Securing the Borders with the Sensus Catholicus and Common Sense

Much of what I write about the events in the anti-Incarnational world of eternity in which we live involves the defense of objective truths, both supernatural and natural, that are the foundation of a just social order.

For example, an unqualified opposition to the chemical and surgical slaughter of the innocent preborn is based upon the immutable precepts of the Fifth Commandment that are also knowable, albeit imperfectly, by means of human reason alone unaided by the light of Divine Revelation as they are part of the Natural Law that was defined as follows by Cicero:

True law is right reason conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens; one thing to-day, and another to-morrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer. And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. And by so doing he will endure the severest penalties even if he avoid the other evils which are usually accounted punishments. (Cicero, The Republic.)

Cicero had it almost entirely correct. Almost. He was wrong in asserting that the natural law does not need any "other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience." He lived before the Incarnation and before the founding of the true Church upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. Cicero thus did not know that man does need an interpreter and expositor of the natural law, namely, the Catholic Church. Apart from this, however, Cicero understood that God's law does not admit of abrogations by a vote of the people or of a "representative" body, such as the Roman Senate in his day or the United States Congress or state legislatures, et al. in our own day.

Pope Pius XI explained in Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929, the Natural Law is authoritatively explicated by Holy Mother Church even though it can be known by human reason and is thus not, unlike the Divine Positive Law, her exclusive possession:

The Church does not say that morality belongs purely, in the sense of exclusively, to her; but that it belongs wholly to her. She has never maintained that outside her fold and apart from her teaching, man cannot arrive at any moral truth; she has on the contrary more than once condemned this opinion because it has appeared under more forms than one. She does however say, has said, and will ever say, that because of her institution by Jesus Christ, because of the Holy Ghost sent her in His name by the Father, she alone possesses what she has had immediately from God and can never lose, the whole of moral truth, omnem veritatem, in which all individual moral truths are included, as well those which man may learn by the help of reason, as those which form part of revelation or which may be deduced from it (Pope Pius XI, Divini Illius Magistri, December 31, 1929.)

A mother can never dispose of the fruit of her womb as she desires. She has an obligation before God to provide the love that is the child’s due. True justice is, after all, giving to each that which his is due.

There are no “decisions” to be made about a child, only selfless, unconditional love to be offered.

There are no “difficult choices” to be made, only a firm reliance upon Our Lady’s graces to provide all the supernatural and natural helps necessary to fulfill one’s maternal duties with the distinction of a saint and imitation of the Queen of All Saints, Our Lady herself.

Our first pope, Saint Peter, explained that we are not to use our liberty as a cloak for malice, and the direct, intentional killing of any innocent human being is act of malice:

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, to refrain yourselves from carnal desires which war against the soul, [12] Having your conversation good among the Gentiles: that whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by the good works, which they shall behold in you, glorify God in the day of visitation. [13] Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God's sake: whether it be to the king as excelling; [14] Or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of the good: [15] For so is the will of God, that by doing well you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

[16] As free, and not as making liberty a cloak for malice, but as the servants of God. [17] Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king. [18] Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. [19] For this is thankworthy, if for conscience towards God, a man endure sorrows, suffering wrongfully. [20] For what glory is it, if committing sin, and being buffeted for it, you endure? But if doing well you suffer patiently; this is thankworthy before God.

[21] For unto this are you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow his steps. [22] Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. [23] Who, when he was reviled, did not revile: when he suffered, he threatened not: but delivered himself to him that judged him unjustly. [24] Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree: that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice: by whose stripes you were healed. [25] For you were as sheep going astray; but you are now converted to the shepherd and bishops of your souls. (1 Peter 2: 11-25.)

Unlike the defense of innocent human being, whether in the womb or at any time thereafter that has long been under attack by medicine and law, commentaries dealing with the consequences of illegal immigration do not involve immutable principles that bind all men in all circumstances at all times. Discussions about illegal immigration fall into the category of the prudential judgments that must be made by public officials in light of the eternal good of souls and the temporal good of men and their nations.

The approach taken by most of those within the warring camps of the false opposites of naturalism, though, are marked be extremes of inflexibility that treat various positions as secular dogmas that are beyond question and debate. Yes, the very same people in the false opposite of the naturalist “right” who such immutable truths about the inviolability of innocent human life and the immoral nature of sodomy as matters to be “decided” by the “people” and thus admit of exceptions tend to be very inflexible concerning the problems caused by illegal immigration and are unwilling to admit that there are times when exceptions can and should be made when a program of mass deportations has been undertaken to undo the harm caused by a previous policy of a refusal to enforce just immigration laws.

Similarly, most of the members of the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” are as inflexible about ignoring the enforcement of just immigration laws and defending the “rights” of illegal immigrants who have committed heinous acts of violence in addition to their entering this country illegally as they are about their defense of unrestricted baby slaughter, euthanasia, and sodomy.

This is what must happen in a world where men do not subordinate their own actions, both individually and collectively, to the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws in all that pertains to the good of souls.

Thus, permit me to outline some general principles before attempting to discuss some of the benefits and disadvantages of the Trump administration’s immigration and deportation policies.

First, the defense of national borders is part of the Natural Law, admitting that how such a defense should be undertaken falls into the realm of human judgment, and this is indeed subject to legitimate discussion and debate.

Kingdoms and cities had means of protecting themselves from invaders long before the emergence of the modern nation-state system in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries as consequence of the Protestant Revolution’s overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Fortresses were built. Sentries were posted. Drawbridges over moats were pulled up at the approach of possible invaders. Checkpoints were established along highways in many instances.

The defense of a nation’s borders, therefore, is a logical extension of the principle of personal self-defense.

Second, a nation thus has a Natural Law right to pass legislation to defend its borders and to provide for a just and orderly system of immigration that is based upon a due respect for the needs and aspirations of migrants while attempting to assure the public health and safety of its own citizens. It is no offense to foreign nationals to require them to meet certain requirements to enter a different nation and for such a nation’s officials to assure that the prospective entrants bring with them employable skills and are willing to undertake a study of the nation’s principal language, noting that there are times in war or natural disaster that may require the suspension of just procedures to deal with cases of legitimate hardship and/or persecution.

Third, there is no inherent human right of foreign nationals to disregard the just laws of another nation by seeking to cross its borders illegally, less yet to commit wanton acts of violence after entering that nation undetected.

Now, the current situation has been centuries in the making, and it has a number of proximate root causes.

Putting Aside All Emotion

Catholics must put aside all emotion on the explosive issue of illegal immigration in order to look at the concrete principles (the right and duty of nations to defend their borders and to control the flow of immigration according to just laws) as they seek how to apply those principles in a prudent manner that is conducive to national security and at the same time takes account of the actual circumstances in which those who have heretofore entered one's country illegally find themselves.

We must remember that those who have entered this country illegally or are trying to seek illegal entry into it are human beings who possess souls created in the image and likeness of the Most Blessed Trinity and have been redeemed, whether or not they know it or understand much about it if they do, by the Most Precious Blood Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King. They cannot be dismissed in a demagogic fashion as threats to the “purity of the blood” or as objects to be derided. Many of these people have been the victims of the human traffickers and others are truly desperate about the situations in their home countries. Even though a lot have come here for the proverbial free ride and to enjoy the benefits such are being handed out to them by the mayoral administration of the City of New York, New York, and by the administration of Governor Gavin Newsom in California, illegal aliens must be the object of our prayers as we pray also for justice to be done in their cases while maintaining the public health and national security of native-born citizens and restoring the country’s territorial integrity.

Many there are, especially among Catholic "bishops" and priests/presbyters who are of the "leftist" bent of naturalism, who have served as nothing other than demagogues on the issue of illegal immigration, seeking to encourage non-Americans, especially from Mexico and Central America, to ignore American laws and then to serve as their ready enablers so as to lobby Federal, state, and local officials for various social services for these illegal immigrants. Some even have gone so far as to say that one cannot consider himself "pro-life" unless he believes in a national policy of "open borders" and then for a full panoply of social services to be extended to those who have entered our country without following a just and orderly process of immigration. Men such as Roger "Cardinal" Mahony, the disgraced former "archbishop" of Los Angeles, have been egregious in their open support of the flaunting of the just laws of the United States of America, daring to assert that the cause of defending those who have deliberately and willfully broken the just laws of this country are victims of "oppression" and that theirs is a "human rights" cause founded in the "dignity of man."

Other Catholics, especially those who are committed to one or another of the "rightist" bents of naturalism, engage in no small bit of demagoguery on their own parts, demonstrating in some instances a nativist mentality towards non-Americans that is eerily and most ironically similar to the nativist mentality exhibited by Freemasons and white Anglo-Saxon Protestants against Catholics who were emigrating from Ireland and Italy and parts of Central and Eastern Europe, including what is again today the nation of Poland that what was then divided among the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires, in the Nineteenth and early-Twentieth Centuries.

Various laws were passed to discriminate against Catholic immigrants.

The General Court state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, at the behest of the Unitarian named Horace Mann, created the first state department of education in 1837 as a means of "standardizing" educational standards in public schools so that the children of Catholic immigrants would learn the ways of religious indifferentism and egalitarianism and democracy.

One author, evidently not a Catholic, put the matter this way:

There were no government schools in any modern sense of that term until the 1840s, when Horace Mann’s Unitarians started them up in Massachusetts as what were then known as common schools. Mann had been to Prussia where he learned of a far different view of the relationship between central government and its citizens than our own tradition which sees the individual as special both morally and economically. Prussian schools considered children property of the state, and educated them accordingly. They were raised to be obedient to the state, their purpose being to advance the interests of the state.

