Faith In Brooklyn For Feb. 23
Brooklyn’s Clergy Leaders Issue Statements on Immigration Reform, Just Days Before Deportation Orders Expand
The leader of Brooklyn’s Roman Catholic Diocese which has a strong immigrant population has spoken out about immigration reform under President Donald J. Trump’s administration. He did so just days before the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday released an even wider set of rules on deportations, to include anyone convicted of any kind of fraud, including recipients of public benefits, and of undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. up to the past two years. This latest order, report Ron Nixon and Michael D. Shear in a New York Times story that broke on Tuesday, Feb. 21, “brings a major shift in the way the agency enforces the nation’s immigration laws.”
The Most Rev. Nicholas DiMarzio shared his column, named “Put Out Into the Deep,” with a readership that extends beyond the diocesan community. Bishop DiMarzio wrote about several aspects of immigration reform now facing the U.S. in the Feb. 15 edition of The Tablet diocesan newspaper.
Bishop DiMarzio, a longstanding advocate for immigrants, wrote about President Trump’s proposed border wall, his recent executive order temporarily banning travel to the U.S. from several primarily Muslim countries, and the administration’s talk about defunding sanctuary cities. While Bishop DiMarzio acknowledged the country’s right to defend its borders, he calls some current approaches to security “ill-advised” and an “overreaction.” In his column, he also points out some long-neglected aspects of immigration law that say “workers who overstay their time in the United States have had a legal way of regularizing their status. This has been built into the law from the very beginning, recognizing that most people come to the United States to work and to contribute, which is being forgotten in the debates of today,” he wrote.