America’s Catholic bishops are decrying the evils of human trafficking, while ignoring their own role in facilitating the dehumanizing practice amidst the illegal immigration crisis. Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, chairman of immigration activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), said in a statement Thursday, “Human trafficking is not only a serious crime — it is a rejection of the God-given dignity of every human being.”
“I’ve talked to little girls as young as nine who were raped multiple times by members of the cartel. Not once, numerous times.”
He added, “As Catholics, we are called to face this issue with both courage and compassion, to initiate hard conversations, and to confront the harsh realities of trafficking and exploitation.”
One “hard conversation” that it seems the bishops have been avoiding, however, is that of their own role in facilitating the illegal immigration crisis at the southern border, and the ensuing human trafficking. Over the past four years, the number of unaccompanied migrant children who have gone missing at the border has tripled: of the roughly half a million children who crossed the border without a guardian, over 300,000 have gone missing.
Mexican, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Salvadoran gangs and cartels will promise to help women and children cross the border, dazzling them with visions of well-paying jobs in America. Once across the border, however, these women and children are often prostituted, which traffickers say is a means of repaying the debt they incurred to the gangs and cartels for their help crossing the border.
It is worth noting that the Office on Human Trafficking in Persons, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has only reported the number of unaccompanied migrant children who have been found and are known to have been trafficked. There are thousands of children still missing, many of whom have likely been sold into sex slavery or forced into prostitution.
The Catholic bishops of the U.S. and their affiliate organizations have, unfortunately, helped facilitate this tragedy. More than that, they have profited from doing so. According to data compiled by the organization Corpus Christi for Unity and Peace, the USCCB and its affiliates were paid nearly $450 million to deal with unaccompanied migrant children, many of whom were either placed with unvetted adult sponsors or are still missing.
Since 2008, the USCCB has been paid over a quarter billion dollars to oversee the handling of unaccompanied migrant children; various branches of Catholic Charities have received a combined total of $213 million for their involvement in the program; other organizations, like Catholic Relief Services and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, have also been paid millions in taxpayer dollars for supposedly handling unaccompanied migrant children.
But the U.S. bishops and their “charitable” allies have done more than just deal with unaccompanied migrant children: they have encouraged, accelerated, and exacerbated the ongoing illegal immigration crisis overall. Records up to 2015 show that the USCCB and its affiliates netted roughly $2 billion in government funding for various immigrant and refugee “services,” including shuttling illegal immigrants deeper into the U.S. once across the border and equipping them with pre-paid cell phones and loaded debit cards. However, under the Biden administration, the USCCB was paid nearly $635 million and Catholic Charities was paid a staggering $1.7 billion for immigrant and refugee “services.”
Under the first Trump administration, the USCCB was paid less than $215 million from the federal government’s coffers and USCCB made less than $130 million. Is it any wonder then that Catholic bishops are so vehemently denouncing Trump’s second administration, and especially his immigration policy? The bishops have been denied their allowance.
While it’s nice of Bishop Seitz to pay lip service to the tragedy of human trafficking, a truly Catholic response to the crisis is evinced by “border czar” Tom Homan, tasked by President Donald Trump with carrying out mass deportations. A border and immigration control veteran, Homan has witnessed firsthand the devastation wrought by trafficking, especially of children.
In an interview late last year, he told Tucker Carlson, “I’ve talked to little girls as young as nine who were raped multiple times by members of the cartel. Not once, numerous times.” He lamented, “Grown men crawled up on this little girl and took everything innocent and pure from her. Her life would never be the same. You look in her eyes, there wasn’t life in her eyes.… [T]his little girl’s devastated for life. And this happens every day.”
Instead of whining about the collapse of “bipartisan progress” as Seitz did, Homan committed to finding and rescuing the more than 300,000 children who have gone missing over the last four years. “We gotta save these women and children,” he declared. “We gotta save these kids, a lot of them are living a life of hell every day.… We’re gonna find some of them living with pedophiles, living in sex-slavery, some are gonna be dead, but we gotta find these children.”
Platitudes and press statements will not be enough to confront the voracious, depraved evils of human trafficking. The Catholic Church does not need ageing politicians in robes hungrily waiting for their next fat check to be cut. The Catholic Church needs more men like Tom Homan.
READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy:
The Vice President and the ‘Ordo Amoris’
Vanquish or Die: The Choice Before the Catholic Church in America