Shortt also cites Robert Owen, one of the Anglo-American world’s first influential socialists, who developed a similar philosophy of education. Owen believed that children should be separated from their parents as early as possible and raised by the state. He believed people were exclusively the products of their social environments, and that if nurtured properly by the state, could be molded into whatever was desired. A key to the thinking that went into forming the official ideology of state-sponsored education was that human beings are innately good, not sinful, and that human nature could be perfected by the right kind of educational system. The ideology that eventually developed would hold that children could be molded into willing consumers of the products of big business and obedient servants of government. In short, the aims of state-sponsored schools were to transform thinking, highly individualistic and very literate citizens into an unthinking, collectivized mass. The slow but steady decline in literacy of all kinds was a by-product.

Why did nineteenth century Christians go along with this scheme? One of the central reasons was that most were Protestants who hoped common schools would slow the spread of Catholicism in the new world. What mattered most about Horace Mann was that he wasn’t sympathetic to Catholicism! It mattered less that he and his Unitarian colleagues were preaching that man could perfect himself through his own efforts, and that compulsory education was a means to this end. So Protestant Christians, including many clergy, supported government schools thinking they could control them.

Very slowly, Pandora’s Box opened. A creeping secularization began. A few theologians (R.L. Dabney is an example) warned of the emerging dangers of state-sponsored education. Dabney, who was no friend of Catholics, was surprisingly prescient. He warned that the danger was not Catholicism but secularism, and that if the common school movement continued unchecked, government schools would end up entirely secular institutions. Christianity – in whatever form – would eventually be driven from them. At the heart of the danger was the transference of responsibility for education from the home to the government, an inherently secular institution. (Steven Yates, A Book Review of Bruce Shortt's "The Harsh Truth About Government Schools," The Harsh Truth About Government Schools by Steven Yates.)

An entire political party, the Know Nothing Party (or American Party), was formed in 1845 to protest the influx of German and Irish immigrants to the United States of America. Part of the larger "Know Nothing" movement (named not for fictional Sergeant Hans Schultz of Hogan's Heroes, but for members of this movement saying that they "knew nothing" about its activities when questioned) that sponsored mob riots against Catholics in various areas, including the attacking and killing of individual Catholics and the burning of Catholic church buildings and schools. Know Nothings won control of the Massachusetts General Court in the elections of 1854, being successful as well in electing their candidates as mayors of the cities of Chicago, Illinois, and San Francisco, California. Ohio was a particular stronghold of the Know-Nothings, who nominated former President Millard Fillmore, who had succeeded to the presidency of the United States of America upon the death of President Zachary Taylor on July 9, 1850, and served the remainder of Taylor's term (which ended on March 4, 1853), for president in 1856.

The Blaine amendments, named after the virulently anti-Catholic James G. Blaine (R-Maine), who, in additional to being the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States of America in 1884, served in the United States House of Representatives (where he was the Speaker of the House from 1869 to 1875) and the United States Senate and served two different terms in two different presidencies as the United States Secretary of State, prohibited the use of public funding of any kind to subsidize schools operated by religious organizations.

Members of the Grand Orient Masonic lodge of Oregon, using all of their considerable clout, joined forces with their great ally, the Ku Klux Klan, and others to sponsor an initiative (a referendum that, if approved by voters, becomes law as though it had been passed by a state legislature) to amend the Compulsory Education Act to, in effect, outlaw Catholic schools in the State of Oregon by mandating that all children be "educated" in public schools. This effort was rendered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in the case of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, June 1, 1925.

The State of North Dakota, long a den of Masonic activity (Freemasons in the newly formed state legislature in 1889 sought to "liberalize" existing divorce laws as a means of destabilizing the family, something that was fought by the founding bishop of the Diocese of Jamestown (later Fargo), North Dakota, John Shanley), passed an anti-garb law in 1947 to require priests and consecrated religious to wear lay clothing when teaching in public schools. The Freemasons of North Dakota hoped to force a crisis of conscience for priests and religious that would prompt the two bishops of North Dakota from prohibiting their clergy and religious to teach in public schools. Bishops Leo Dworschak of Fargo and Vincent Ryan of Bismarck got permission from the Holy See for the clergy and the religious to wear lay clothing, thereby avoiding that crisis of conscience:

When the "anti-garb" campaign was waged in North Dakota in 1948, Bishop Ryan led in the defense of the rights of those wearing religious garb to teach in the public schools of the state. The opposition was well organized and had carried on vigorous campaign before the Catholics of the state were aware of their activities. Bishop Ryan rose to the challenge, and his efforts to defeat this measure were very nearly successful. In conjunction with Bishop Leo Dworschak of the Fargo Diocese, he appealed to the Holy See for permission for the sisters to teach in lay clothing. The victory for the anti-Catholics and the bigots was rendered empty when the Holy See granted their request. Friends and enemies alike had a new admiration for Bishop Ryan following this campaign. (History of Bishop Vincent J. Ryan.)

Did I hear anyone out there chant the slogan of "states' rights"?

Catholics, therefore, should be the last ones on the face of the earth to resort to any kind of nativism whatsoever as it is wrong for those of us who are disciples of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church that He founded on the Rock of Peter, the Pope, and was brought to her birthday on Pentecost Sunday to lose sight of the fact that Our Lord died to redeem the soul of each and every human being on the face of this earth, and that we are treat every human being as we would treat Him in the very Flesh. What would we say to Our Lord, "Get out of America, you Nazarene, you. America is for Americans, not Nazarenes"?

Yet it is that, fallen human nature being what it is, Catholics have practiced bigotry, sometimes upon their very arrival to these shores. A former graduate student of mine from Saint John's University in Jamaica, Queens, back in the 1985-1986 academic year told me the story of what his maternal grandmother said upon her arrival fresh off the boat from Ireland when she realized that her neighbors in Floral Park, Queens, were Italian-Americans: "Look, there's foreigners living next to us!" Bigotry has no place in the heart of a believing Catholic as the only "foreigners" to Our Lord at the General Judgment of the living and the dead on the Last Day will be those who had persisted until the end outside of the Catholic Church and/or who died in a state of final impenitence.

Discrimination in the Making and Enforcement of Just Immigration Laws

All of this having been noted, it is important to point out that nations do have the right and the duty to make and enforce immigration laws on the basis of a just discrimination, which is different than "bigotry," which is an irrational hatred of a group of people. Permit me a word a thousand to explain.

Discrimination is part of daily life. That is, those reviewing a student's application for admission to a particular school or college, or university or graduate program are required by the dictates of the Natural Law to assess his qualifications. This is a process of discrimination, a just discrimination, you see, as those who are less qualified are excluded from qualifying for admission or placed on a waiting list or told to undertake some program of remedial studies before reapplying if they desire to do so. Mind you, there is no place for invidious racial bigotry in this process nor is there any place for the reverse bigotry known as "affirmative action." There is neither racial segregation or "affirmative action" in Heaven.

As one who taught in college classrooms for over thirty years, I had to discriminate when assigning a grade to a particular essay written by a particular student.

Did the student express himself intelligibly in the mother tongue? Did the student present factual points accurately?

Did the student understand the philosophical or even theological points at work in a particular issue?

As I told my students at the start of every semester and frequently thereafter until the conclusion of a course, they must write their essays as though I, the reader of the essay, know nothing about the subject matter. They must "teach" me about the subject, being careful to be explicit and thorough in their presentation. I told them that I would not "read into" their essays what they wanted to write but not do so explicitly. They had to be explicit. (Most people, especially in these days of instant communications, write or speak to others as though the people to whom they are addressing do indeed know the contexts of their various references without even bothering to give a brief description. Some people will write, "Joe said this and that the other day. This troubles me." That's nice. Who is Joe? That might be a helpful bit of information to pass along.) I had to use my own imperfect abilities to assess the competency of these essays. This is a process of just discrimination.

Similarly, discrimination must be used by employers when seeking to fill a particular job vacancy. Applicants with better qualifications are identified and then invited for interviews. Those who are considered to be less qualified get form letters of rejection wishing them well on their careers. (I am just a bit familiar with that kind of letter. Humiliation is good for the soul. I get a lot of it as my sins deserve so richly.)

Managers and coaches of professional, collegiate, scholastic or amateur sports teams must discriminate on the basis of judgments concerning the ability of various individuals to discharge the skills required of them to succeed in competitive sports.

Judges of, say, a contest of piano performances or at a dog show must use a process of discrimination to choose a winner.

Just discrimination is simply part of ordinary daily living. We even discriminate on the basis of our food tastes and/or dietary needs, do we not? Those who equate the word "discrimination" with "bigotry" are entirely misinformed.

Thus it is that just discrimination plays a very important role in the process of devising and enforcing immigration laws that are meant to secure a nation's borders and to provide for skilled workers at a time of need for them and to provide a legitimate refuge for those suffering from proven political oppression or severe economic distress, perhaps caused by a natural disaster (a tornado, earthquake, fire, flood, hurricane). No one has a right founded in the Natural Law to enter a particular country and to stay there as long as he wants. Those desiring to reside permanently in a country must submit themselves to a process of just discrimination to determine their eligibility for admission.

Contemporary Immigration Problems as the Result of the Protestant Revolution and the Social Revolutions of Modernity

Alas, this whole process of devising and enforce just immigration laws has been rendered exceedingly complex, if not almost entirely perverted and distorted, by the rise of the contemporary pluralist state that is not composed of a very heterogeneous population. Again, permit me a chance to explain.

