Why It Is Morally Wrong to Deport Families

By: DARREN Thou. HENSON, PhD

Alex Nabaum

Catholics, from Pope Francis to bishops, theologians and the faithful, have responded to the increasing hostility towards immigrants and refugees worldwide. In the The states, significant shifts in policy affecting immigrants and those seeking safe and permanent refuge sparked Catholic reaction from multiple sources.

The United states Conference of Catholic Bishops' Commission on Migration voiced strong disagreement with President Donald J. Trump'southward Jan. 27, 2017, executive order temporarily halting travel visas and blocking admission of refugees from Iran, Iraq, Great socialist people's libyan arab jamahiriya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also stopped resettlement of Syrian refugees. The USCCB pledged redoubled support and assist for resettling the most vulnerable.¹

A court claiming stopped the Jan 27 executive lodge from taking upshot, and the White House then rewrote the order to address the legal issues raised. Citing the need to protect the U.Due south. from terrorist attacks, Trump signed the second travel and clearing ban on March 6, 2017. It, also, was challenged in court and is caught up in legal proceedings.

Theologians take denounced the policies as morally unjust and in violation of Christian ethics and human rights.² They appealed to Scripture'due south command to welcome the stranger and the Judeo-Christian understanding that inviolable human dignity flows from God creating u.s. in God's own image and likeness.

A strong message came from Chicago's Central Blase J. Cupich when he decried the policies as "a dark moment in U.S. history." He asked, "Have we not repeated the disastrous decisions of those in the past who turned away their people fleeing violence, leaving certain ethnicities and religions marginalized and excluded?"^three

Similarly, Newark's Cardinal Joseph West. Tobin, CSsR, referenced Scripture and stated, "Mass detentions and wholesale displacement do good no one; such inhuman policies destroy families and communities."⁴

Cardinal Tobin's statement echoes a particular line from the 2nd Vatican Council'southward Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes. The council specifically identifies deportation amid a list of actions insulting human dignity, alongside such morally reprehensible acts as slavery, prostitution and the selling of women and children.⁵ "All of these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human social club…"

Was it the threat of mass deportations and the outright prejudice against Muslims that prompted some Catholic voices?^half-dozen The Catholic moral tradition has identified deportation — not simply mass deportation — with potent, morally objectionable linguistic communication. Nevertheless, Catholic voices were conspicuously muted if not silent, while President Barack Obama deported more persons than any other president in U.S. history.^seven

Displacement AS MORAL WRONGDOING
Pope John Paul Two condemned deportation in his 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor. The encyclical not but repeats the listing from Gaudium et Spes of actions that denigrate life, simply the pontiff further heightens their moral gravity by labeling them as intrinsic evils.^viii The return of the complex theological term "intrinsic evil," every bit well as the encyclical itself, has been vociferously debated.^ix Detangling the encyclical's methodologies and interpretations is beyond the scope of this cursory article. Yet, an honest and critical theological engagement with immigration problems must debate with this attribute of the tradition.

Moral theologians and social and health intendance ethicists need to bring a deeper and more nuanced theological understanding to the current policies, rhetoric and social realities on displacement and immigration. Why would deportation exist considered an intrinsic evil? What are the shortcomings and benefits of emphasizing this? What possible conditions would make information technology permissible?

Bishop Daniel E. Flores, in the edge diocese of Brownsville, Texas, adamantly argues that mass displacement policies are "formal cooperation with an intrinsic evil," akin to bringing a adult female to an ballgame dispensary.¹⁰ He argues that sending people to parts of Mexico and Central America would place them in proximate danger of death.

Non but is the term "intrinsic evil" fraught with difficulties, just it sharply contrasts with Pope Francis' emphasis on pastoral sensibility and his theology of mercy. Cardinal Tobin demonstrated an alternative style of addressing the dehumanizing effects of displacement when, in March 2017, he led a group of clergy in accompanying an unauthorized immigrant to his displacement hearing at the Newark courthouse.¹¹ The immigrant, who has lived more than than a quarter-century in the U.South. and has no criminal tape, received a one-twelvemonth reprieve.¹²

Right TO FREEDOM oF Motility AND RESIDENCE
The Catholic tradition's moral objections to deportation is just one side of the coin. The positive counterbalance is the tradition's articulate affirmation of the man right to migrate. The appeal to human rights is conspicuously missing in the current discourse, even among recent bishops' statements.

Pope John XXIII used homo rights to ground his thinking on social justice. In addition to naming medical care and the right to be looked after in times of ill health, disability, loss of a spouse and old age, his encyclical Pacem in Terris recognizes a basic right to migrate. The pontiff wrote, "every human existence has the correct to freedom of motility and of residence within the confines of his own State. When in that location are just reasons in favor of information technology, he must be permitted to immigrate to other countries and take upwardly residence in that location."^xiii

He articulates boosted and specific rights for refugees. Their profound suffering merits special concern. Thus, the pope honors a refugee'due south right "to enter a country in which he hopes to exist able to provide more fittingly for himself and his dependents. It is therefore the duty of State officials to take such immigrants and — so far equally the skillful of their own community, rightly understood, permits — to further the aims of those who may wish to go members of a new gild."¹⁴ The pontiff argues for these and other human being rights from a perspective of an ordered universe in which all is given past the Creator.

