Pope Leo’s Top U.S. Ally Says ‘No’ to Funding ICE
Cardinal Joseph Tobin calls ICE a “lawless organization” perpetuating a “machinery of death” and urges Congress to defund Trump’s deportation force.
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Late Sunday night in Newark, as an interfaith prayer vigil live-streamed across the country, Cardinal Joseph Tobin offered a one-word answer to state-sponsored cruelty: “No.”
Drawing on a scene from an anti-fascist novel, Tobin recalled a young woman pleading with her priest as “the machinery of death” loomed.
What can we do? she asks. The old priest answers that empires topple when even one person slips into the piazza at midnight and scrawls “No” on the wall.
In that spirit, Tobin told hundreds of faithful gathered online that now is the time to say no — no to violence, no to indifference, and no to funding the U.S. government’s own “machinery of death.”
Speaking from the Archdiocese of Newark, just miles from two major immigration detention centers, Cardinal Tobin used some of the strongest language yet by a U.S. church leader to condemn President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
He denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as a “lawless organization” and urged Catholics to contact their lawmakers and vote against any new funding for it.
“Will you ask them, for the love of God and the love of human beings, to vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization?” Tobin challenged, as Congress prepares to debate an appropriations bill this week.
His remarks, first reported by National Catholic Reporter’s Michael J. O’Loughlin, mark the first time an American cardinal has so directly urged defunding a federal agency.
Cardinal Tobin framed this moral outcry in explicitly Christian terms.
He cited the Gospel parable of the Good Samaritan — emphasizing that the true neighbor is the one who shows mercy — and echoed Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s warning that “hate cannot drive out hate; only love can.”.
In practice, Tobin said, “one way that we say ‘no’ is that we mourn.”
Rather than become numb to atrocity, people of faith must name the victims and refuse to “pretend it [death] doesn’t happen.”
He ticked off the recent horrors: a 37-year-old nurse, Alex Pretti, shot dead by ICE agents during a Minneapolis protest; children as young as 5 “legally kidnapped” from their parents at the border.
A nation that normalizes such brutality, Tobin suggested, is immersed in a “culture of death.” He ended with a direct challenge to the conscience: “How will you scrawl your answer on the wall? How will you help restore a culture of life in the midst of death?”
A Consistent ‘Pro-Life’ Stand Against Cruelty
Cardinal Tobin’s impassioned “no” is not a lone voice — it’s the latest note in a chorus of Catholic resistance inspired by Pope Leo XIV.
Tobin is one of Pope Leo’s closest American allies, and in recent weeks he has proven it by openly challenging the Trump administration on multiple fronts.
Just days ago, on Jan. 19, Tobin and two other U.S. cardinals issued a rare joint statement questioning Trump’s entire foreign policy agenda.
In that letter — an almost unprecedented move in U.S. church history — Cardinals Tobin, Blase Cupich of Chicago and Robert McElroy of Washington drew directly from Pope Leo’s recent peace message and renounced “war as an instrument for narrow national interests,” insisting military force be only a last resort.
America, they wrote, has entered its most soul-searching debate over its role in the world since the Cold War, and the nation urgently needs a “genuinely moral foreign policy” built on human dignity and peace.
The joint statement was a stunning rebuke to the White House’s bluster — and it showed the moral leadership of Pope Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, galvanizing his brothers back home.
Leo himself had denounced the world’s new “zeal for war” in a fiery address to diplomats earlier this month, implicitly criticizing Trump’s military adventurism.
It wasn’t the first time Cardinal Tobin stood up to President Trump’s agenda, and it won’t be the last.
Last summer, Tobin joined 19 other Catholic bishops in publicly opposing Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” — a sweeping budget package that combined tax cuts for the wealthy with aggressive immigration crackdowns.
In an interfaith letter to the U.S. Senate, Tobin and the other faith leaders warned that the bill’s drastic funding for mass deportations (and corresponding cuts to aid for the poor) represented a fundamental betrayal of Christian values.
“From our various faith perspectives, the moral test of a nation is how it treats those most in need,” the letter declared, calling the legislation’s treatment of migrants and the poor “a moral failure for American society as a whole.”
Cardinal Tobin’s name on that bold letter signaled that prominent bishops were willing to break ranks with norms for the sake of the Gospel. And indeed, Tobin was far from alone — the signatories included prelates from coast to coast, from Seattle to St. Louis to Washington, D.C., all united in telling Congress to reject Trump’s brutal bill.
Taken together, these actions point to a growing rift between the Catholic Church under Leo XIV and the Trump White House.
Trump’s hard-line immigration and law-and-order policies have prompted an almost prophetic response from Leo and his allies.
In Rome, Pope Leo has repeatedly blasted the idea of treating migrants as disposable; he famously said that treating any person like “garbage” is a “serious crime” by those in power.
In the United States, bishops inspired by Leo are amplifying that message. Last November, the full body of U.S. bishops — hardly a radical bunch — took the unusually bold step of formally criticizing Trump’s signature mass deportation policy, saying its cruelty “disturbed” and “saddened” them.
Now in Cardinal Tobin’s fiery plea to defund ICE, we see the church’s most outspoken pro-life voices expanding the definition of pro-life to include immigrant children and targeted minorities. Defending the vulnerable is not politics for these faith leaders — it’s a direct demand of the Gospel.
This confrontation is about more than budgets or bills; it’s about two clashing visions of moral leadership in our time.
One vision, emanating from the White House, has glorified domination and division — from building bigger walls to boasting about “total control.”
The other vision, emanating from the chair of St. Peter, insists that “the rule of law [is] the foundation of all peaceful coexistence” and that great powers must serve peace over pride.
As David Gibson wrote in the New York Times recently, we are witnessing “two Americans, two visions” on the world stage: President Trump’s hyper-nationalist swagger versus Pope Leo’s humble, law-driven internationalism.
And in Newark on Sunday, that global drama filtered down to a simple question of conscience for every believer: Which vision will we choose?
Cardinal Tobin has made his choice. By urging Americans to say “no” to a culture of death and cruelty, he is saying “yes” to the culture of life at the heart of the Christian faith — the same ethic that underpins Pope Leo XIV’s entire pontificate.
The Newark cardinal’s cry of “No!” is, in essence, an appeal to reclaim the true meaning of pro-life. It’s a call to love our neighbor over obeying unjust orders, to comfort the afflicted rather than fear the powerful.
It is, above all, a challenge to put faith into action. The Gospel “cannot remain silent” in the face of injustice, Pope Leo has taught. Now one of his most trusted American lieutenants is carrying that message into the public square, even if it puts him at odds with a president.
The lines are drawn: a pope and a president, each backed by their allies, offering competing moral visions for America’s soul. In that contest, Cardinal Tobin has joined Pope Leo in firmly choosing the side of the poor, the persecuted, and the oppressed — and he’s urging the rest of us to do the same, without fear.
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Thank you, Christopher. It’s important for us to know where the church stands - with us ❤️🩹
Thank God for this witness!