By House Speaker Mike Johnson defended mass deportations in response to Pope Leo XIV’s opposition. Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe said the lawmaker’s response was “deeply concerning.”
Santa Fe, New Mexico, Archbishop John C. Wester said while nations may regulate their borders, Catholic teaching requires that all policies and rhetoric uphold the inherent dignity of migrants and avoid using Scripture as a political weapon.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson had put forth a biblical defense of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts Feb. 3 after a reporter asked him to respond to Pope Leo XIV’s criticism of mass deportations. The pontiff cited Matthew 25:35, in which Jesus Christ speaks about those who will inherit the kingdom of God, saying “[when I was] a stranger and you welcomed me.”
In response, Johnson, a Southern Baptist, said immigration is not “frowned upon” in the Bible but instead welcomed, and “we’re going to welcome the sojourner and love our neighbor as ourself.” However, Johnson said that biblical command to welcome the stranger falls on “individuals” instead of “civil authorities,” which Wester said is contrary to Christian ethics.
Johnson said civil authorities maintain a divine right to establish immigration laws that maintain order. He called national borders and walls “biblical.” He said God “allowed us to set up our civil societies and have separate nations.”
“When someone comes into your country, comes into your nation, they do not have the right to change its laws or to change a society,” he said. “They’re expected to assimilate.”
The speaker cited Romans 13, in which St. Paul instructs Christians to be “subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God.”
Johnson said there was not proper order under former President Joe Biden and criticized him for the number of unlawful border crossings, which he said included “many dangerous people.” He said borders are “good and right,” not because “we hate the people on the outside” but because “we love the people on the inside.”
“We should love our neighbor as ourself as individuals,” he said. “But the civil authority and the government has to maintain the law, and that is biblical and it’s right and it’s just.”
Archbishop calls comments ‘deeply concerning’
In a Feb. 6 statement, Wester — whose archdiocese is near the southern U.S. border — said “it is deeply concerning when theological language and sacred texts are used to diminish the fundamental dignity of human beings created in the image of God.”
Wester said Catholic teaching acknowledges the right of governments to manage their borders but that the right “is never absolute” and policies must “reflect the inherent dignity of every person, and must be ordered toward justice, mercy, and the common good.”
The archbishop said those with power have “a greater duty … to protect the vulnerable” and “not to treat them as political fodder.”
“To suggest that compassion, dignity, and respect for the stranger are merely personal virtues rather than obligations of society betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of Christian ethics,” the archbishop said.
“The Gospel is not a collection of sound bites for political advantage; it is the call to love our neighbors as ourselves, to defend the defenseless, and to remember that every human being bears the imprint of God,” he continued. “Reducing Scripture to a political tool undermines its transformative power and our shared humanity.”
Wester said the national right to regulate borders “must be balanced with the call to show compassion, protect human dignity, and seek just and humane solutions” and that “strong policies and humane treatment are not mutually exclusive.”
“In fact, justice demands both,” the archbishop said. “Let us pray for our leaders that they may be guided by wisdom, informed by truth, and moved by the love and mercy of Christ, who came not to condemn but to call us into communion with all people.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that prosperous nations have an obligation, “to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner.” The immigrant has an obligation “to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying civic burdens.”
“Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions,” it adds.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted 216-5 in November to adopt a special message that expresses opposition to “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.” A November 2025 poll from EWTN News and RealClear Opinion Research found that 54% of Catholics support “broad scale” deportations, while only 30% oppose it and 17% neither support nor oppose it.
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The quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church sums it up nicely. We are a prosperous nation, and we do welcome immigrants, but we do have laws. The doors are open to all who choose to come through them and play by the rules. The immigrant has an obligation to respect the laws. And those that came broke the first law when they came over the border illegally. They don’t want to assimilate. Why would you want to break into a country when you have no opportunity to be a part of it because you have to hide? Is it because you love it and respect it? I don’t think so and my thinking is confirmed when someone plants the flag of another country on the ground as they enter my country.
I am proud to be part of a church that helps people throughout the world and I support it with my tithe, but I have a responsibility to take care of the family that God has given me. Should I leave the door unlocked so that anyone who wants to live here too can just come in? The boundaries of the United States are like my front door and those who want to come in, need to knock and wait for someone to invite them in. And if they are just passing through, I can give them aid and help them on their way, but if they plan to stay, they have to be ready to give allegiance to this country that welcomed them. Hiding is not assimilation and gratitude. The current administration in the United States has offered money and transportation to help people go back to the country of their origin without penalty and with the ability to come back the right way. That is the humane way to take care of those people who came here illegally and maybe under false pretenses unlawfully extended by the prior administration. I don’t remember other administrations in the past deporting people with that kind of assistance and offer to return legally. I haven’t heard our bishops give any reasonable or helpful advice on how to deal with this situation either. Are they ready to help assess the needs of 10 to 12 million people, weed out the criminals, educate the children, help them to find jobs and places to live?? Unless they have answers, which I would welcome, they should hold their criticism and not add fuel to the fire by pointing out the sliver in this administration’s eye before they take out the plank in theirs.
I’m no fan of Johnson, but why does Wester think a Southern Baptist is going to give him a second thought?
“We are a prosperous nation”
Are we? The (acknowledged) national debt is roughly $38T. It’s almost doubled in the last ten years.
Young people can’t buy homes, marry or have children-and worse, too many don’t even aspire to those things because they follow thew conventional advice to “get a degree, any degree” and worry about paying the onerous debts later.
The current crop of Bishops always seek to direct public resources they have no part in producing or even have the slightest appreciation of the difficulties of those of us who lose a job for any number of reasons.
How many have spent their episcopies either seeking bankruptcy protection or avoiding it by closing churches and schools?
In the last six decades, the number of priests has gone from 58K to 34K and that drop conceals the emergence of sacerdotal celebrity activists such as James Martin, whose collar is a mere asset in his cottage industry of sexual subversion.
Their implicit notion is that the United States is in inexhaustible cornucopia.
No amount of lachrymose verbal engineering can conceal the underlying cultural, moral and spiritual rot that threatens the future vitality-and indeed solvency of the country.
With this being the 250th anniversary, it’s interesting to look at the national debt in the last 50 years, since there’s still a good many people who remember the Bicentennial.
1976: $620,433,000,000 nominal ($3,390,344,262,295 Adjusted.)
Now (estimated): `38,000,000,000,000
This isn’t sustainable.
Welcoming individuals is one thing. It would be difficult to reconcile the Mass influx of Canaanites, Israel’s prominent neighbors who worshiped Baal, and immolated their own children should be welcomed by the Jews and blessed by God. Speaker Johnson makes good scriptural sense.
Wester is not one of the bishops I pay much heed to.
Archbishop Wester: Your homosexualist agenda undermines human dignity..