Although even European countries whose people have a strong sense of national identity and culture cannot claim a "pure" race of people as invasions of barbaric tribes in Europe over the centuries resulted in all types of ethnic and even racial mixtures over time, it is certainly true that there was a sense of national personality, as termed by the late Father Denis Fahey in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, that developed in the Catholic Middle Ages. Ireland, England, Scotland, France, the various regions within what are known today as Germany and Italy, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Portugal, to name just a few countries, developed, despite the faults of their citizens and the bad example given on many occasions by those in civil and ecclesiastical positions, a strong national personality during their long years of their allegiance to the banner of Christ the King. Other than missionaries, such as Saint Boniface (Winifred) or even Saint Patrick himself, who were sent from their native places to convert pagans and barbarians elsewhere, there was no need for large numbers of people to migrate during the Catholic Middle Ages. They were proud of their national identities and how they were able to express the Catholic Faith within the context of those identities.

Father Fahey explained this in The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World:

In proportion as the Mystical Body of Christ was accepted by mankind, political and economic thought and action began to respect the jurisdiction and guidance of the Catholic Church, endowed, as she is, with the right of intervention in temporal affairs whenever necessary, because of her participation in the spiritual Kingship of Christ. Thus the natural or temporal common good of States came to be sought in a manner calculated to favour the development of true personality, in and through the Mystical Body of Christ, and social life came more and more fully under the influence of the supreme end of man, the vision of God in Three Divine Persons.

Accordingly, Catholic Social Order, viewed as a whole, is not primarily the political and social organization of society. It is primarily the supernatural social organism of the Church, and then, secondarily, the temporal or natural social order resulting from the influence of Catholic doctrine on politics and economics and from the embodiment of that influence in social institutions. If instead of Catholic Social Order we use the wider but more convenient expression of Kingdom of God, we may say that the Kingdom of God on earth is in its essence the Church, but, in its integrity, comprises the Church and the temporal social order which the influence of the Church upon the world is every striving to bring into existence. Needless to say, while the general principles of social order remain always the same, social structures will present great differences at different epochs. No particular temporal social order will ever realize all that the Church is capable of giving to the world. The theology of history must include, then, primarily, the study of the foundation and development of the Church, and secondarily, the examination of the ebb and flow of the world’s acceptance of the Church’s supernatural mission. . . .

The organization of the Europe of the thirteenth century furnishes us with one concrete realization of the Divine Plan. It is hardly necessary to add that there were then to be seen defects in the working of the Divine Plan, due to the character of fallen man, as well as an imperfect mastery of physical nature. Yet, withal, the formal principle of ordered social organisation in the world, the supremacy of the Mystical Body, was grasped and, in the main, accepted. The Lutheran revolt, prepared by the cult of pagan antiquity at the Renaissance, and by the favour enjoyed by the Nominalist philosophical theories, led to the rupture of that order." (Father Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, p. 10.)

The unity and cohesion of Europe was, of course, rent asunder by the Protestant Revolt in the Sixteenth Century. Peoples who shared a common national identity become enemies one to another. Half of the German states were lost to the Holy Faith. The countries of Scandinavia were lost to the Holy Faith. Irishmen were now divided against their fellow Irishmen. Catholics were hunted down and killed in England by their former friends, sometimes even by their own relatives, eager to prove their "loyalty" to the crown.

Catholics in England and Ireland were particularly hard hit in economic terms by the Protestant Revolt. Catholics in England who had been living as hereditary tenant farmers on the lands of monastery and convents were expelled, forcing them off the land into unfamiliar lives in urban centers, where they lived in poverty and hunger. Catholics in Ireland were oppressed severely. The nearly three centuries of persecution and temporal misery that followed made some more than willing to seek refuge in the new world of pluralism that was the United States of America, a country that had been formed by the union of thirteen British colonies, most of which under colonial rule had their own laws to persecute Catholics.

The social revolutions that began with the French Revolution on July 14, 1789, and thereafter, revolutions that were but the result of the aftermath of the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plan that God Himself instituted to effect man's return to Him through the Catholic Church, introduced more upheaval and enmity in the formerly Catholic countries of once proudly Catholic Europe. Class warfare replaced the religious differences engendered by the Protestant Revolt as a new fault-line to divide families and friends, to drive wedges of hatred against Holy Mother Church and to lead people into lives of agnosticism, if not complete atheism. People became refugees in their own countries, fleeing sometimes from one country to another in Europe to avoid the chaos.

The social revolutions in Central Europe in 1848 produced a great wave of immigration specifically to the United States of America from the then still divided German states and parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Another wave of immigration followed after the Franco-Prussian War on May 10, 1871, as Catholics suffering from the Freemasonic anticlerical Risorgimento in Italy and the Freemason Otto von Bismarck's Kulturkampf in the now united Germany fled to the shores of the United States of America. Modern immigration was in full swing in the era between 1871 and the beginning of World War I in Europe on August 3, 1914, when the United Kingdom declared war on the German Empire.

Although anti-Catholic nativism was far from dead in the United States of America after the War Between the States, there was a need for both skilled and unskilled laborers to do the work required of the industries that were coming to full bloom during the American version of the Industrial Revolution. These new Catholic immigrants, although they faced the overt hostility and persecution described earlier in this commentary, were seen as a valuable source of labor to increase American wealth and power, and it is for this reason that they were welcomed into this country.

Many of the industrialists, inheritors of the ethos of Calvinist materialism, viewed the presence of these new immigrants as a "necessary evil" to help them make money. They could be tolerated if they were kept in their places. Professional politicians, especially those in the Democratic Party in the Northeast and industrial Midwest saw these new immigrants in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century in exactly the same terms that many of their predecessors had viewed the Irish and German immigrants to these shores in the 1820s and 1830s: an invaluable resource of voters who could be, in effect, bribed with jobs and favors--and even an easy path to citizenship--in exchange for becoming loyal members of the Democratic Party who would vote (sometimes in multiple voting precincts on the same day) and organize in behalf of their candidates, which might involve intimidating opposition candidates and spreading disinformation about them (sound familiar?).

Large numbers of Jewish refugees came to the United States of America in the latter part of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, emigrating from the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian Empires. Lutherans from Nordic lands such as Norway and Sweden came here in large numbers at around the same time. More came from parts of the Middle East, including parts of Lebanon and Syria and Palestine. The American pluralist state was expanding greatly with no true principle of national unity, that is, without the principle of national unity desired by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: Catholicism.

The world created by the Protestant Revolution and the social revolutions that followed a few centuries later disrupted such basic elements of social order as national identity and character, making it more possible for the devil to use his various minions to promote the concept of a "global new word order" as a means of dealing with the "global interdependence" caused by massive shifts of peoples from one place to another and by the economy of the post-industrial revolution that relies upon the dictatorship of the corporate elite in multinational corporations and the outsourcing of most manufacturing jobs from "first world" countries such as the United States of America and those in the socialist enclave that is the European Union to countries such as Red China, where workers are paid very substandard wages to manufacture most of the world's consumer goods in largely unsafe working conditions. This is a world of chaos and dislocation, not the world of order and national cohesion of the Catholic Middle Ages.

Social Engineering and American Immigration Law

American immigration law has varied from time to time. There have been efforts to preserve a "white European heritage" by seeking to establish quotas from non-European countries. And there has been an effort in the past forty-five years to encourage immigration from non-European nations so as to change the social, political and economic composition of the United States of America.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese immigration to the United States until its repeal in 1948. This more or less continued United States immigration policies first established in 1790 to bar all but those who were deemed to be "white" from being naturalized as citizens, although non-whites could live as permanent residents without the privileges of citizens.

The Immigration Act of 1924 limited immigration from European to countries to two percent of number of people from a particular country that had already emigrated to the United States and barred the immigration of Asians almost entirely. The two percent quota was an effort to reduce the numbers of people coming from eastern and southern Europe. Those from Latin American countries were permitted to emigrate to this country without any limitations or quotas whatsoever. Although there were changes made to the quota system and racial restrictions were removed by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, the first sweeping measure of true modern social engineering by means of American immigration law occurred with the now infamous Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was signed into law by then President Lyndon Baines Johnson on October 3, 1965.

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was a sweeping measure of social engineering designed by the socialists of the administration of President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Vice President Hubert Horatio Humphrey to alter the demographics of the United States of America so that those of a white and "Christian" background would be in the minority of the population--and hence of the electorate--within a hundred years or so. These social engineers could be confident in their success as the Johnson administration oversaw passage of legislation in 1967 that mandate the states and localities to implement "family planning" programs, knowing that the more affluent white population would be inclined to accept contraception in order to "enjoy" their material success while those in the non-white population could be told that the use of "family planning" would be helpful to their own economic stability. Despite all of the loud protestations at the time, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was an effort to reshape the American electorate so as to institutionalize the sort of social engineering being implement by means of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" and "Great Society," both of which were responsible for the large increase in the size and scope and power of the Federal government of the United States of America since the "New Deal" of the thirty-third degree Freemason Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s.

Oh, yes, the protestations were loud. They were also entirely disingenuous.

Consider these comments made by the late United States Senator from Massachusetts, Edward Moore Kennedy:

"First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same.... Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.... Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia.... In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think.... The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." (U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1-3.)

Quite the anti-prophet, wouldn't you say?

Lyndon Johnson himself, ever the liar, cheat, scoundrel and all around fake, phony and fraud, was equally disingenuous in the comments he made at the signing ceremony of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965:

This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives, or really add importantly to either our wealth or our power. (President Lyndon Baines Johnson, October 3, 1965.)

