‘Open Borders’ Archbishop Claims Profit, Politics Play Roles in Inhumane Migrant Treatment

García-Siller casts aspersions at Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts.

Days after a meeting among several Catholic bishops serving along both sides of the Texas-Mexico border — a regular gathering for the “Tex-Mex” bishops — OSV News spoke with Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller of San Antonio to explore his thoughts on the impact of the Trump administration’s sustained crackdown on migration.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

OSV News: How would you sum up the current situation at the Texas-Mexico border?

Archbishop García-Siller: It’s very clear that for migrants from the south — from Mexico and other parts of Central America and South America — there have been very few crossings for weeks.

Usually, we think about migration (at the U.S.-Mexico border) as moving from south to north. And in the meeting that we just had, it was clearly stated in many different ways that now the migration is north-south. So it’s a shift.

Of course, we understand that nations have the right to protect our borders. But the question here is this new phenomenon, in which there are some recent migrants or refugees who were legally accepted in the United States — yet with this new administration, they have gone from being legally processed as refugees and migrants, who have been legally here, to illegal, automatically from one day to the next. And they also have been labeled criminals.

But many of those that became “illegals” and now “criminals” are people who have been here in the United States for 10, 15, 20, even 30 years. And those are the ones who are detained.

And of those who are detained, in the many detention centers in the country and the many more sites that ICE is getting, we need to recall that most of them, 70% or so, are not in the category of criminals.

So the question is why they are detained, and what treatment do they receive in the detention centers?

Continue reading at OSV News
 

TAKE ACTION: Contact Archbishop Garcia-Siller at pablo.garcia@archsa.org or 210.734.2620 and let him know what you think about his comments.