(RNS) — Last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sued the U.S. State Department for suspending refugee assistance to programs run by church agencies under USCCB auspices. Spoiler alert: The suspension is a disgrace.
What’s going on here?
For 45 years (i.e. since long before George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative), the USCCB has received federal funds appropriated by Congress to help integrate legally admitted refugees — usually people driven to leave their country under threat or deprivation — into American society. Under State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, various Catholic agencies help refugees in applying for Social Security cards and health insurance and in enrolling in English-language programs. For their first 90 days, they are given cultural orientation and help finding a job.
The USCCB is the largest non-governmental refugee-resettlement program in the country, welcoming 17% of all refugees with $65 million in contracts for this fiscal year, plus an additional $4 million from the USCCB itself. As a result of the suspension of assistance, the program has had to initiate layoffs for 50 employees and, without being reimbursed by the government for ongoing expenditures, is faced with the likelihood of having to curtail services for the 6,700 refugees assigned to its care by the government.
The Trump administration has justified the suspension on the grounds that it is “consistent with” executive orders pausing foreign development aid and “realigning” refugee admissions policy — as if helping already admitted refugees had anything to do with either. Its letter to the USCCB also says that the money “may no longer effectuate agency priorities,” albeit without indicating what the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration’s priorities are or why the awards may no longer effectuate them.
Actually, we do know what the Trump priorities are. They are to keep refugees — along with immigrants generally — out of the country. (When he was last president, he lowered the number of refugees his administration would accept to 20,000, down from 86,000 in the last year of the Obama administration and from a historic average above 90,000.)
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meets at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront hotel in Baltimore, Md., in November 2024. (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)
How does making life as difficult as possible for admitted refugees effectuate those priorities? In the words of the USCCB, the program “promotes the successful settlement of refugees in their communities, including by promoting gainful employment or connections to educational opportunities, thereby diminishing the likelihood that newly arriving refugees will be dependent on ongoing public support.” Clearly, that undermines the priorities.
The USCCB bases its lawsuit on the same grounds that any secular agency would, alleging violations of multiple statutes as well as an undermining of the constitutional separation of powers (inasmuch as Congress has appropriated the funds at issue). But, in addition, the lawsuit repeatedly cites religious grounds for its involvement in the State Department program.
For example: “This work is an expression of charity taken in fulfillment of Christ’s commandment to serve those in need.” And: “The Catholic Church has cared for refugees since the earliest days of Christianity.” And: “In this way, USCCB discharges the mandate of the Gospel: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me.’”
And (quoting Pope Paul VI): “The ‘duty of giving foreigners a hospitable reception’ is ‘imposed by human solidarity and by Christian charity.’” And (quoting Cardinal Blase Cupich): “USCCB does so not because the refugees are Catholic (many are not), ‘but because we are Catholic.’”
Am I suggesting that the suspension of refugee assistance to the USCCB constitutes a violation of its religious liberty under the First Amendment? By no means. The Catholic church has no right to federal funds to pursue a religious imperative to help refugees, and so long as the State Department’s suspension of funds applies to all recipients, the USCCB has no grounds to complain that its free exercise rights have been violated.
However, you might think that an administration, and a political party, that has made “religious liberty” into a political battle cry would take care to respect a religious mission of the nation’s largest religious body. Nope. When it comes to immigration issues, the attitude is, “Religious liberty be damned.”
Thus, on the very day Trump took his second oath of office, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded its longstanding “sensitive locations” policy, which had restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting immigration raids, arrests and other enforcement actions at houses of worship.
Since then, an array of religious organizations have filed a lawsuit claiming that the change in policy violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. (On Monday a federal judge in Maryland blocked the Trump administration from conducting immigration enforcement actions at the places of worship of those religious organizations that sued last month.)
Meanwhile, down in Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton is doing all he can to shut down Annunciation House, a Catholic nonprofit that has operated shelters for immigrants and refugees in the El Paso area since 1976. In his lawsuit, which was argued before the state supreme court last month, Paxton contends that Annunciation House is not a Catholic institution and that its mission of feeding and housing poor migrants does not amount to an exercise of Catholic religious practice.
That’s “simply wrong,” say the Catholic bishops of Texas in their amicus brief.
The Catholic bishop of El Paso and his predecessors in office have determined that Annunciation House, whose very name invokes the angel Gabriel’s announcement of the incarnation of Christ, is and has been for many years a Catholic ministry. Determining who is Catholic or what ministerial activity is Catholic is left only to the Catholic Church, not to state actors. To allow otherwise would impermissibly place governance of the faith with the state rather than the religious organization itself, trampling on the very idea of free exercise of religion.
Under the circumstances, you might think there’d be a brief supporting Annunciation House from one or another of those legal outfits that have been so zealously fighting for the free exercise rights of religious groups to discriminate against LGBTQ+ folks and to keep houses of worship open during pandemics and to avoid covering abortion services in their insurance plans.
If you happen to think so, think again.
This column has been updated. After this column was published, it was reported that the USCCB lawsuit was referred for mediation.