Indeed, the election of someone along the lines of Barack Hussein Obama is exactly what the social engineers who gave us the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (named after the late United States Senator Philip Hart, a Democrat from Michigan, and the late United States Representative Emmanuel "Manny" Celler, a Democrat from Brooklyn, New York, who was the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 1949 to 1953 and again from 1955 to 1973) had in mind when this law passed in 1965. (See an article in the Boston Globe from 2008 that discussed the effects of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 on the election of 2008: Obama victory took root in Kennedy-inspired Immigration Act of 1965.) There is no turning back the effects of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Our situation is what it is, and it has certainly helped produce a political climate favorable to the election of statists such as Barack Hussein Obama and thence to Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., twelve years later.

Our lives have been revolutionized by the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, and as the counterfeit church of conciliarism in the United States of America made its own "reconciliation" with the goals in this act as it celebrated "diversity" and "pluralism" in the "free" United States of America, the land of "religious liberty."

This "reconciliation" involved sometimes very subtle efforts to de-emphasize Catholicism on the campuses of traditionally Catholic colleges in order not to "offend" non-Catholic students from Asia and Africa. I was told by a colleague of mine at Saint John's University in Jamaica, Queens, upon returning to adjunct teaching there in January of 1991 after an absence of about two and one-half years from the campus, "Be careful, Tom. Things have changed. You can't be as Catholic now as you were before. The study body is different. No more prayers at the beginning of class." This was advice, not "official" policy. I ignored the advice (and never taught there after the Spring Semesterof 1992). Conciliarists used "sensitivity" for the "diverse" nature of the once Catholic colleges in their control to prevent Catholicism from being taught by the few professors interested in teaching their subject matters in light of the Holy Faith and interested in helping their students to get home to Heaven as members of the Catholic Church, no less to exhort non-Catholic students to convert.

American immigration law has been used in the past fifty-nine years to make it difficult for Europeans (what few of them are left, that is) to emigrate to this country as those from traditionally non-Christian nations have permitted to come here in droves and thus take their place in American society. This has indeed changed the social, political, and economic landscape of the United States of America quite a lot.

Contraception and Abortion as the Driving Force to Spur Illegal Immigration from Mexico and Other Parts of Latin America

Prompted by the endemic corruption of Mexican government, especially those at the state and local levels who are bought and paid-for by the drug cartels, and industry, millions of people from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America have entered the United States of America illegally since the 1970s. Nearly twenty million illegal immigrants have come to the United States of América in the first twenty-three years of this century, and over six million have entered the country just since January 20, 2021!

The problem was so bad in the 1980s, however, that even the administration of then President Ronald Wilson Reagan surrendered to the realities of the situation at hand and agreed to grant amnesty to a large number of illegal immigrants who had been in this country continuously since before January 1, 1982, and created a means by which some illegal immigrants who worked on farms or other agriculture-related fields could be legalized.

What were the realities at hand that prompted the "conservative" Reagan administration to agree to the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986?

Simply this: contraception and abortion had taken their toll on the supply of available workers for jobs, especially those menial, backbreaking jobs that so few Americans want to take. Many of our restaurants and hotels and other service industries would have to shutter their doors were it not for the fact that so many illegal immigrants are now in this country to take the jobs that do not appeal to most Americans. Other industries relied on this supply of labor as well. Employers needed these workers. Many of these employers made hefty campaign contributions to members of the two organized crime families of naturalism in the United States of America, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party, and one of the many things that unite the naturalists of the false opposites of the "left" and the "right" is their deep and profoundly held personal desire for ready campaign cash.

Open Borders Under Autopen Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

As is well known and has been much discussed on this site, former President Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., authorized the Alejandro Mayorkas to open the borders, resulting in foreign nationals who entered the country illegally to become automatic beneficiaries of the largesse of the taxpayers in various so-called “sanctuary cities” and “sanctuary states” while the violent crimes they committed went largely unpunished.

A secular commentator wrote the following about this social engineering about seventeen months ago:

In truth, the reason why there are so many aliens to detain is because word has gotten out that if you come and request asylum, you’ll be released into the U.S.—and this has been the case since Biden took office. As Judge Wetherell put it in a 2023 immigration case, the Biden administration’s actions have been “akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border.” As word has spread, the numbers at the border have massively increased, with the most recent month on record (December 2023) being the worst month to date.

For his part, Biden claims that if the prospective Senate bill “were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly”—thereby implying that Congress is at fault. This flips the truth on its head. What’s more, even if the bill were to pass and Biden were to “shut down the border,” it’s not as if the flow would stop: people cross the border illegally on a daily basis already.

Such a “shutdown” would reportedly “suspend asylum [claims] in between official ports of entry” but apparently wouldn’t stop people from claiming asylum at the ports. According to CBS News, during a so-called shutdown of the border, the bill “would preserve asylum at official ports of entry”—indeed, it “would require U.S. border officials to continue processing more than 1,400 asylum-seekers daily at these official border crossings.” So, this means that another half-a-million illegal aliens would be released into the U.S. annually, even if the border were “shut down” all year.

In reality, having a “Come In, We’re Open” sign at each port of entry, while discouraging rampant crossings of the border between the ports, reflects the Biden administration’s goals. In a 2022 interview, Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas whether “it is the objective of the Biden administration to reduce—sharply reduce—the total number of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border.” Strikingly, Mayorkas refused to answer yes, instead immediately replying, “It is the objective of the Biden administration to make sure that we have safe, legal, and orderly pathways for individuals to be able to access our legal system.”

What Mayorkas meant by this is that the administration wants illegal aliens to come not to random places along the border but to the ports of entry—from whence they will be released into the interior of the country. The Biden administration and the mainstream media insist on calling this “lawful” entry. The law, however, requires that those who enter the U.S. without proper documentation be continuously detained until their claim can be adjudicated, since they lack the documents to enter lawfully.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) states that if “an alien seeking admission is not clearly and beyond a doubt entitled to be admitted, the alien shall be detained for a [removal] proceeding.” It also declares that “if an alien asserts a credible fear of persecution, he or she shall be detained for further consideration of the application for asylum.” Justice Samuel Alito writes that these detention “requirements, as we have held, are mandatory.”

The Biden administration asserts that it can use “parole” or “prosecutorial discretion” to release illegal aliens into the U.S. as it sees fit, but this policy plainly violates federal law. Quoting the INA, Chief Justice John Roberts writes for the Supreme Court, “DHS may exercise its discretion to parole applicants ‘only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.’” In the past, DHS has construed this language to mean that those who would qualify might include, for example, someone who needs emergency medical care (for urgent humanitarian reasons) or an alien scheduled to be a witness in a trial (providing significant public benefit). The Biden administration is construing it to mean essentially anyone.

The administration’s primary justification for releasing massive numbers of aliens into the U.S. is that it doesn’t have the space or personnel to detain them as the law requires. But as a 2023 DHS Inspector General report notes, “Since FY 2019, Congress has authorized most of the law enforcement personnel that CBP and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] requested.” Judge Wetherell observes that DHS had the capacity to detain an average daily population (ADP) of 55,000 just five years ago, but under the Biden administration “DHS requested a reduction to 32,500 ADP for fiscal year 2022” and for FY 2023 “requested a further reduction to 25,000 ADP.”

Congress nevertheless approved funding for 34,000 ADP for FY 2023. This year, in its 119-page FY 2024 Budget in Brief—under the heading of “Major Decreases”—DHS requested that detention space be reduced to 25,000 ADP for FY 2024, touting that this would save $555 million versus 2023 outlays. In short, the Biden administration is claiming that there isn’t enough detention space, while simultaneously proposing further reductions in detention space.

The Biden administration’s catch-and-release—or welcome-and-release—policy has also had the effect of making it easier for others to evade capture along the open border. Andrew Arthur, a former federal immigration judge currently at the Center for Immigration Studies, explains that “many if not most” border patrol agents are now “stuck transporting and processing migrants before they are released,” rather than policing the open border.

Why would anyone feel the need to cross the open border when the Biden administration would willingly let them in at a port of entry if they utter the password “asylum”? Well, if one is a drug-smuggler, a terrorist, or someone with a criminal record in the U.S., one might rather cross the open border than risk an encounter at a port of entry. We don’t know how many potential terrorists have crossed the southwest border under Biden without getting caught, but we do have strong evidence of a huge increase in the number who have tried. According to CBP statistics, from FY 2018 through FY 2020—the three full fiscal years under Trump—USBP had only nine encounters along the southwest border with noncitizens on the terrorist watch list. In just the first two-and-one-quarter fiscal years entirely under Biden (FY 2022 through the first quarter of FY 2024), USBP had 316 such encounters—a 35-fold increase overall, and a 47-fold increase per month.

Even apart from aiding terrorists, drug-smugglers, and the like, the effects of Biden’s refusal to enforce federal law have been profound. According to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in less than three years under Biden, the United States’s foreign-born population over the age of 16 rose by 5 million (from 43,086,000 in January 2021 (Table A-7) to 48,049,000 in December 2023). That’s enough to populate a new Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, D.C. combined.

Why is Biden releasing millions of illegal aliens into the U.S.? Because he thinks that his notion of “equity”—which he extends to non-U.S. citizens—requires it. On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order declaring that his administration would pursue a policy of “advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.” In a subsequent document, DHS quoted that passage from Biden and made clear that it was applying it “[i]n the immigration and enforcement context.”

In other words, the situation at the border is by design. What most Americans think of as a “crisis,” the Biden administration regards as a success. (A Border Crisis By Design.)

The crisis created by the Biden administration benefitted human traffickers, exploited those seeking to come to the United States of America illegally, and created a public health and safety crisis throughout the country.

