by Jacob G. Hornberger

December 2, 2025

Last month, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a remarkable “Special Message” condemning the grave mistreatment of immigrants at the hands of the U.S. government. According to the conference’s Office of Public Affairs, “It marked the first time in twelve years the USCCB invoked this particularly urgent way of speaking as a body of bishops.”

To their everlasting credit, the bishops made it clear that there is no way to reconcile what the U.S. government is doing to immigrants with God’s laws. The bishops stated in part:

“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones….”

“The Church’s teaching rests on the foundational concern for the human person, as created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27). As pastors, we look to Sacred Scripture and the example of the Lord Himself, where we find the wisdom of God’s compassion. The priority of the Lord, as the Prophets remind us, is for those who are most vulnerable: the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger (Zechariah 7:10). In the Lord Jesus, we see the One who became poor for our sake (2 Corinthians 8:9), we see the Good Samaritan who lifts us from the dust (Luke 10:30–37), and we see the One who is found in the least of these (Matthew 25). The Church’s concern for neighbor and our concern here for immigrants is a response to the Lord’s command to love as He has loved us (John 13:34)….”

Unfortunately, however, the bishop’s statement also includes some grave errors, which end up undermining their concern for the welfare of immigrants. They state:

“We bishops advocate for a meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures. Human dignity and national security are not in conflict. Both are possible if people of good will work together.”

“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. Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.”

In calling for immigration “reform,” the bishops make the same claim that I have heard all my life from commentators in the mainstream press — that all we need is “comprehensive immigration reform” and everything will then be hunky dory for immigrants.

But the bishops and the mainstream-press commentators are wrong. There is no “comprehensive immigration reform” that can ever make America’s immigration-control system work in a gentle, kind, benevolent, and Christian-like manner. The mistreatment and abuse of immigrants that the Catholic bishops condemn is an inherent part of the immigration-control system that exists to “secure the border.” They are inseparable.

Suppose we were talking about lightning and thunder. Let’s assume that the bishops issued a statement in which they stood squarely in favor of lightning but, at the same time, made it clear that they condemned and opposed thunder. That would be ridiculous, right? Thunder comes with lightning. If you favor lightning, you necessarily accept thunder at the same time.

It’s no different with America’s immigration-control system. It comes with an immigration police state. If one favors the concept of “securing the border,” one automatically accepts, at the same time, America’s immigration police state.

In fact, one of the “positive” aspects of President Trump’s vicious and brutal immigration enforcement measures to “secure the border” is that he is demonstrating what actually needs to be done to achieve that goal.

In other words, it wasn’t enough to have a decades-long immigration police state along the border, which has long consisted of such things as domestic highway checkpoints, warrantless searches of ranches and farms, roving Border Patrol checkpoints, the criminalization of hiring, transporting, and caring for immigrants, violent raids on American businesses, a Berlin Wall, troops along the border, hidden concertina wire in the Rio Grande, and much more.

Trump is showing that to “secure the border,” it’s necessary to not only reinforce and strengthen the immigration police state in the borderlands but also to expand the immigration police state beyond the borderlands to the entire nation, including kidnappings of people at the hands of non-uniformed masked men, the incarceration of immigrants in squalid prisons, their deportation to tyrannical third-world countries for incarceration and torture, and much more.

The bishops want the federal government to “secure the border” but, at the same time, want this immigration-control system to be enforced in a gentle, kind, and Christian-like manner. They want lightning but not thunder. Theirs is a pipe-dream. Thunder comes with lightning, just as a fierce, tyrannical, and oppressive immigration police state comes with “securing the border.”

The fundamental issue that the bishops fail to confront is that the right to cross a political border freely, especially to save, sustain, or improve one’s life or the lives of one’s family through labor and contract, is a God-given right. As such, it cannot be controlled, regulated, or destroyed by any government, not even the U.S. government. As soon as one says that the government wields the legitimate authority to control the free movements of people across a political border, one negates the concept that freedom of movement is a God-given right.

The bishops also get it wrong when they say, “Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks.”

In fact, it’s the other way around. It’s the immigration-control system itself that gives rise to black-market trafficking and other forms of exploitation. With the right to freely cross borders, people would then be free to travel into the United States like human beings — in buses, cars, planes, and trains. It is only when such movements are illegal that people resort to black-market methods to enter the country illegally and end up, for example, dying of asphyxiation in the back of some tractor-trailer. Thus, contrary to what the Catholic bishops claim, America’s immigration-control system is not an “antidote” to such abuse and exploitation but instead is the cause of the abuse and exploitation of immigrants.

As we have emphasized for 36 years here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, the only antidote for the death, suffering, abuse, mistreatment, tyranny, and oppression that come with America’s system of immigration control is not some ephemeral concept of “comprehensive immigration reform.” As I point out in my recent book The Case for Open Borders: A Primer (Spanish version here) — which I wish every Catholic bishop and every Catholic priest would take the time to read — the only — repeat only — solution to America’s decades-old, ongoing, never-ending perpetual immigration morass is open borders — that is, the free movements of goods, services, and people across borders. It is also the only system that is consistent with principles of freedom, morality, free markets, and the Golden Rule, as well as the teachings and principles of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church.