Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

As a Catholic-educated youth from the Midwest, now in my eighties, I am appalled by the President’s current policy of mass deportation. I view the nationwide ICE raids and harsh treatment of detainees as sorely lacking in the social justice of religious teaching.

Operating without moral limits, the indiscriminate deportation of undocumented immigrants proceeds apace, with cruel and humiliating treatment of those apprehended and deported. Young men handcuffed and shackled are forced onto planes heading to the Guantanamo prison or to third countries, where they are incarcerated under undisclosed conditions. Others are held in one or another of the many for-profit “detention centers” scattered about the United States. The ICE roundups target not only criminals and gang members, but also undocumented foreign-born residents who have resided peacefully and productively in the U.S. for years or even decades.

ICE raids, detentions and mass deportations now underway utterly disregard religious principles regarding the treatment of migrants and immigrants. In the Old Testament, Leviticus Chapter 19 enjoins followers to “treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you.” In the New Testament,........

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