Local opinion: What the Catholic bishops said about mass detention and deportation

Recently I started to attend Marana Town Council meetings. At my first meeting’s “Call to the Public,” speakers opposing a planned Marana ICE Detention center described how ICE and border patrol agents were detaining and deporting people who were not violent criminals, often acting with cruelty, and that detainees were subjected to horrendous conditions in ICE detention centers. Meanwhile, detention center supporters praised ICE and its detention centers and complimented the council for putting up with those voicing opposition. When public comments ended, the mayor justified the council’s failure to withhold detention center approval by saying that he had to obey federal and state law. Since this sounded a lot like what some German people said eighty years ago, I decided afterward to ask the mayor a question in a letter that appeared in the Arizona Daily Star.

“How would history have differed had the German people opposed the construction of concentration camps within the vicinity of their communities?”

At the second meeting, I decided to appeal to the moral compass of the council members. I read an excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail, written to a group of eight Birmingham Pastors who wanted him to abandon Civil Rights demonstrations because they were “untimely.”

“There are just and unjust laws ... one has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws ... and to disobey unjust laws ... I agree with St. Augustine that an unjust law is no law at all…to put it in terms of St. Thomas Aquinas ... an unjust law is not rooted in eternal and natural law ... any law that degrades human personality is unjust ...”

With Dr. King, St Augustine, and St Thomas Aquinas’ rejections of unjust laws, the bases were loaded in Moral Compassville. I swung for the grand slam by reminding people that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and again repeated the question about history and Nazi Germany. No reactions from the council, but detention center supporters said we were name callers, our comparison to Nazi Germany was absurd, and we distorted truth by calling the center a “concentration camp,” my guess here being they were conflating concentration camps with death camps, though more than thirty souls have perished in detention centers.

Interested in the morality and legality of mass detentions and deportations, I went to a “Regional Convening” at the Diocese of Phoenix, cosponsored by the Tucson Diocese with participants from four others. The title was “Witness to Hope: Responding to Mass Deportations.” The stories of cruel and inhuman treatment of migrants by anonymous paramilitary like agents were the same from state to state. Immigrants and refugees lived in daily fear of family separation and deportation. Since constant fear was traumatizing, the need to treat traumatized families was overwhelming community social service agencies and charities.

On Feb 24, 2026, we learned, border state Catholic bishops wrote to members of Congress suggesting legislative reforms in the current enforcement practices that were causing unnecessary suffering in their communities:

“Enforcement should be targeted, proportional and humane.” “Humanitarian protections and due process should be ensured.” “Long time residents should have an earned pathway to citizenship.”

“Family unity should remain a cornerstone of the U.S. system.” “Legal pathways should be expanded, reliable, and efficient.” “The root causes of forced migration should be addressed."

At the next council meeting, I quoted the bishops, saying that while acknowledging “the rights and duty of sovereign states to enforce its laws, we believe that those laws should be upheld in a manner that protects the God-given human dignity and the rights of the human person." Again, the responses from council members and detention center supporters were silence and disapproval.

All faith leaders and clergy must work to protect migrant individuals and families from cruel and unjust actions committed under a false claim of protecting the American people. Catholic bishops can start by educating clergy and parishioners about the rampant inhuman oppression of migrant communities. A start would be to read from pulpits the bishops’ Feb 24th letter about recommended reforms to Immigration Enforcement. Otherwise, how will history describe us?