Immigration and Migration

The Biden administration Feb. 21 proposed its most restrictive border control measure to date, announcing it plans to issue a temporary rule blocking asylum-seekers who cross the border without authorization or who do not first apply for protections in other nations before coming to the United States.

Catholic organizations applauded the announcement of a new State Department program that allows groups of private individuals to directly support refugees resettling in the U.S.

In this first trip to the border since he took office, President Joe Biden, who is Catholic, sought to “assess border enforcement operations” and talk to those helping to manage “the historic number of migrants fleeing political oppression and gang violence in Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba,” according to the White House.

On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the U.S. bishops’ migration chairman reaffirmed the church’s solidarity with immigrants, “each one of them a brother or sister to us all.”