Miami’s Catholic archbishop and a Trump-hating billionaire have joined forces to prevent illegal aliens in Miami from being deported. This is taking place in the very city reporting the most arrests of illegals since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January.
Archbishop Thomas Wenski, who celebrated the first Mass for detainees at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the new immigrant detention center in the Florida Everglades, is receiving funding from Cuban-born billionaire Miguel B. Fernández and other wealthy locals, Bloomberg reported on August 19.
Fernández and his allies met to raise funds for the Catholic Legal Services of Miami (CLSM) and its team of 30 staff lawyers who assist 3,000 illegal immigrants each month. CLSM’s revenue totaled $8.63 million in 2024, according to ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
“I see myself in those people who are being detained today,” said Fernández, who emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12 and made a fortune trading in healthcare-related companies. “I happen to be one of those immigrants who arrived in this country penniless.”
Tycoon Insists He Will Spend Millions Fighting Trump
“If I have to spend $10, $20, $30 million in this fight in my community, I will spend it,” he told the Spanish newspaper El País. “I’ve built 32 companies that have been sold primarily to public companies, so money is not an issue for me. Principles and morals are the issue for me.”
Fernández, who has contributed generously to philanthropic causes, owns the 4,000-acre Little River Plantation ranch near Tallahassee, a total of 9,000 acres in Florida, 25,000 acres in Alabama, a yacht, helicopter, plane, and a 31,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom house on Biscayne Bay in Coral Gables worth $36 million.
Miami has witnessed a flood of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela, and is a prime target for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Approximately 60% of the population is foreign-born, and 70% are Latino.
“There certainly are people living in fear in this community,” Wenski told Bloomberg. “They’re living in fear of a knock on the door in the middle of the night.” The prelate has helped expand the CLSM program; he said that when federal agents are rumored to be conducting raids in the area, attendance at mass declines.
At a recent meeting, Fernández and local donors collectively raised $250,000, with an additional $50,000 from Fernández, who has been friends with Wenski for the last 15 years.
According to a report published by World Relief, 80% of individuals at risk of deportation are Christians. Sixty-one percent of those are Catholic, 13% are evangelical, and 7% adhere to other Christian traditions.
Since last April, Fernández, who currently serves as chairman of MBF Healthcare Partners, has been anonymously funding a campaign that places billboards along highways in South Florida criticizing local Cuban-American congresspeople and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their anti-immigration stance, El País reported.
Pope and Bishops Ratchet Up Rhetoric Against Deportations
Supported by Pope Leo XIV, the U.S. Catholic bishops have continued to ramp up their pro-immigrant rhetoric against Trump.
At the end of July, Bishop Mark Brennan of Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia, slammed the Trump administration’s policy of deporting “as many immigrants as possible” without “distinguishing between true criminals and law-abiding persons.”
“Mary and Joseph had to flee their homeland because a jealous king wanted to kill their son. That son would later say, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me,’” Brennan said, reiterating the trope that the Holy Family were illegal immigrants — even though they were fleeing from one part of the Roman Empire to another to escape genocide.
Brennan also insisted that entering the United States illegally is merely “a misdemeanor — a crime but a lesser one, on the level with loitering, public intoxication and shoplifting; it only becomes a felony, a more serious crime, if a person is deported and then enters again without our government’s permission.”
Faithful Catholics who support the large-scale deportation of illegal aliens have repeatedly insisted that the Democrat-supporting bishops who support illegal immigration were raking in billions of taxpayer dollars under the Biden administration.
Catholic Agencies Face Probe for Misuse of Funding
The United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic Charities (CCU) — the domestic charity wing of the U.S. Catholic Church — are among 200 NGOs facing a federal investigation over the misuse of taxpayer funds to facilitate illegal immigration, The Stream reported in June.
Earlier this year, prominent lay Catholics urged Vice President J.D. Vance, a practicing Catholic, to investigate the bishops under the provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) — a law first used to prosecute the Mafia in the 1970s.
“We request that a RICO investigation be undertaken into how the USCCB dispersed funds received from USAID,” a cohort of Catholic scholars, journalists, and victims of clerical sex abuse wrote in a March 8 letter to Vance.
The signatories noted that the Department of Government Efficiency has already discovered an obscene amount of funds was given to the Catholic Church through its various organizations to help settle refugees and immigrants.
As The Stream reported last September, CCU, which operates under the jurisdiction of the U.S. bishops, received nearly $1 billion from taxpayers via the Biden administration to facilitate illegal immigration. Financial documents show that government grants for CCU nearly quadrupled after Biden took office in 2021, with most of the funds directed to the charity’s immigration services — especially its operations near the southern U.S. border.
The Biden administration provided the USCCB with more than $100 million annually, which the bishops allocated to affiliated Catholic nongovernmental organizations, according to the USCCB’s audited financial statements.
Catholics have also accused the bishops of supporting illegal immigration to fill the rapidly emptying pews in their churches.
In July, Pope Leo claimed that Catholic migrants have a special opportunity to become “missionaries of hope in the countries that welcome them, forging new paths of faith where the message of Jesus Christ has not yet arrived or initiating interreligious dialogue based on everyday life and the search for common values.”
In his message for the 111th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Leo noted: “With their spiritual enthusiasm and vitality, they can help revitalize ecclesial communities that have become rigid and weighed down, where spiritual desertification is advancing at an alarming rate.”
Dr. Jules Gomes (BA, BD, MTh, PhD) has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
