the victims of intimidation and fear tactics within [the Department of Homeland Security],” he said.

The pastoral letter contained some of the strongest and most unambiguous condemnation of the U.S. mass deportation campaign from the U.S. Catholic hierarchy thus far. 

“I must make clear, the current national campaign of mass detention and deportations is a grave moral evil, one which must be opposed, with prayer, peaceful action and acts of solidarity with those affected,” Bishop Seitz wrote.

“Mass deportations will not make our communities safer,” he added. “They separate families, divide neighbors and threaten our economic wellbeing.”

Recalling the nomadic experiences of Abraham and the earliest Israelites, Bishop Seitz said that “God’s people” are a “people on the move.” In his letter, he stressed the themes of care and hospitality for migrants that are abundant in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospels. He noted that “we meet Jesus as a child living in exile and as an adult with no place to lay his head.”

Bishop Seitz wrote that it was his hope that American Catholics will come to see Jesus in the migrants of today, who have shared their “fears, sufferings and worries about deportation” with him in recent months.

“Neighbors are being snatched as they walk out of immigration court proceedings downtown. Workers are being taken from construction sites across the city. Mothers and fathers are no longer able to work because the government has taken away their legal work permits. Young women are languishing in mental torture for months in private detention centers,” Bishop Seitz said.

“So many people are once again being made to feel like they are less than American.”

In the letter, Bishop Seitz pledged to “redouble” diocesan ministries to support immigrants and their families, including outreach to immigrants in detention and at courthouses and “work to end racism and make immigration reform a reality.” He emphasized that the church stands in solidarity with migrants against enforcement abuses.

Bishop Seitz spoke extensively of his experience on the border and the brutality of the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign in an address at Boston College adapted for publication in America on March 9. “Since Day One of the current presidential administration—our nation’s very carefully crafted system of protection at the border for receiving those fleeing threats to life and liberty,” he wrote, “has been effectively dismantled.”

“Asylum and international protection are over.”

Bishop Seitz wrote that the mass deportation campaign reflects an expansion of the precariousness of the borderlands to the rest of the nation and how Pope Leo XIV has been clear about the need for the U.S. church “to act, to speak up.”

The federal government is pouring more money than ever into immigration enforcement. Despite the ongoing government fight over D.H.S. funding, which has led to a shutdown of some D.H.S. capacity, ICE is fully funded through 2029 thanks to the $75 billion budget package passed by Congress in July.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the cash injection “more than tripled ICE’s annual budget and made it the largest federal law enforcement agency.” The agency is increasing the detention capacity at its facilities by the tens of thousands and shows no sign of stopping.

The additional resources made available to D.H.S. includes $45 billion for new detention centers, an expansion that has similarly alarmed Bishop Seitz. He called the rising numbers of deaths of immigrants held in detention “unacceptable.”

Edward Desciak is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.