U.S. Catholic Bishops Supporting Illegal Immigration?
Getting rich off the poor.
[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
As the immense human tragedy at the nation’s southern border unfolds, an organization claiming to fight for the vulnerable remains breathtakingly silent.
That organization, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, vigorously fought President Donald Trump’s efforts to build a wall to curtail the trafficking in human lives — especially children — and drugs that accompany the kind of open borders Pope Francis advocates. But since Joe Biden became America’s virtual president, and especially since Title 42 expired, the bishops’ public opposition to federal policy evaporated.
Why the glaring reversal?
For the USCCB and various Catholic agencies, illegal immigration means wealth. The Catholic Church in the United States exploits Latin American migrants entering illegally to enrich itself with money from taxpayers.
The amount of federal immigration funding Catholic agencies received during the past 15 years grew exponentially. For Fiscal Year 2008, those organizations received $85 million. In Fiscal Year 2022, the total exploded to $618 million. During those 15 years, Catholic groups received $3.053 billion, among the highest totals for all charitable agencies.
Catholic Charities USA led the way with $1.86 billion during that period. Grant totals from individual years ranged from $25 million in 2008 to $383 million last year. The USCCB placed second with $422 million accrued over 15 years. Individual yearly totals increased from $25 million in 2008 to $140 million in 2022.
All those totals can be divided into prime awards and subawards. Prime awards describe direct federal funding. Subawards describe any money a group receives from an agency getting a prime award.
From 2008-2022, the USCCB received $1.113 billion from Washington in prime awards for immigration, the fifth largest total among all agencies. The USCCB then distributed $743 million in subawards, the most by any single group, with $422 million going to Catholic Charities.
“The USCCB essentially acts as a general contractor having the largest pipeline amongst all the players,” reported Complicit Clergy, which compiled the statistics.
So what does the church do with all that money?
“Immigration is an income-producing issue at the diocesan level,” wrote Maureen Mullarkey, a traditionalist Catholic commentator. “As bishops struggle to maintain infrastructure, they have incentive to breathe divine purpose into practical politics: ‘Our purpose is to help Catholics form their consciences in accordance with God’s truth.’ ”
Complicit Clergy also noted the $3 billion in federal funding received matches the figure that dioceses and archdioceses lost in settling claims of clerical sex abuse.
Insuring the constant flow of cash means actively encouraging and even helping migrants bypass legal channels to enter the United States. In other words, the USCCB and Catholic agencies participate in human trafficking.
“The Catholic ‘Underground Railroad’ of migrant safe houses that extend across Central America, through Mexico, and up to and into the U.S. is a well-oiled machine,” wrote Michelle Malkin. For example, the Franciscans operate one in the Mexican state of Tabasco on the southern Gulf coast. Catholic nuns manage another in the nearby state of Chiapas, near Guatemala’s border. The Scalabrinian Order runs a shelter in Tijuana, part of a network it established in 1999.
In Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, the Jesuit Refugee Service “opens its churches and pastoral centers to provide shelter, monetary aid, voluntary aid and emergency assistance,” Malkin wrote. “Its team of lawyers, psychologists, social workers and Jesuit clergy spread from Tapachula to Comalapa (in Guatemala) and Mexico City.” Members also personally guided large caravans to the United States.
Many safe houses receive supplies from the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, which also provides legal and counseling services. Funding not only comes from federal grants to Catholic organizations but also through church collections. In 2019, Francis donated $500,000 from Peter’s Pence, which raises funds from parishioners every June, “to provide housing, food and basic necessities to the migrants,” reported Catholic News Agency.
In December, as part of a wider investigation into the role of NGOs in human smuggling, the Heritage Foundation revealed Catholic Charities’ pivotal position. By geofencing the agency’s facility in San Juan, Texas, the foundation discovered nearly 3,400 separate mobile phones linked to anonymous contacts in 433 of the nation’s 435 Congressional districts.
“Now we can prove what border security experts have long known — NGOs that support these radical policies are facilitating it,” the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Howell, a former oversight counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “The NGOs are happy to step into the breach and form the final link in the drug cartels’ human smuggling operation, ensuring these individuals make it all around the country.”
Those individuals include children. Since 2016, the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program has received more prime grants than any other federal immigration program. UAC funding has increased in 12 of the past 15 fiscal years, reaching an all-time high of $2.709 billion in 2022. Of that amount, about $97 million went to Catholic agencies, “a conservative figure,” said Elizabeth Yore, former general counsel for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Yet with all that funding, Catholic agencies appear to care little for the safety of those children.
“We know that children have been trafficked through the program,” said Tara Lee Rodas, who inspects government agencies. “Your trafficker in Guatemala, he’s got to use the cartel to get his children across Mexico. But once he gets the children to the U.S. border, we take them. We care for them. We clothe them. We feed them. Then with your dollars, my dollars and the dollars of every person watching, we fly that product directly to the trafficker.”
Many sponsors also enter the country illegally. An investigation from Project Veritas found 44 children living at one address and another 25 at a separate address. One 16-year old admitted to being pimped by her so-called aunt.
Yore, a conservative Catholic, called Catholic Charities “probably the number one or two NGO that is handling the trafficking of children,” she said. “Sexual predators go where vulnerable children are. You can’t tell me that there aren’t hundreds, if not thousands, of sexual predators who are posing as sponsors for these vulnerable children.”
Should anyone be surprised the Catholic bishops are shockingly silent on child trafficking, sex trafficking and drug trafficking? Should anyone be surprised the bishops fail or refuse to support innocent Americans of all ethnicities victimized by criminal immigrants, especially murder, as in the case of the “Angel Families”?
Should anyone be surprised the bishops seem not to have one iota of interest in the consequences of their support for illegal immigration?
“This is going to be a catastrophe for our health-care system, our criminal justice system, our educational system,” Yore said in December. “We’re not going to recognize our society in two years. The crime and the chaos in the schools is going to be unimaginable. We are going to be paying for this for decades, generations.”
So by supporting and profiting from illegal immigration, the bishops have basically declared war against their fellow countrymen – including American Catholics.
Joseph Hippolito
Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Human Events, American Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.
No comments:
Post a Comment