Although the papal encyclical tradition acknowledges distinct rights of immigrants and refugees, a palpable xenophobia in some corners of American society thwarts an appreciation for the lived experience, in fact, the suffering, of these women, children and men. The voicelessness of vulnerable others creates a compelling need for theologians, pastoral ministers and leaders in the church's ministries to speak from the depths of the Catholic moral and social tradition to these current challenges.

CONSIDERATIONS
Scholarship and public discourse must advisedly distinguish situations of unauthorized clearing from that of refugees. Those recognized by the international customs equally refugees due to the dire situations in their original homelands ought to receive timely safety and resettlement.

A second and related matter pertains to language. We are talking well-nigh man persons, not "aliens." Persons relate to cosmos, community and solidarity — concepts that merit greater attending in discussions on deportation and immigration.15 Furthermore, employing the term "illegal" suggests, rightly or not, that the ceremonious laws themselves are but.¹⁶

Third, theological scholarship must grapple with the Second Vatican Council'south mentioning of deportation, John Paul Ii'due south identification of information technology as intrinsically evil and subsequent references to mass displacement.¹⁷ Might the qualification of "mass" deportation be akin to moral distinctions betwixt direct and indirect abortion? If then, is this distinction sufficient, or does moral wrongdoing linger in at least some instances of deportation per se?

Quaternary, renewed scholarship on the rights of persons to migrate can enlighten the soapbox. Multiple pressures can prompt fleeing ane's homeland: political persecution, exploitation, war and violence, starvation, climate change, economic and financial motives, or family reunification. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church links immigration and work. As seen in the U.Southward., immigrants provide labor that would otherwise remain unfulfilled.^eighteen

Here are some questions that merit report and word: How does the correct to free human movement correlate and disharmonize with the Catholic social tradition's recognized right to labor, to a just living wage, to individual property and a state's obligation to regulate rights in service to the common good? Moreover, many voices object to unauthorized clearing on the grounds of national sovereignty and a state's duty to protect itself. What are morally acceptable rights to protect a national border? What responsibilities correlate to the private'southward correct to migrate?

Exploring these questions leads to possible examples of just and unjust deportation. A migrant worker who violates the parameters of a work agreement may justly be deported. Still, we must argue for and articulate a moral imperative to cease deportations of (and threats to carry) unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.Due south. as children. They must not behave the devastating and dehumanizing consequences of actions for which they had neither capacity nor freedom to choose. Moreover, such women and men deserve a reasonably unencumbered means to authorized residency, if not citizenship.

Conditions and practical rights to authorized residency, if not citizenship, are needed for individuals who have years of residency, who have been contributing to society and their families, and who take no criminal record. Civil law recognizes adverse possession with regard to property — also known as squatters' rights. It seems even more critical and dignified for human persons to have an analogous process. Deporting long-term residents may be morally unjustified. Cardinal Tobin suggested every bit much in his public statements.

Immigration AND Wellness CARE
Cosmic health care in the U.S. began with women and men religious — immigrants themselves — centuries agone. Today, more than than e'er, it is essential for our healing ministries to be an unequivocal identify of welcome and respite. We must continue advocating for access to care for immigrants. One Catholic medical school, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, has taken a prophetic step in albeit immigrants with Deferred Activity for Babyhood Arrival status — often chosen "Dreamers."¹⁹ (see story on page 14). Upon completing their medical grooming, will these talented doctors detect welcome in Catholic wellness ministries or other institutions?²⁰

Some bioethicists have grappled with expensive medical treatments for undocumented immigrants. Catholic health care ethicists have pondered the moral permissibility and limits of medical repatriation — that is, returning an immigrant (and commonly undocumented) patient to his or her home country because the patient needs long-term medical intendance that won't be reimbursed.²¹ Their analyses didn't differentiate medical repatriation from deportation.

Does coercion lurk in the background of an informed consent to being returned to some other county? Bioethicist Marking Kuczewski proposed three narrow criteria that must exist met for a hospital to morally pursue medical repatriation equally the intendance plan for an unauthorized immigrant who needs ongoing, advanced medical support.²² Legally or otherwise, at what indicate does i, realistically, no longer belong to ane's one-time country?

In less extreme situations, Cosmic and other nonprofit hospitals routinely provide charity care for immigrants ineligible for well-nigh wellness coverage programs. But how ought Cosmic ministries react if federal agents seek to remove a hospital patient with unauthorized clearing status? Does a Cosmic hospital participate in moral wrongdoing if information technology cooperates or remains complicit?

