Cardinal McElroy criticizes Trump’s immigration policies

Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., condemned President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies in a July 1 interview with CNN, calling mass deportation efforts “morally repugnant.”

“This is simply not only incompatible with Catholic teaching, it’s inhumane and it’s morally repugnant,” Cardinal McElroy told CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb. He cited recent scenes in Los Angeles where federal agents reportedly detained individuals in public spaces.

While acknowledging the government’s right to secure its borders, Cardinal McElroy said current enforcement policies are “something far beyond that.”

“It is a mass, indiscriminate deportation of men and women and children and families which literally rips families apart and is intended to do so,” he said. 

Installed as archbishop of the nation’s capital in March, the cardinal also took aim at Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which was advancing through Congress at the time of the interview. He said the legislation would strip health care coverage from millions, “so that billionaires can receive greater tax cuts.” 

“There’s something radically wrong with a society that takes from the poorest to give to the wealthiest,” he said. “It’s just wrong.”

Cardinal McElroy’s latest remarks continue a longstanding critique of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. In February, he called Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at churches and schools “dehumanizing” and a “moral falsity,” CatholicVote reported.

In the same CNN interview, Cardinal McElroy said expanding women’s roles in the Church is “important,” though he acknowledged it remains a “controversial question.” He has repeatedly voiced support for ordaining women to the diaconate — a stance definitively rejected by Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.