Hundreds join El Paso bishop's protest against migrant mass deportation, asylum bans

Mass deportations and asylum bans — part of the Trump administration's rapid changes to U.S. immigration policy — destroy communities and human dignity, while constituting a "war on the poor," said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas.

The bishop — who chairs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration — shared his thoughts during a March 24 prayer vigil at Sacred Heart Church in El Paso, which capped a rally and march that began in the city's downtown San Jacinto Plaza.

"Aquí Estamos: March and Vigil to Stand with Migrants" drew hundreds of participants, including immigration advocates, Catholic and interfaith clergy, religious and lay faithful.

The gathering, spoken in English and Spanish throughout, was attended by Catholic prelates from the U.S., Canada and Mexico, including Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio; Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces, New Mexico; Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky; and Bishop Noël Simard of Valleyfield, Quebec.

Also on hand was Cardinal Fabio Baggio of Bassano del Grappa, Italy, the undersecretary of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

Speaking in Spanish, Baggio invited attendees at the vigil to pray for "all the victims of the different migratory routes" in the world, from Africa and Asia to Europe and the U.S.

"Thousands and thousands of brothers and sisters who, simply looking for a better future or refuge, lost their way," he said in lament.

According to the United Nations' International Organization for Migration, 2024 was the deadliest year on record for migrants, with at least 8,938 perishing on migration routes.

The El Paso rally, march and vigil — organized by Seitz in partnership with Hope Border Institute, an El Paso-based immigrant advocacy nonprofit — took place on the feast of St. Óscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of San Salvador known for his fierce defense of human rights and the marginalized in El Salvador.

The rally's timing was "no accident," especially as such rights have become increasingly endangered amid an "attack on immigrants today," Seitz said in his address at the vigil.

The denial of asylum and the threat of mass deportations represent "a fundamental attack on the human community" and on "Jesus' vision of a fully reconciled humanity," he said. "Mass deportations are another tool to keep people afraid, to keep a people divided, to extinguish the charity and love that keep a people alive."

Catholic social teaching on immigration holds that people have the right to migrate to sustain their lives, while nations have the right to regulate their borders and control immigration, although they must do so with both justice and mercy.

But speakers at the rally pointed to recent U.S. immigration policy changes as exceeding those moral parameters, and instead eroding human rights and fostering division.

Ruben Garcia, founder and executive director of Annunciation House — an El Paso shelter that has hosted over 500,000 people fleeing more than 40 countries for nearly five decades — pointed to recent letters sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to organizations receiving shelter grant money. The notices require "a detailed and descriptive list of specific services," and compel executive officers from the groups to sign sworn statements they have no knowledge or suspicions of staff violating smuggling laws.

Children are not spared in the administration's crackdown on immigration, said attorney Melissa Lopez, executive director of the Diocese of El Paso's Estrella del Paso (formerly Migrant and Refugee Services), which provides free immigration legal services.

Lopez advised the crowd her office had received notice March 21 the federal government had terminated its contract with the Acacia Center for Justice, which provides legal services to unaccompanied migrant minors through a national network of providers, including Lopez's team.