Cardinal Robert McElroy, the archbishop of Washington D.C., slammed President Trump’s immigration policies by describing the administration’s measures as “inhumane” and “morally repugnant.”
“It’s right to be able to control our borders. However, what’s going on now is something far beyond that,” McElroy told CNN on Tuesday.
“It is a mass, indiscriminate deportation of men and women and children and families, which literally rips families apart and is intended to do so,” he added.
McElroy also blasted the Trump-backed “big, beautiful bill,” recently approved by Congress, as beneficial to the rich and detrimental to the poor, citing sweeping cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs.
“There’s something radically wrong with a society that takes from the poorest to give to the wealthiest. It’s just wrong,” he told CNN.
The cardinal, who opposed Trump’s immigration agenda during his first four years in the White House said the new efforts to crack down on illegal immigration are “incompatible with Catholic teaching.”
Trump has heavily criticized McElroy, a migrant supporter who was appointed as archbishop weeks before the president was sworn in for a second term.
However, the tension isn’t one sided.
McElroy railed against Trump’s new provisions after visiting “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention facility surrounded by swampy waters in the Everglades of Florida, and said its development is being used to create fear in immigrants.
“I fear that one of the main things behind it, in the minds of many who are pushing it, is the sense that the people who are coming to our country now are of a different kind,” he told CNN.
“And that’s been a great theme in American culture and history all through our country’s immigration. When the Irish came, when the Italians came, when the Poles came, the refrain has been the same: ‘These are inferior people.’ And that’s what’s going on now. … It’s an outrage.”
McElroy said many are now afraid to attend church, visit hospitals or go to work amid the uptick in immigration raids and arrests.
Still, the White House says the immigration crackdown received strong support on the campaign trail and will remain a pillar of the Trump administration.
“The American people elected President Trump, not a DC Archbishop, to serve as their President,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement obtained by CNN.
“President Trump is fulfilling the mandate the American people gave him in November to turn his campaign promises – like no tax on tips, social security, and overtime – into law. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill will be one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed and will supercharge our economy to benefit all Americans.”
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