Pope Francis has condemned President-elect Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations within the U.S.
The Catholic Church’s leader called Trump’s plans a “disgrace” in a Sunday interview on the Italian talk show Che Tempo Che Fa, a show by Banijay Italia’s L’Officina.
“If it’s true, it should be a disgrace, since it makes the poor wretches who don’t have anything pay the unpaid bill,” he said. “It won’t do. This shouldn’t be the strategy to solve things.”
This comes after Francis appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy to be the subsequent Archbishop of Washington, D.C. McElroy is a staunch opponent of mass deportations, calling them “inconsistent with Catholic doctrine,” CNN reports.
Francis’s comments come as Trump is anticipated to start gutting legal immigration paths and carrying out mass deportations inside his first days in office.
Trump’s administration is already planning an enormous deportation operation in Chicago starting Tuesday, his first full day in office, The Wall Street Journal reported. The operation is anticipated to incorporate as much as 200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Immigration experts and advocacy groups expect “executive orders, agency actions and requests to Congress for funding and immigration bills to enlarge its authority” and “intimidate all elected officials across the country into going along along with his mass deportation agenda,” Naureen Shah, deputy director for presidency affairs at ACLU, told reporters last week.
This comes as Fox News and ABC News each report that Trump is about to sign greater than 200 executive orders on Monday just hours after taking office.
These orders will close the border to all undocumented migrants via proclamation, declare a national emergency on the border and designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, based on reports.
Trump can be reportedly set to re-institute the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces migrants in search of asylum to remain in Mexico until their immigration court date within the US.
He can even end the practice of “Catch and Release,” during which migrants are allowed to stay of their community — quite than be detained — while awaiting their court date, based on the reports.
Other executive actions will reportedly include mandating federal employees return to in-person work, withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and establishing a Department of Government Efficiency hiring freeze.