A great many, if not perhaps the majority, of those who entered the United States of America at the invitation of the lawless administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris, are as clueless about First and Last Things as are most native-born Americans, and a strong criminal element within the ranks of those who have already been invited to break the nation’s just immigration laws has come here to pillage, steal, ransack, and to commit violent crimes because they know nothing of the fear of God nor have any respect for the just laws of nations, including those are designed, at least ostensibly, to provide for the protection of the lives and property of American citizens. The violent criminal element among the illegal immigrants knew full well that they would not be prosecuted in cities with “woke” prosecutors in states with “cashless bail” laws that have encouraged recidivist criminals to rob stores, commit violent crimes against people, and to even attack police officers with utter impunity.

The Trump Administration Reacts to the Biden-Harris-Mayorkas Mess

This is the situation that faced President Donald John Trump when he took office for his second, nonconsecutive term on Monday, January 20, 2025, and he authorized border security czar Thomas Homan and his Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security to undertake the largest mass deportation effort in the history of the country, focusing first on the illegal immigrants who had committed violent crimes, which was, despite the opposition of organized and well-paid groups of violent protesters, some of whom have sought to assault Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, a justifiably necessary step to take to remove those whose presence imperiled the life, liberty, and property of American citizens.

Moreover, the Trump administration undertook efforts to secure the southern border. These efforts have been remarkably successful in slowing the numbers of those who have entered the United States of America illegally:

June 2025 saw just over 6,000 unlawful border crossings, a historic low for U.S. southern border apprehensions.

• May 2025 illegal crossings dropped 93% from May 2024, falling from 117,905 to 8,725 apprehensions.
• Trump administration’s emergency proclamation and zero-release policies drastically reduced asylum pathways and increased deportations.

Unlawful crossings at the United States southern border have reached a record low as of June 2025, marking a dramatic change in migration patterns and border enforcement. This analysis examines the purpose and scope of recent border policies, the methods used to collect and interpret data, key findings, and the broader implications for migrants, officials, and the public. It also presents trends, comparisons, and evidence-based conclusions, while noting the limitations of current data and policy impacts.

Unlawful crossings at the southern border are at their lowest level ever recorded.
June 2025: Border Patrol reported just over 6,000 apprehensions of migrants entering without authorization, setting a new historic low.
May 2025: Only 8,725 illegal crossings were detected, a 93% decrease from May 2024, when there were 117,905 crossings.
Comparison to Previous Years: During 2022–2024, monthly apprehensions often exceeded 180,000, with daily crossings sometimes topping 10,000 in late 2023. The current figures represent a 95–97% decrease from those years.
Policy Changes: The Trump administration’s emergency proclamation, zero-release policy, and increased military presence have been central to this decline.
Legal Pathways Reduced: The shutdown of the CBP One app and swift deportations have sharply limited asylum opportunities at the border.
Family Units Affected: The share of family units among apprehended migrants has dropped to 7%, down from 30% in 2020.
Civil Rights Concerns: Reports of U.S. citizens, especially Latinos, being caught in immigration sweeps have raised concerns about racial profiling.

Data Presentation and Visual Trends

Monthly Apprehensions at the Southern Border (2022–2025)

2022–2023: Monthly apprehensions regularly exceeded 180,000.
December 2023: Nearly 250,000 encounters, the highest on record.
May 2024: 117,905 crossings.
March 2025: 7,200 apprehensions (previous record low).
May 2025: 8,725 crossings.
June 2025: Just over 6,000 apprehensions (new historic low).

Visual Description: Imagine a line graph showing monthly apprehensions from 2022 to 2025. The line peaks sharply in late 2023, then drops steeply through 2024 and 2025, reaching its lowest point in June 2025.

Daily Average Encounters

May 2025: 952 per day (second lowest daily average in history).
Late 2023: Often over 10,000 per day.

Apprehended Migrant Demographics

Single Adults: 84% of apprehended migrants in June 2025.
Family Units: 7% (down from 30% in 2020).

Visual Description: Picture a pie chart where the largest slice represents single adults (84%), a much smaller slice for family units (7%), and the remainder for unaccompanied children and others.

Policy Changes and Enforcement Strategies

Emergency Proclamation and Zero Releases

Emergency Proclamation: Issued by President Trump in January 2025, this order allows border officials to swiftly deport migrants without hearing their asylum claims. Civil rights groups are challenging this in court, arguing it violates U.S. asylum law.
Zero Releases Policy: Since May 2025, Border Patrol has released zero illegal aliens into the U.S. interior, compared to 62,000 releases in May 2024. Only those with life-threatening conditions are excepted.

Military Deployment and Infrastructure

Thousands of active-duty troops have been sent to the border.

New barriers and military zones have been set up for temporary detention before migrants are transferred to immigration officials.

CBP One App Shutdown

The administration discontinued the CBP One app, which previously allowed migrants to schedule asylum appointments at ports of entry.

This has left thousands stranded in Mexico and sharply reduced legal pathways for asylum seekers.

Mass Deportations and Interior Enforcement

ICE has been directed to conduct large-scale arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants nationwide.
The number of people in ICE detention reached a record high in late June 2025.

Comparisons, Trends, and Patterns

Historical Context

2020–2023: Unlawful crossings surged, peaking in December 2023 at nearly 250,000 monthly encounters. This was driven by global migration pressures and the end of Title 42, a public health order used to expel migrants quickly.
2024: The Biden administration introduced new restrictions and worked with Mexico to reduce flows, leading to a significant decline by late 2024.
2025: The Trump administration’s immediate and strict enforcement measures have pushed crossings to the lowest levels since record-keeping began.

Patterns in Migrant Demographics

The proportion of single adults among apprehended migrants has increased, while family units and children have decreased. This reflects the unavailability of asylum for families and the risks of crossing with children under current policies.

International Cooperation

Mexico has increased its efforts to intercept migrants before they reach the U.S. border, contributing to the decline in crossings.

Evidence-Based Conclusions

Aggressive enforcement and policy changes have directly led to the historic drop in unlawful crossings.
Legal pathways for asylum at the border have been nearly eliminated, leaving many migrants stranded in Mexico or other transit countries.

The zero-release policy has ended the practice of releasing migrants into the U.S. interior while they await court hearings.

Mass deportations and increased interior enforcement have raised concerns about civil rights and the treatment of U.S. citizens, especially those of Latino descent.

International cooperation, especially with Mexico, has been key to sustaining low crossing levels.

As reported by VisaVerge.com, these combined measures have produced the lowest apprehension numbers ever recorded, but they have also sparked legal challenges and humanitarian concerns.

Step-by-Step Enforcement Process (2025)

Apprehension: Migrants crossing between ports of entry are apprehended by Border Patrol or military personnel in temporary border zones.
Processing: Migrants are processed for immediate removal under the emergency proclamation, with no opportunity for asylum claims except in rare, life-threatening cases.
Deportation: Most are deported within hours or days, often via military aircraft. There are no releases into the U.S. interior.
Interior Enforcement: ICE conducts large-scale sweeps nationwide, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, with a record number in detention as of June 2025.

Multiple Perspectives

Government Officials

President Trump: Credits the “Trump Effect” and aggressive enforcement for the historic drop, declaring, “The Invasion of our Country is OVER.”
CBP Acting Commissioner Pete Flores: Praises the “historic support” and “unprecedented levels of operational success,” highlighting the 93% decrease in illegal crossings and the halt of releases into the interior.
Border Czar Tom Homan: Confirms the historic lows and the zero-release policy, stating, “We have never seen numbers this low. Never.” (Unlawful Crossings at Southern Border Hit Historic Low in 2025.)

This is all quite commendable.

The Immorality of a Quota System

While these efforts are both necessary as well and legally and morally justifiable, Catholics must nevertheless be concerned about the use of a quota system to round up illegal immigrants to be detained prior to deportation without regard for the extenuating circumstances of those arrested and, in an increasing number of cases, arresting foreign nationals who are here on work/student/religious visas and even those who are permanent residents and are thus entitled to the privileges and immunities of American citizens subject to certain restrictions, such as voting.

Here is one troubling case:

A Suffolk County Community College honors student arrested by ICE agents in May said Thursday she chose to be deported to Colombia rather than spend months fighting to stay in the United States, saying "I want my freedom."

Sara Lopez Garcia, 20, told Newsday in a telephone interview from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, where she has spent the last month, "I want to return to my life and keep studying."

"If it has to be in Colombia or it can be here" in the United States, she said. "I just want to get out of" jail.

"At this point, I just want to leave because I want my freedom," she said.

Professors at the college on Thursday reported a groundswell of support for her while SUNY Chancellor John King posted on X this week that her case "is heartbreaking."

"Sara is a standout student building a better life for herself and her family. Like so many SUNY students, she is using her education to better our community," he wrote.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) said in a statement: "I am aware of the situation, and have been in contact with the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. We are continuing to gather information."

Lopez Garcia spends her days reading the Bible and other religious books to help her get through the ordeal, she said. Her mother, Viviana Garcia Gomez, is also detained in the processing center. Lopez Garcia has mixed feelings about her younger brother being left behind by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, since now the family is separated, but she is glad he can continue living here.

She agreed to be deported last month "because I know that will be the quickest option. Being here is really hard," she said. "At 20 years old, I don’t think I should waste my time like that."

One immigration lawyer told her she might have to wait six months or more in jail for her case to be resolved if she didn't agree to deportation, she said.

Her arrest, part of President Donald Trump's escalating immigration crackdown throughout the country, has provoked shock and outrage at the college.

Lopez Garcia said she expects to be deported any day now. She was arrested May 21 at her basement apartment in Mastic.

She said she is still in shock, going from being a student leader at SCCC to finding herself in handcuffs after ICE agents showed up at 7 a.m. that morning looking for someone else.

