Three weeks ago I reported on the following:
The Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski, joined by two dozen bikers from the Knights of Columbus — a Catholic fraternal group committed to American patriotism to which I belong — gathered outside the Florida immigrant detention center nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz.
They gathered to pray the rosary. Nothing wrong with that. However, they’re also complaining that no chaplain services have been provided to detainees. And that’s a concern worth addressing.
Sunday PM about 25 Knights on Bikes stopped at entrance of Alligator Alcatraz and prayed a rosary for the detainees. Archdiocese is still waiting for approval to access to provide Mass for detainees pic.twitter.com/MoXArGjCUh
— Thomas Wenski (@ThomasWenski) July 20, 2025
While of course I want those arrested for immigration crimes provided with chaplains like any other prisoners, I did raise a couple of questions:
Did the Knights do this for January 6 detainees? Do they do it for Operation Rescue detainees?
Dozens of J6 prisoners were held in solitary confinement for months for nonviolent offenses before trial. From our bishops: crickets. …
In Biden’s last year in office, some 400,000 young immigrants were simply lost in our country, sent to unvetted sponsors.
When all that child exploitation was happening on a mass scale, which U.S. bishops denounced it? Not one of whom I’m aware. How many Knights of Columbus chapters did those bishops summon to pray outside the facilities that were shipping kids off to traffickers?
The answer, alas, was zero.
Problem Solved. Now There’s a New Problem
I’m happy to say that the difficulties in providing the detainees with chaplain services seem to have been resolved. CatholicVote reports:
The Archdiocese of Miami has secured the right to celebrate Mass and provide pastoral care at Florida’s remote detention facility for illegal immigrants, “Alligator Alcatraz,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski recently announced.
“I am pleased that our request to provide for the pastoral care of the detainees has been accommodated,” Archbishop Wenski said in an Aug. 3 statement. “Also, we were able to respond to a request to provide similar service to the staff who reside at the facility.”
He added, “The Church has ‘no borders’ for we all are members of one human family. Our ‘agenda’ was always to announce the ‘good news’ to the poor.”
The archdiocese celebrated its first Mass Aug. 2 and plans to continue regular liturgical services under the facility’s guidelines. Under the agreement, Catholic chaplains and pastoral ministers will have “full access to offer two liturgical Masses” for detainees and staff, the archdiocese said.
According to the archdiocese, the agreement follows months of dialogue between the state’s bishops, archdiocesan leaders, and state authorities.
One thing I saw was missing from the announcement: Any talk of offering the sacrament of confession. Now maybe that’s implied as part of “pastoral care,” but given how few opportunities are offered for Confession at booming parishes in posh neighborhoods, I wonder. Will these detainees be offered the chance to confess their sins and be absolved before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, perhaps unworthily?
Should Illegal Immigrants Repent?
I can’t say how the Florida priests sent to Alligator Alcatraz will behave, whether they will make sure to offer opportunities for confession. If they do, here’s another question: Will they encourage those arrested for breaking America’s laws to repent for that? Surely it’s a sin to break a country’s laws, unless those laws are evil,or you’re literally fleeing the immediate threat of death. (The Church allows that those who are literally starving may steal something to eat, and Common Law has always maintained similar exceptions for emergency situations.)
I read almost daily of bishops like Wenski denouncing the “cruelty” of deporting illegal aliens, and warning against sins like racism and xenophobia. I never hear them address the much more clear-cut question of those who sin by violating our laws. The Catholic Church itself says in its Catechism that nations have the right to regulate immigration, and that immigrants are obliged to obey host nations’ laws.
So do Catholic bishops in America believe that U.S. immigration laws are somehow unjust, like the laws permitting abortion? And that such laws are so wicked that instead of simply trying to change them, people are entitled to simply flout them — as it was moral for slaves to escape from their masters before the 13th Amendment was ratified?
Nobody makes that argument. I’ve literally never seen an attempt to show that U.S. immigration laws violate the Natural Law inscribed on the human heart. Nor that such laws in other Western countries are likewise unjust. Nor, for that matter, have I ever seen bishops or popes denounce the enforcement of immigration laws by non-white countries, such as Mexico, Japan, Nigeria, or Morocco.
My Questions for the Bishops
The U.S. bishops never step up like men, much less like heirs of the apostles, and try to argue openly that Western countries have no right to limit immigration, but that non-Western and non-white countries do. That claim would be hard to prove. I’d like to see some clever Jesuit try.
Instead, these pastors weave manipulative webs of rhetoric about “the vulnerable” and “the marginalized,” and bleat out sheeplike noises about “preaching the Good News to the poor.” They try to weaponize post-Christian White Guilt, which entails holding one set of people to the highest human standards of self-abnegating altruism while treating other people like mischievous, lovable pets who can literally do no wrong — they’re so exotic, brown, and cute.
I want to know from our bishops and from the open-borders globalists at places like Christianity Today whether it is sinful to do the following:
- Illegally enter a foreign country.
- Illegally work there, undercutting the wages and working conditions of citizens.
- Get paid in cash, avoiding taxes.
- Falsely claim that they are being persecuted so they can seek asylum claims.
- Refuse to appear in court to have those claims adjudicated, just disappearing into the wind.
- Collect government benefits intended for citizens.
- Use false documents, purloined Social Security numbers, and other means of identity theft to evade the law.
- Get free medical care paid for by taxpayers.
- Intentionally bear children in that foreign country, so their little citizens can get free education and medical care, and prevent themselves from being deported.
Are these sins or not? Should illegal immigrants repent them? Should their forgiveness be conditioned on at least trying hard to stop committing them? Should absolution for the sin of illegal immigration entail returning to your own country, as thieves must restore what they took?
Or are these illegal aliens just cuddly widdle pets who can’t sin because they aren’t fully human, the way white people are?
A theological clarification from the Vatican itself would come in mighty handy right about now.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.