Catholic social teaching'southward foundation in human nobility and solidarity forms a bedrock that seems to significantly limit moral justifications for displacement. The wisdom of the Second Vatican Council noted that greater harm comes to those who exercise deportation and related injustices than to those who suffer its injury.²³ Those deported and their families would likely disagree. Much work remains to foster a social consciousness that aches for the griefs and anxieties of others, peculiarly those separated from their habitation and culture, notwithstanding striving to reestablish new homes and stabilize their families. With the help of the Catholic social and moral traditions, and Catholic health care'due south vision of holistic care, we tin can fortify the structures to assistance immigrant persons flourish in a different location within Creation.

DARREN M. HENSON is regional officer for mission and ethics at Presence Health, Chicago.

NOTES

1. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "USCCB Committee on Migration Chair Strongly Opposes Executive Society Because It Harms Vulnerable Refugee and Immigrant Families," news release, Jan. 27, 2017. www.usccb.org/news/2017/17-026.cfm.
2. Statement of the Catholic Theological Social club of America Board of Directors on Refugees and Migration, Jan. 31, 2017. http://s3.amazonaws.com/berkley-middle/170131CatholicTheologicalSocietyAmericaBoardDirectorsStatementRefugeesMigration.pdf.
3. Archdiocese of Chicago, "Statement of Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago, on the Executive Gild on Refugees and Migrants," Jan. 29, 2017. www.archchicago.org/statements/-/asset_publisher/a2jOvEeHcvDT/content/statement-statement-of-cardinal-blase-j-cupich-archbishop-of-chicago-on-the-executive-order-on-refugees-and-migrants?inher.
4. Archdiocese of Newark, "Argument of Central Joseph W. Tobin, CSsR, On Wednesday's Executive Actions on Immigration," Jan. 27, 2017. www.rcan.org/statement-key-joseph-w-tobin-cssr-wednesday's-executive-actions-immigration.
5. 2d Vatican Quango, Gaudium et Spes, par. 27. world wide web.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.
6. Come across, for example, Kate Morrissey, "Cosmic Church Prepares to Fight 'Grave Evil' of Mass Deportations," The San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 30, 2016. San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy voiced grave concern and "massive action," following the 2016 presidential election.
7. United States Department of Homeland Security, 2015 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, Table 39; www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/table39.
8. John Paul Two, Veritatis Splendor, par. eighty. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-2/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html.
9. See for example, Charles E. Curran, The Moral Theology of Pope John Paul II, (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2005); Richard John Neuhaus et al., "The Splendor of Truth: A Symposium," First Things, Jan. 1, 1994; and Mary Elsbernd, "The Reinterpretation of Gaudium et Spes in Veritatis Splendor," Horizons 29, no. 2 (Oct 2002): 225–39.
10. Charles C. Camosy, "Bishop Says Deporting Migrants 'Not Unlike' Abortion," Crux, July 26, 2016. https://cruxnow.com/interviews/2016/07/26/camosy-interview-bp-brownsville-tx/.
11. David Porter, "Religious Leader Heads Effort to Help Human Facing Deportation," Associated Press story on U.South. News and World Report website, March 10, 2017; world wide web.usnews.com/news/best-states/new-jersey/articles/2017-03-10/newark-archbishop-to-pb-rally-for-human being-facing-deportation.
12. Associated Press, "Man Gets Deportation Reprieve later on Cartoon Clergy Support," April 20, 2017. https://apnews.com/8fced4be1307408099401c3fa67ba5a6/new-bailiwick of jersey-human being-avoids-deportation-example-drew-clergy-support.
13. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, par. 25. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html.
14. Pacem in Terris, par. 106.
15. Francis, Laudato Si', par. 25. Pope Francis' environmental encyclical observes how climate modify has caused people to migrate or has forced them out of their homes and into a condition as unofficial refugees. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.
16. Encounter, for instance, this article by Fr. Thomas Berg, which omits the tradition's treatment of deportation. Thomas Berg, "Illegal Clearing and Cosmic Social Teaching," With Skillful Reason, Catholic News Agency online blog, May eighteen, 2010. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/cavalcade/illegal-clearing-and-catholic-social-pedagogy-1231/.
17. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church mentions mass deportations alongside genocides and new forms of slavery and trafficking. See par. 158. www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/justpeace/documents/rc_pc_justpeace_doc_20060526_compendio-dott-soc_en.html.
18. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, par. 297-98.
19. Mark Grand. Kuczewski and Linda Brubaker, "Medical Didactics as Mission: Why Ane Medical School Chose to Accept DREAMers," The Hastings Center Report, 43, no. 6 (Nov. 18, 2013): 21-24.
20. Jeremy Raff, "What Will Happen to Undocumented Doctors?" Video by The Atlantic, February 2, 2017.
21. John Paul Slosar, Mark F. Repenshek and Elliott Bedford, "Catholic Identity and Charity Care in the Era of Health Reform," HEC Forum 25, no. 2 (June 2013): 111–26.
22. Marker Kuczewski, "Can Medical Repatriation Be Ethical? Establishing Best Practices," The American Journal of Bioethics, 12, no. ix (2012): ane-5.
23. Gaudium et Spes, par. 27.

Copyright © 2017 by the Cosmic Health Association of the United States
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Source: https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/july-august-2017/deportation-a-moral-morass

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