The Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, called for “more pressure” on politicians to defend migrants, and stressed that President Donald Trump must “change his tactics” because “mass deportation is not going to help anything.”
“These days we have to try to put more pressure on Congress so that the congressmen make the necessary changes (to the immigration laws) and I also believe that it is important that the Administration listens to our voice as well. In other words, we do not want to be enemies of anyone and we are Americans,” the priest declared to the agency. EFE.
1.3 million Catholics
Wenski is leader of an area with about 1.3 million Catholics, including one of the largest communities of Latinos and Haitians in the country.
In his conversation with the Spanish agency, he vindicated the “special message” that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued in its Fall Plenary Assembly to defend migrants.
Wenski emphasized that “the bishops have never been silent on this issue.” Personally, he said he had fought for more than 20 years for immigration reform in the United States, where he indicated that agents who apprehend migrants “should not make fun of them, they should not mistreat them, they should treat them humanely.”
The response of the “border czar”
At the request of the bishops, Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, responded that “the Catholic Church is wrong” and that “they need to spend their time fixing the Church.”
“I understand that he is a little sensitive to the issue and I also recognize that there are many Catholics who are working for ‘la migra’, working for the Government and in the statement that the bishops made in our meeting a week or so ago we said that they should not attack the agents,” Wenski responded to the comment.
The United States expelled nearly 400,000 migrants in the first 250 days of the second Trump Administration, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which anticipates the removal of 600,000 in the first year of administration.
Change tactics
The archbishop said “that the Administration has to change tactics, it has to focus more on the economy and, to have a prosperous economy,” the “Administration must recognize that this will not be possible without counting on the labor of immigrants.”
He also accepted that the “president managed to close the border and he must accept the praise of the people who are happy with that goal and are eliminating criminals and no one is in favor of dangerous people being loose in the streets”; But, at the same time he said: “we don’t want grandmothers, daughters, girls or men who are working hard, to be caught and deported.”
Miami’s population has grown by “at least 250,000 people due to immigration in the last two or three years,” he says, so there are legal services from the Church for newcomers.
His legacy, a diverse church in Miami
Wenski delivered his letter of retirement to Pope Leo
Questioned about his legacy, the archbishop highlights that he has worked to make a Church “more open to newcomers” and to offer services in the languages of the parishioners, since he speaks Creole, Spanish and English.
