Two American bishops have written to the government seeking an end to deportation raids that earlier this month rounded up more than 120 Central American immigrants.
“We disagree with the underlying rationale behind this action: that sending children and families back to the dangerous environment they fled will serve as a deterrent for other children and families who are considering fleeing Central America,” wrote Seattle’s Auxiliary Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, chairman of the US bishops’ committee on Migration, and Orange, California’s Bishop Kevin Vann, chairman of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, to Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security. “To send migrant children and families back to their home countries would put many of them in grave danger because they would face threats of violence and for some, even death,” the bishops wrote.
Criticising the raids for lacking due process, the bishops added that the organisations they head “have first-hand knowledge that these actions have generated fear among immigrants and have made their communities more distrustful of law enforcement and vulnerable to misinformation, exploitation and fraud”.