Border czar Tom Homan dismissed Pope Leo’s criticism of President Donald Trump’s deportation policies on Wednesday by comparing the fortified walls around the Vatican to the United States’s own border security efforts.
During a brief encounter with reporters, Homan was asked about Leo’s comments condemning mass deportations, including that the U.S. is doing them in a “disrespectful” way. Homan said Vatican City itself is a walled state and that the pontiff should focus on the Catholic Church’s “own issues.”
“The Catholic faith is always in support of law enforcement, always has been, and he should be, too. … You ought to be fixing the Catholic Church because they got their own issues,” Homan said. “Bottom line is, if we jumped the wall at the Vatican, the penalties for doing that are much harder than the ones here in the United States.”
Homan’s comments follow Trump touting his administration’s immigration enforcement record during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.
In the roughly 108-minute speech to a joint session of Congress, Trump said the U.S. has the “strongest and most secure border in American history by far” and highlighted deportations of criminal illegal immigrants and border security as key achievements of his second term.
The pope has consistently called for compassion toward migrants and refugees, a stance the Catholic Church has held through several pontiffs.
Hours prior to the State of the Union, a group of U.S. Catholic bishops from border states issued a public statement urging reform of immigration enforcement to protect families and ensure respect for human dignity.
Homan, who has defended Trump’s immigration crackdown, has previously told religious leaders to “stick to” their own institutional roles and leave border enforcement to U.S. authorities.
In Wednesday’s conversation, Homan echoed his prior comments and said Leo does not understand “there is a flip side to illegal immigration.”
“Women get raped making that journey, or 4,000 aliens died making that journey under Joe Biden,” Homan said. “When you overwhelm the border patrol, all the bad things happen. … Securing the border saves lives.”
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Homan, who called himself a lifelong Catholic, said he was open to the idea of sitting down with Leo to discuss issues surrounding illegal immigration and explain that the matter is “not a victimless crime.”
The border czar also praised Trump’s policies and said they are “saving thousands of lives.”