When the agents started asking her questions, she answered, believing she was in no danger of deportation because she has special juvenile immigration status — a visa granted to some children after they enter the country illegally with their parents and who have been abandoned, abused or neglected by at least one parent. Lopez Garcia was 15 when she came here with her mother and brother.

"I got shocked and I didn’t remember all my rights because I would never expect that this could happen to me being a student" with legal status, she said. "It was very fast so I didn’t have the time" to recall what to do.

ICE apparently is no longer recognizing the protection against deportation for new juvenile visas and may be revoking it even for existing ones, immigration lawyers said. Advocates have counseled immigrants that they do not have to answer questions from immigration agents or open the door to their house.

Lopez Garcia is the first known SUNY student arrested by ICE as part of what Trump says will be the largest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history. Trump says agents are targeting mainly dangerous criminals. Lopez Garcia, however, has no criminal record or even a traffic ticket, as verified by her fiance, Santiago Ruiz Castilla, and a search of recent records.

She has a 3.9 GPA, was a peer mentor and was working on a school project for a nonprofit that helps women who are victims of domestic violence

ICE agents also arrested her mother but did not take her brother, apparently because he is a minor. He is now living with neighbors on Long Island, according to Lopez Garcia’s fiance.

The brother could return to Colombia but chose to remain here for at least several months to work and save for college, Ruiz Castillo said. He just graduated from William Floyd High School, which was also his sister's alma mater.

"I support him with his decision, but still it is very sad because our family is separated without any reason," Lopez Garcia said.

Dante Morelli, president of the college's Faculty Association, said he has received numerous messages of support for Lopez Garcia.

People "are upset and horrified by this," he said. Ideally, Lopez Garcia would be able to return to the Riverhead campus in the fall and graduate in December, he said, but that now seems unlikely.

An interior design major, Lopez Garcia said she had dreams of later attending the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. By agreeing to be deported, though, she hopes she can reapply to come to the United States.

"I try to do my best every day to make the time better. It’s really sad to be here," she said of her detention. "I try to do something different to avoid my reality." (Why Sara Lopez Garcia, Suffolk student arrested by ICE, has agreed to be deported to Colombia.)

This is wrong. It is immoral.

There is no reasonable justification for placing a young woman without any criminal record who in this country on a legally granted visa in a detention center with other deportees who lack such status.

Alas, this what happens when men and their nations are not informed by the sensus Catholicus to see in all others the Divine impress and to treat all others as we would treat Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the very Flesh, and thus to have no common sense to recognize the distinctions that exist between cases such as Sara Lopez’s and the violnt felons and gang members who are being rounded up in many American cities, especially in the City of Los Angeles, California.

It is one thing to target enforcement activity against known felons, gang members and other thugs but it is quite another to round up human beings on the presumption that they are illegal immigrants even though they are in the United States of America legally.

Sadly, it appears that are some officials within the administration of President Donald John Trump who believe that it is “useful” to arrest people like Sara Lopez so that they will get discouraged at the prospect of spending six months in a detention center and thus agree to be deported. This is draconian and it has nothing to do with the protection of American citizens nor the provisions of public safety and health.

Additionally, it does appear that racial profiling, which cannot be used by the Transportation Security Agency at American airports, which is why ninety year-old grandmothers in wheelchairs must be body-searched, one of the lasting “contributions” of President George Walker Bush’s so-called Patriot Act of 2001, is being used by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers to meet the quotas that have been imposed so arbitrarily by the Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

In the midst of all this, though, President Donald John Trump, who is guided by nothing other than his viscera, which is subject to change even within several hours of making one declaratory statement before contradicting himself and then reversing himself yet again, something that has happened three times in the past week as he first floated the idea of amnesty for immigrant farm workers before saying that he opposed such amnesty and then concluded that, there should be a new visa program for farm workers who want to enter the country legally:

President Trump was adamant Tuesday that illegal immigrant farmworkers will not be granted amnesty – as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins floated replacing deported laborers with “able-bodied” Medicaid recipients.

“There’s no amnesty,” Trump said of his plan to support the agriculture industry amid ramped-up efforts to deport illegal migrants. “What we’re doing is we’re getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program.”

“We got to give the farmers the people they need, but we’re not talking amnesty,” the president insisted during a Cabinet meeting at the White House.

Rollins explained that the work program would ensure “farmers have the labor that they need” as the industry moves “automation” and “an American workforce.”

“No amnesty, mass deportation continue, but in a strategic way,” the agriculture secretary added.

Earlier Tuesday, Rollins suggested that new Medicaid work requirements included the recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act could help farmers replace migrant laborers.

“There’s been a lot of noise in the last few days and a lot of questions about where the president stands and his vision for farm labor,” Rollins said at a press conference. “Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure, and then also, when you think about there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program.”

“There are plenty of workers in America.”

A controversial provision included in Trump’s massive agenda bill requires able-bodied, childless adults between the ages of 18 and 64 to work at least 80 hours a month to be eligible for Medicaid, which provides health insurance to 70 million low-income Americans.

Individuals can also meet the requirement by participating in community service, going to school or engaging in a work program.

Trump teased a plan that would allow farmers to vouch for migrant farmworkers who may be facing deportation, so that they can remain in the US, during a rally in Iowa last week.

“You know, they’ve had people working for them for years. And we’re going to do something … we’re going to sort of put the farmers in charge,” Trump told the crowd in the state where agriculture is a major industry.

“If a farmer has been with one of these people that worked so hard – they bend over all day, we don’t have too many people that can do that, but they work very hard, and they know him very well, and some of the farmers are literally, you know, they cry when they see this happen – if a farmer is willing to vouch for these people, in some way … I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?”

“We don’t want to do [border security] where we take all of the workers off the farms,” Trump added. “We want the farms to do great.” (Trump insists 'no amnesty' for migrant farmworkers as agriculture secretary floats replacing them with Medicaid recipients.)

The Trump administration is launching a new visa program for migrant workers as farmers and hotel owners express concerns that their labor force is being threatened by the president’s mass deportation raids.

The Department of Labor’s newly-created Office of Immigration Policy will help fast track visas for foreign laborers — but the administration has made it clear that the initiative is “not amnesty” for illegal migrant workers, a senior administration official told Axios.

“This is not amnesty. It’s not amnesty lite,” the official told the publication. “No one who is illegally here is being given a pathway to citizenship or residency.”

Migrants who are in the US illegally will not be eligible for the visa program and would-be foreign workers must apply from their home country before coming to the US legally, Axios reported, citing officials.

The Office of Immigration Policy will attempt to cut through regulations the Labor Department argues the Biden administration used as incentives for employers to hire illegal immigrants.

It’s unclear how the Trump administration intends to expedite the visas for migrant workers.

To hire foreign, seasonal agricultural workers via H-2A visas, farmers must show that there’s a lack of qualified local employees to fill the roles, according to the Department of Labor.

President Trump last month halted ICE raids at farms, hotels and restaurants after industry leaders raised some issues stemming from the administration’s immigration crackdown.

The employers, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, shared that his “policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

“In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs,” Trump wrote. “This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

One Trump advisor told Axios that the post served as “the bat signal to ICE” to “leave the farmers alone.”

ICE raids on farms, hotels and restaurants have since resumed.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said that farmers dug themselves into a hole by not taking Trump’s threats of carrying out a historic deportation campaign seriously.

“They should have known this was coming,” Krikorian told The Post.

“That’s not the way it has to be done. That is the business model they have followed. And they should have known eight months ago that they needed to start making adjustments,” said Krikorian.

Krikorian said these farmers have access to the “unlimited” H-2A visa program for agricultural workers, but didn’t want to shell out the extra cash to provide required wages.

He added: “It’s an unlimited program, but it has certain requirements related to pay and transportation and housing. And the farmers just want to not bother. Well, sorry, but they’ve had eight months to work with companies that actually arrange the H-2A process.”

The Department of Labor didn’t immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. (Trump offers new program for migrant workers after facing backlash from farmers.)

Got all that?

Men who lack core principles founded in an understanding of the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law are prone to vacillate without regard to providing coherent guidance to those they supervise:

A panicked Donald Trump phoned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to slam the brakes on his coast-to-coast immigration raids after furious street protests erupted across the country, according to a new report.

The bombshell revelation from Reuters comes after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller set an aggressive quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day in late May, following through on Trump's campaign promise to carry out what he called the "largest domestic deportation operation" in U.S. history.

But the massive crackdown quickly backfired, sparking nationwide protests in June that started in Los Angeles, where Trump dispatched 4,000 National Guard troops that he said were needed to quell demonstrations—over the fierce objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

As his poll numbers plummeted and political fallout mounted, Trump frantically called Noem to put a pause on his signature policy.

"He said: 'We're going to do this targeted,'" one former official who heard the mid-June call told Reuters, describing Trump's growing panic that indiscriminate arrests of farmhands and hotel maids were becoming a political nightmare.

The episode exposed a crack in the alliance between Trump and Miller, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly freezing operations at farms, restaurants, and meat-packing plants within hours of Trump's desperate call, the report stated.

Senior ICE official Tatum King immediately told field offices to ease up on the raids, according to Reuters, but the stand-down lasted only days before Miller and Noem rescinded the order.

Trump's administration has doubled overall arrests, slapped travel bans on 19 countries, and earmarked a staggering $170 billion for immigration enforcement under the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" passed in July.

But the crackdown is now facing serious pushback from federal courts, which have moved to stop multiple attempted deportations.

A White House official told Reuters there was "no daylight between Miller and Trump."

