How the Catholic Church Became a Champion of Biden’s Open Borders, by Steven Malanga

By Steven Malanga, City Journal, (Complicit Clergy), February 5, 2025

Church groups grew massively with government funding for the controversial immigrant and refugee programs that Trump is now cutting.

Vice President J. D. Vance has emerged as one of the Trump administration’s unwavering defenders on many issues. One of his most widely quoted retorts to critics occurred on the January 26 edition of CBS’s Face the Nation. Vance was responding to statements by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemning as “deeply troubling” the administration’s enforcement actions against illegal aliens and its pause of government-funded refugee-resettlement programs. As a Catholic, Vance said, the criticism left him “heartbroken.” Then he hit out at the church for its role in garnering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts to serve immigrants over the last several years. “I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns? Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”

The Catholic Church has indeed emerged as one of the largest government contractors of immigration services. In the process, it has not only rapidly expanded its role as a taxpayer-supported nonprofit but also became one of the chief facilitators of the Biden administration’s loose borders policy. That relationship has troubled many politicians and other critics, who fear that reduced border enforcement has worsened numerous social problems, including human trafficking. “I believe the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, if they’re worried about the humanitarian costs of immigration enforcement, let them talk about the children who have been sex trafficked because of the wide open border of Joe Biden,” Vance said in the Face the Nation interview.  He went on to slam church leaders for not being good partners in “common sense immigration enforcement.”

The Catholic Church has long positioned itself as an advocate for poor immigrants and provided them with services in the United States. But for decades, including during the great migration waves of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, much of the church’s work was charitable in nature, funded by contributions from parishioners. Over the past 50 years or so, however, Catholic Church-affiliated organizations, especially Catholic Charities, have become government contractors with a stake in a growing welfare state. Even before the last four years of explosive immigration, Catholic Charities nationwide derived more than six of every ten dollars of revenues from government contracts. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholic Charities have been among the biggest beneficiaries.

Now, with Trump changing the immigration focus to border enforcement and deportation, most of the Biden programs that aided in resettling immigrants are being curtailed, along with their funding. That policy change may represent an existential crisis for nonprofits dependent on government contracts, including dozens of Catholic Charities branches around the country. This conflict of interest makes it harder for Catholic leaders to claim the moral high ground on immigration.

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