Mass detention and mass deportation are a “grave moral evil,” El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz said Sunday, calling on the faithful in the diocese who work in immigration enforcement to follow the Gospel over the orders of the Trump administration.
“No one has to obey an immoral order. I implore all involved to carefully discern the moral requirements of the Gospel at this moment with integrity and honesty. When we take off our masks and encounter each other as neighbors, we can reclaim our common dignity,” Seitz said in a pastoral letter issued Sunday.
The El Paso diocese said Seitz’s pastoral letter, issued during the holy season of Lent, is the first by a U.S. bishop on the subject of mass detention and mass deportation of those in the country without authorization. Bishops issue pastoral letters to inform and guide their dioceses on pressing issues of faith.
READ MORE: Border bishops urge U.S., Mexico to reject ‘inhumane’ immigration enforcement
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security – which oversees immigration enforcement, border security, detention and deportation – said the real moral evil is people who kill Americans after entering the country illegally.
“Open borders have deadly consequences. We will continue to fight to stop another senseless tragedy from happening to another American family,” the spokesperson said.
Seitz’s letter also seeks to reassure frightened immigrants that the Catholic Church stands with them.
“In recent months, I have heard your fears, sufferings and worries about deportation. I have heard the stories about families being separated and of members being taken away from our community,” the letter said.
He cited people “snatched away” as they appeared at immigration court proceedings, workers taken from construction sites in El Paso, and parents who can’t go to jobs because the government took away their work permits. He also cited the deaths of three people at Camp East Montana, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center at Fort Bliss.
“To those of you affected by hatred and discrimination and afraid of what comes next, know that the church stands with you. As your Bishop, I carry your pain daily in my heart and in my prayers. I stand with you,” the pastoral letter said. “Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, told me personally to stand in solidarity with suffering migrant families and not to remain silent. I will do everything I can to uphold the God-given dignity of every person in our borderlands community.”
But the most pointed message in the letter is aimed at El Paso Catholics working in the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection and ICE, as well as with contractors running detention centers.
More than 415,000 El Pasoans identified as Catholic in 2020, accounting for more than three-fourths of El Pasoans who were affiliated with a church, according to a study by the Association of Religion Data Archives.
Seitz said in the letter that law enforcement and immigration enforcement agents perform vital work to keep the community safe.
“But the death of those in immigration detention is unacceptable. An unjust immigration system that leads to deadly outcomes is destructive of our shared humanity,” he wrote.
“Mass deportations will not make our communities safer. They separate families, divide neighbors and threaten our economic wellbeing. While we do need significant immigration reforms, it is an injustice to make families, children and the vulnerable pay the price of our inaction,” the letter said.
Seitz said “the current national campaign of mass detention and deportations is a grave moral evil, one which must be opposed, with prayer, peaceful action and acts of solidarity with those affected.”
For those working as part of mass detention and mass deportation efforts, he said: “I promise the pastoral support of our priests, chaplains and myself as you navigate the demands of conscience with sincerity. You are also in my prayers.”
Seitz has long been a leader among U.S. bishops on immigration issues. He recently completed a three-year term as chair of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration.
In a 2017 pastoral letter, Seitz called the nation’s broken immigration system “a wound on this border community. It is a scandal to the Body of Christ in El Paso.”
Sunday’s pastoral letter is Seitz’s third since becoming El Paso’s bishop in 2013. The other was written in 2019, in the aftermath of the racist attack that killed 23 people that year at an El Paso Walmart. He said “racism is really about advancing, shoring up, and failing to oppose a system of white privilege and advantage based on skin color.”
Seitz’s latest letter never mentions the Trump administration, and frames mass detention and deportation as a spiritual and moral issue rather than a political one.
“In the Gospels, we meet Jesus as a child living in exile and as an adult with no place to lay his head. In his ministry, Jesus called his followers to join him on the road, and we Christians have always been a people on the move,” Seitz wrote.
The El Paso bishop’s pastoral letter is the latest in a series of steps that places the U.S. Catholic Church at the forefront of opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
In November 2025, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a “special message” opposing what it called “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
That message came a month after Pope Leo XIV told Seitz and an El Paso delegation at the Vatican that he wanted U.S. bishops to be “stronger with their own voice” on immigration.
The El Paso diocese and other Catholic organizations will have a march and vigil “for human life and an end to mass deportations” at 6 p.m. March 24 at San Jacinto Plaza in Downtown El Paso.
Evelio Menjivar, the auxiliary bishop of Washington, D.C., will join Seitz at the event. Menjivar came to the United States in 1990 as a 19-year-old refugee from El Salvador.
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