The official also claimed that "the initial ICE directive pausing raids had not been authorized by top administration leaders." (Trump frantically called Noem to halt deportations as protests raged: insider.)

While it can be stipulated that many farmers, especially those who run cooperatives for Big Agriculture, have exploited migrants, legal or otherwise, who do work so hard on farms for substandard pay, and are thus to blame for not providing their workers with the proper H-2 Visa because of the costs associated with the program, it is also true that a program of mass deportations leaves no room for common sense solutions without disrupting so many lives.

Moreover, there is such a suspicion of foreigners entering the country for routine visits, including a musician from the Czech Republic who was denied entry into the country even though he was scheduled to perform at least two concerts and then to visit family members in Ohio:

Several concerts in Nebraska featuring a Czech musician had to be canceled after the man was refused entry into the country earlier this week because of a documents issue.

Jaroslav Skuta, a clarinetist from the Czech Republic, was scheduled to play four concerts - Saturday in Wilber, Sunday in Omaha, Monday in Lincoln and Tuesday in Fremont.

But he posted Friday morning on the International Clarinet Association’s Facebook page, saying that he had been detained by immigration officials at the airport in Detroit and refused entrance to the country.

“For hours I was in their custody – phone and all devices confiscated, very rude bullying interrogation, threatening me with jail time. After (a) couple hours of this, they ultimately ordered to send me back home to Prague,” Skuta wrote.

“I had proper documents for the projects I was invited to – I was supposed to visit multiple Czech communities in Nebraska and Ohio with my friends there and perform chamber recitals in their community spaces and churches. This was planned as like sharing Czech classical music with Czech communities in the U.S.,” he wrote.

The immigration office didn't believe me and they were ready to be done with me from the start. It was (a) devastating experience, but I hope I could come to the U.S. in the future when the country administration changes.”

Officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, said in a statement that Skuta did not have the proper documentation, which is why he was refused entry.

A CBP spokesperson said Skuta claimed to be entering the U.S. for tourism.

"During inspection, it was determined he had misrepresented the purpose of his travel and was actually scheduled to perform at multiple events as a professional musician," the spokesperson said.

"Performing in the United States constitutes work and requires the appropriate employment-based visa. Skuta did not have the required visa, was refused entry, and returned on the next available flight."

The concerts were organized by the Czech Culture and Education Foundation of Nebraska.

Steve Steager, the foundation’s president, said he was actually on his way back from a trip to the Czech Republic on Monday when he got an email from a Lincoln-based pianist who was going to be part of the concerts saying that Skuta had been detained.

Steager said that though his foundation is fairly new and had never worked with Skuta before, “I know that he has been in the United States before.”

He also said the foundation within the past year had brought two bands from the Czech Republic to perform in Nebraska and had not had any problems.

Immigration enforcement has increased significantly since Donald Trump became president and there has been anecdotal evidence that more and more valid visa holders are being denied entry for things such as not allowing immigration agents to search their electronic devices or having a history of criticizing the U.S. government.

Steager said both the Czech consulate in Chicago and the Czech ambassador were notified about the situation and were looking into it, but he said his foundation doesn’t want to get into any of the “political ramifications” of the incident.

“We do want to make sure that anyone who comes to perform has the correct documentation so that this doesn’t happen again,” he said. (Nebraska concerts canceled after Czech musician denied entry into U.S.)

A situation such as this one should be handled with simple common sense by letting the musician enter the country and then to get the proper American visa with the help of the Czech consulate. What rational good was accomplished by turning away the musician except to demonstrate “toughness” when common sense was all that was needed. Let such people into the country and have them apply for the correct visa online while having sponsoring organizations verify the information.

Sadly, Jaroslav Skuta’s case is not an isolated one as an Australian man was denied entry into the United States of America three months ago because he had taken a circuitous route to get here in order to save money on his airfare:

One Traveller reader has vowed never to return to the US after he was detained last month for eight hours at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport, while his laptop and smartphone were examined by US border guards. He was finally deported back to Australia.

His “crime”? Taking a more circuitous route to the US to save on his airfare, though he stresses he was not accused of any actual “wrongdoing”.

“I feel like returning to the US under the current administration would be the equivalent of going back for your hat after escaping a devastating house fire,” says the reader, an Australian citizen who asked not to be named. “I have no wish to be burnt again.”

He arrived in the US following a 24-hour flight from Sydney to New York via Hong Kong, with Florida his planned final destination. From there he intended to board a cruise and says he is now $15,000 out of pocket due to the cruise line’s refusal to refund his fare.

The reason he believes he was detained and then deported was not due to any visa irregularities but for what he considers a perverse justification.

“Eight hours later, after three interview teams and extensive examination of my laptop and iPhone, [the decision of US immigration] was that I had come to the US on a very unusual route from Australia via Asia (I flew premium economy and Cathay Pacific had the cheapest airfare).” (US border entry requirements: Australian denied entry due to long flight route.)

This is all the result of President Donald John Trump’s executive order six months ago to require enhanced vetting of foreign visitors. However, it defies all logic and common sense to grill ordinary tourists and then to deport them back to their home countries because various officers do not use simple common sense to assess who is a threat to American national security and who is not.

Finally, as is well known by now, there have been a few instances where foreign nationals who are permanent residents of the United States of America have been questioned and/or arrested for writing about the ongoing Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and/or merely writing about this genocide:

The Trump administration has issued a fresh warning to green card holders in the United States, advising them to behave like a guest or risk removal, escalating concerns among millions of legal residents amid intensified immigration enforcement.

A post on X, formerly Twitter, from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) this week reminded lawful permanent residents that their stay in the country is not guaranteed and could be revoked if they are deemed a threat to national interests.

Newsweek reached out to USCIS and the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) for further comment on the criteria being used to analyze social media posts via email Tuesday morning.

Why It Matters

The warning underscores the Trump administration's broadened approach to immigration enforcement, one that now increasingly targets not just undocumented individuals but also legal residents. At the center of this shift is a growing policy emphasis on social media monitoring and ideological scrutiny, as legal residents are reportedly being deported or denied reentry into the U.S. based on their online activity or political affiliations.

The administration's tactics have raised urgent questions about free speech, surveillance, and the limits of due process for immigrants who have lived legally in the country for years.

The post, shared on the official USCIS account, stated: "EVERYONE should be on notice. If you're a guest in our country – act like it. Our robust social media vetting program to identify national security & public safety risks never stops. USCIS is on watch to find anything online that poses a threat to our nation & our way of life."

USCIS announced in March it would soon require visa and green card applicants to disclose all their social media handles, part of a broader vetting effort that the agency says is essential for national security.

The information would be used for "identity verification, vetting and national security screening," the agency said. The change, now in effect, is likely to impact over 2.5 million applicants and add nearly 286,000 hours of work annually to agency staff workloads, Newsweek previously reported. (Trump Administration Issues Another Warning to Green Card Holders.)

President Trump’s promise not to censor the speech of American citizeit ns as the administration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., and Kamala Harris Emhoff did does not extend to permanent residents, some of whom are at risk of being deported solely because they either hold views that are opposed to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians or have engaged in public activities to protest against this genocide.

What is lost in all this is the policies of the current administration could be reversed by the next administration if a member of the false opposite of the naturalist “left” gets elected to the presidency on Tuesday, November 7, 2025, and issues executive orders undoing everything that Trump has sought to do while undoing the immoral open borders policy his own predecessor. And thus it must ever be in a land where no one in public life thinks in terms of his own eternal salvation and where very few people in public life are willing to make distinctions between deporting violent criminals among illegal immigrants and others who have established themselves, have no criminal record after entering the United States of America, are employed, and do not pose any threat to American national security.

Concluding Remarks

There are, of course, no easy remedies to the problems that have been created by the Biden-Harris administration's deliberate decision to refuse to enforce exisiting immigration laws and thus open the borders as hardened gang members and criminals were permitted to enter the country and terrorizing cities, no less taking the lives of, among others, Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungary.

One of the things that must be kept uppermost in our minds is that we dealing with the lives of human beings, some of whom were impelled to break the just laws of the United States of America for what they thought to be good reasons. This is not to exculpate them for violating the just laws of this nation. Of course not. There is a legal path for entry into the United States of America, and it is that legal path for entry that must be followed.

It is, however, to remind us all that, as noted fifteen years ago in Good Catholic Common Sense Must Prevail, part 1, everyone bears within him an immortal soul which has been redeemed by the shedding of the Most Precious Blood of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ thus carried within his soul the Divine impress. We must have true compassion on those who have been afflicted by serious economic problems in their own country while at the same time insisting that the just laws of our own nation be respected and enforced, both at the border and here at home, being willing at all times to perform the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy for all men, no matter their status, whether legal residents or citizens or illegal immigrants.

Far more importantly, though, is the fact that the Catholic Church, quite unlike the counterfeit church of conciliarism, has always sought the true spiritual welfare of migrants by sending missionaries to help protect from the hedonistic ways of pluralistic societies, something that Pope Pius XII noted in Exsul Familia Nazarenthana, August 1, 1952:

We are happy to mention Blessed Vincent Pallotti, the eminent founder of the Catholic Apostolic Society. We ourselves have called him the “pride and glory of the Roman Clergy” and at the beginning of the recent Jubilee year, we gladly announced that he was among the resplendent company of the Beatified. Urged on by love of souls and eager to strengthen the Catholic Faith of Italian immigrants in England, Blessed Vincent sent several of his Congregation to London to provide for the spiritual care of their people. Our predecessor Pius IX granted Blessed Vincent’s request for permission to collect funds for the construction of a new church building in Landon which was to be dedicated to the glory of God in honor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and it was intended chiefly for Italian immigrants.

Toward the end of the 19th century, when the social means of prosperity became available to the poor in a manner previously unknown, great waves of people left Europe and moved especially from Italy to America. As usual the Catholic Church devoted special effort and care to the spiritual welfare of these emigrants. Inspired by devotion towards her exiled sons, she has through the centuries been ever quick not only to approve new methods of Apostolate, more suitable to the progress of peoples and the changed circumstances of the times, but she has also zealously integrated them into this new social system, for she is ever careful to warn of the dangers that threaten society, morality, and religion.

The record of our predecessor Leo XIII provides clear evidence of the Holy See’s diligent solicitude, a solicitude which became more ardent as public officials and private institutions seemed the more dilatory in meeting the new needs. Leo XIII not only upheld vigorously the dignity and rights of the working man but also defended strenuously those emigrants who sought to earn their living abroad. On July 9, 1878, when he had been Pope for only a year, he graciously approved the Society of St. Raphael, established by the Bishops of Germany to aid emigrants from that nations Through the years, the Society worked advantageously in behalf of emigrants in the ports of departure and arrival, and aided other nationalities, such as Belgian, Austrian and Italian, as their own.

Later, in an Apostolic Letter of 1887, he approved as most beneficial and timely the project of the Servant of God, John Baptist Scalabrini, then Bishop of Piacenza. The plan was “to found an institute of priests ready and willing to leave their native land for remote places, particularly, for America, where they could carry on the priestly ministry among the numerous Italian Catholics, who were forced by economic distress to emigrate and to take up residence in foreign lands.”

Then, aided by energetic priests and far-sighted prelates, this apostolic man, whom we ourselves in 1946 proclaimed most valuable to the Church and State, founded a Society of priests. In the apt words of Leo XIII, in the letter which we shall mention later, Leo said: “In that Society, priests burning with love of Christ gather together from all parts of Italy to devote themselves to studies and to practices of these duties and ways of life that would make them effective and successful ambassadors of Christ to the Italians scattered abroad.” (Pope Pius XII, Exsul Familia Nazarenthana, August 1, 1952.)

Obviously, Pope Pius XII was referring to those who had migrated to the United States of America legally. Granted.

However, human beings are human beings and, as such, even illegal immigrants must be seen as redeemed creatures to whom justice should be administered as far as is possible with a due concern for their spiritual and temporal welfare while the extension of mercy is granted to those in ordinary circumstances.

This having been noted, while it is very just to deport unemployed illegal immigrants, including those who are on public assistance of one sort or another, and especially those who have committed violent crimes, a policy of mass deportations based on quotas fails to take into account legitimate circumstances might meet numerical goals but also open the doors to the deportation of those who, as mentioned above, hold views proscribed by whichever set of naturalists is in power.

While it is certainly the case the current policy mass deportations and the strict enforcement of border security will serve as a salutary deterrent to those foreign nationals who are thinking about entering the United States of America illegally, such a policy must target the most dangerous first and leave those who are in this country legally as permanent residents or her on work visas unmolested from the even the fear of being arrested to meet an arbitrary quota system.

What I want to stress at this juncture, however, is that none of this would be necessary if we lived in a Catholic world, a world where men would be united primarily by the bonds of the Holy Faith. They have been torn asunder by the revolutions of Modernity, something that Pope Pius XI stressed in Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922:

Peace indeed was signed in solemn conclave between the belligerents of the late War. This peace, however, was only written into treaties. It was not received into the hearts of men, who still cherish the desire to fight one another and to continue to menace in a most serious manner the quiet and stability of civil society. Unfortunately the law of violence held sway so long that it has weakened and almost obliterated all traces of those natural feelings of love and mercy which the law of Christian charity has done so much to encourage. Nor has this illusory peace, written only on paper, served as yet to reawaken similar noble sentiments in the souls of men. On the contrary, there has been born a spirit of violence and of hatred which, because it has been indulged in for so long, has become almost second nature in many men. There has followed the blind rule of the inferior parts of the soul over the superior, that rule of the lower elements "fighting against the law of the mind," which St. Paul grieved over. (Rom. vii, 23)

Men today do not act as Christians, as brothers, but as strangers, and even enemies. The sense of man's personal dignity and of the value of human life has been lost in the brutal domination begotten of might and mere superiority in numbers. Many are intent on exploiting their neighbors solely for the purpose of enjoying more fully and on a larger scale the goods of this world. But they err grievously who have turned to the acquisition of material and temporal possessions and are forgetful of eternal and spiritual things, to the possession of which Jesus, Our Redeemer, by means of the Church, His living interpreter, calls mankind.

It is in the very nature of material objects that an inordinate desire for them becomes the root of every evil, of every discord, and in particular, of a lowering of the moral sense. On the one hand, things which are naturally base and vile can never give rise to noble aspirations in the human heart which was created by and for God alone and is restless until it finds repose in Him. On the other hand, material goods (and in this they differ greatly from those of the spirit which the more of them we possess the more remain to be acquired) the more they are divided among men the less each one has and, by consequence, what one man has another cannot possibly possess unless it be forcibly taken away from the first. Such being the case, worldly possessions can never satisfy all in equal manner nor give rise to a spirit of universal contentment, but must become perforce a source of division among men and of vexation of spirit, as even the Wise Man Solomon experienced: "Vanity of vanities, and vexation of spirit." (Ecclesiastes i, 2, 14)

The same effects which result from these evils among individuals may likewise be expected among nations. "From whence are wars and contentions among you?" asks the Apostle St. James. "Are they not hence from your concupiscences, which war in your members?" (James iv, 1, 2)

The inordinate desire for pleasure, concupiscence of the flesh, sows the fatal seeds of division not only among families but likewise among states; the inordinate desire for possessions, concupiscence of the eyes, inevitably turns into class warfare and into social egotism; the inordinate desire to rule or to domineer over others, pride of life, soon becomes mere party or factional rivalries, manifesting itself in constant displays of conflicting ambitions and ending in open rebellion, in the crime of lese majeste, and even in national parricide.

These unsuppressed desires, this inordinate love of the things of the world, are precisely the source of all international misunderstandings and rivalries, despite the fact that oftentimes men dare to maintain that acts prompted by such motives are excusable and even justifiable because, forsooth, they were performed for reasons of state or of the public good, or out of love for country. Patriotism -- the stimulus of so many virtues and of so many noble acts of heroism when kept within the bounds of the law of Christ -- becomes merely an occasion, an added incentive to grave injustice when true love of country is debased to the condition of an extreme nationalism, when we forget that all men are our brothers and members of the same great human family, that other nations have an equal right with us both to life and to prosperity, that it is never lawful nor even wise, to dissociate morality from the affairs of practical life, that, in the last analysis, it is "justice which exalteth a nation: but sin maketh nations miserable." (Proverbs xiv, 34)

Perhaps the advantages to one's family, city, or nation obtained in some such way as this may well appear to be a wonderful and great victory (this thought has been already expressed by St. Augustine), but in the end it turns out to be a very shallow thing, something rather to inspire us with the most fearful apprehensions of approaching ruin. "It is a happiness which appears beautiful but is brittle as glass. We must ever be on guard lest with horror we see it broken into a thousand pieces at the first touch." (St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, Book iv, Chap. 3)

There is over and above the absence of peace and the evils attendant on this absence, another deeper and more profound cause for present-day conditions. This cause was even beginning to show its head before the War and the terrible calamities consequent on that cataclysm should have proven a remedy for them if mankind had only taken the trouble to understand the real meaning of those terrible events. In the Holy Scriptures we read: "They that have forsaken the Lord, shall be consumed." (Isaias i, 28) No less well known are the words of the Divine Teacher, Jesus Christ, Who said: "Without me you can do nothing" (John xv, 5) and again, "He that gathereth not with me, scattereth." (Luke xi, 23)

These words of the Holy Bible have been fulfilled and are now at this very moment being fulfilled before our very eyes. Because men have forsaken God and Jesus Christ, they have sunk to the depths of evil. They waste their energies and consume their time and efforts in vain sterile attempts to find a remedy for these ills, but without even being successful in saving what little remains from the existing ruin. It was a quite general desire that both our laws and our governments should exist without recognizing God or Jesus Christ, on the theory that all authority comes from men, not from God. Because of such an assumption, these theorists fell very short of being able to bestow upon law not only those sanctions which it must possess but also that secure basis for the supreme criterion of justice which even a pagan philosopher like Cicero saw clearly could not be derived except from the divine law. (Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, December 23, 1922.)

The ultimate solution rests, as most of you know, in the conversion of men and their nations to the Social Reign of Christ the King and Mary our Immaculate Queen. Catholicism is indeed the one and only foundation of personal and social order. If you never remember anything else that I write, I ask you to remember that as it is nothing other than simple Catholic truth.

The conversion of our own beloved nation depends in no small measure on our own daily conversion away sin as we seek to grow in holiness with every beat of our hearts, consecrated as they must be to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Every Rosary we pray helps to plant the seeds for the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and thus the restoration of Christendom in the world and of the Church Militant on the face of this earth. Never underestimate the power of our simple prayers and the simple performance of our daily duties as members of the Mystical Body of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to plant seeds whose flowering may not occur until many years after we have died and have faced our Particular Judgment.

Let us turn to Our Lady of Guadalupe to ask her intercession for justice to prevail for the sake of those caught up in the vortex of illegal immigration and for security and order to be restored to the borders of the United States of America.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon!

Viva Cristo Rey! Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint John Gualbert, pray for us.

Saints Nabor and Felix, pray for us.

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