Trump’s Raids Terrorize Catholics — Pope Leo’s Top Cardinal Calls It an ‘Assault on Millions’

Seminarians are leaving the country, priests worry they could be next, and Pope Leo XIV insists the Church must stand with its most vulnerable faithful.

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On a recent Sunday in Washington, DC, empty pews at the imposing Shrine of the Sacred Heart bore witness to a bitter irony: in the shadow of the White House, many worshippers are now too afraid to attend Mass.

This historic parish, founded by immigrants over a century ago, was meant to be a sanctuary. Today its mostly immigrant congregation is steeped in fear.

Church leaders report that over 40 parishioners have been detained or deported since August when federal agents dramatically ramped up deportation raids in the nation’s capital. Families have vanished from the pews; Mass attendance has plummeted, with half the congregation too scared to come,

Some parents have even pulled their children from the parish school, not daring to drop them off in the morning lest ICE be waiting in the parking lot.

The Trump administration’s crackdown has upended daily life and worship at Sacred Heart, spreading a pervasive anxiety through the neighborhood.

Cardinal Robert McElroy, a Pope Leo ally who serves as archbishop of Washington, doesn’t mince words about what is happening. “We are witnessing a comprehensive governmental assault designed to produce fear and terror among millions of men and women,” he warned in a recent homily.

While acknowledging the state’s right to remove violent criminals, McElroy noted that ordinary faithful Catholics — catechists, lectors, even spouses selling fruit outside church — have been swept up in the raids.

“It really is an instrument of terror,” the cardinal told reporters bluntly. Parishioners have reported immigration agents “prowling” near church doors a tactic virtually unheard of in prior administrations.

For years, ICE observed “sensitive location” rules that kept agents away from churches and schools, but Trump’s DHS scrapped those protections, arguing that “criminals will no longer be able to hide in … churches.”

The result? Worshippers who once felt safe in God’s house now fear even stepping outside their homes.

Sacred Heart Parish has effectively become ground zero of this new climate of fear. One parishioner hasn’t returned to Mass since the day her husband was tackled and detained by ICE agents at their sidewalk fruit stand.

The couple had fled violence in El Salvador two decades ago and built their life around church ministry. Now he’s in a distant detention center, and she is left packing their belongings into cardboard boxes. “Our lives changed from one day to the next. We had so many dreams,” she told the Associated Press through tears.

As she prepares to uproot everything to reunite with him — possibly returning to El Salvador for good — she clutches her rosary and keeps a prayer card of Pope Leo XIV on her makeshift altar at home, a reminder of the pope’s promise to “stand with” migrants.

The heartbreak playing out here is multiplied across the country, as families face agonizing choices in the wake of these raids.

Priests and Seminarians in the Crosshairs

It’s not only laypeople bearing the brunt. Immigrant clergy and those in training for ministry have also been caught in the dragnet, adding a new layer of crisis for the Church.

In central Washington state, Bishop Joseph Tyson of Yakima revealed that “several seminarians in the diocese” have been impacted by aggressive enforcement — including one young man, born in the U.S., who felt compelled to leave the country to accompany his self-deported parents back to Mexico.

“I know how hard it is to keep my priests and my seminarians in status,” Tyson admitted, “I can only imagine what it’s like for parishioners who don’t have a fleet of lawyers.”

His point is sobering: if even dioceses are struggling to protect their clergy from visa and paperwork nightmares, regular Catholic families stand little chance against a faceless immigration bureaucracy.

Nationwide, the numbers underscore Tyson’s fears. A recent Christian demographic study found more than 10 million Christians in the U.S. would be vulnerable to deportation under President Trump’s policies — and 61% of those at risk are Catholics.

In fact, roughly one in six U.S. Catholics either is undocumented or lives in a household with someone who is.

These aren’t statistics in a vacuum; they translate to millions of real people in the pews — the choir member, the catechism teacher, even the priest on the altar — now living with heightened anxiety.

About 24% of all priests serving in America were born abroad, and many rely on religious worker visas that have grown more precarious.

If deportation enforcement is taken to its extreme, Bishop Tyson warns, “we have parishes without priests immediately.”

In other words, entire communities could be left suddenly shepherdless. It’s a scenario as unthinkable as it is possible under the current trajectory.

Some clergy find themselves ministering under a literal threat of exile.

J. Kevin Appleby, a veteran migration policy expert for the Church, noted that foreign-born priests now live “caught between looking after their flock here and perhaps also being a target of enforcement.”

And yet, far from abandoning their flocks, many are doubling down on solidarity. “When push comes to shove — and loyal to their ministry — they will stand with their immigrant brothers and sisters,” Appleby said.

In parishes like Sacred Heart, this isn’t theoretical: clergy have marched alongside their people, led prayer vigils, and even opened the rectory as a refuge.

Their presence offers comfort, but they too feel the cold gaze of enforcement. One auxiliary bishop in Washington — himself once an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador — confessed that seeing parishioners detained made him think, “That could have been me.”

It’s a jarring reminder that in today’s Catholic Church, the shepherds and the sheep are often walking the same perilous road.

Standing with the Scared and Scattered

Yet amid the fear, the Church is fighting back with its timeless weapons of solidarity and faith. At Sacred Heart, what could have become a story of paralysis has instead become a story of creative compassion. “Our role here at the church has changed, also dramatically,” says Fr. Emilio Biosca, the pastor, describing how his team shifted into crisis mode.

Volunteers now escort people to immigration court hearings, parish funds cover rent and legal bills for families torn apart, and food pantry deliveries arrive daily for those too afraid to venture to the grocery store.

Every evening, parishioners log onto a Zoom call to pray the rosary together, lifting up by name the dozens of fellow church members who have been detained.

The image is striking: families praying in virtual unison because stepping outside to pray in their own sanctuary feels too risky. This adaptation speaks to the resilience of the faithful. The church community rejects being reduced to powerless victims — they are finding new ways to be Church, even as the usual rhythms of parish life are disrupted.

Broader Catholic America is taking notice. In late September, nearly 1,000 Catholics – including priests, nuns, and laypeople – processed in prayer through the heart of Washington, D.C.

The pilgrimage began at Sacred Heart and wound its way to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the seat of the archdiocese.

They carried banners, statues of the Virgin, and the names of loved ones detained, marking the Vatican’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees with an urgent local purpose.

The sight of women religious in full habit walking down D.C. streets in support of “the disappeared” migrants was a powerful witness.

Holy Cross Sister Ruth Nickerson, who joined the march, told National Catholic Reporter she did so to “support the migrants and refugees, especially those who are being disappeared in our own city here in DC.”

Their destination was a special Mass where Cardinal McElroy thundered his moral indictment of the crackdown.

The cardinal thanked those Catholics who refuse to abandon immigrant neighbors, calling their solidarity the true face of the Church in a dark time.

Pope Leo XIV himself has made the protection of migrants a hallmark of his pontificate.

From day one, Leo has preached that “if [the Church] wants to be Christ’s Church, it must be a Church of the Beatitudes — one that makes room for the little ones.” He has consistently urged Catholics to see immigrants not as outsiders but as brothers and sisters, echoing Jesus’s call to welcome the stranger.

That teaching is now being put to its severest test on American soil. President Trump’s promise to deport one million in the first year of his new term hangs like a sword over communities from Washington to Yakima. But Leo’s Church is not staying silent in the face of this assault.

In fact, the message to the faithful could not be clearer: Defending migrants is not a partisan issue — it pure Christianity. The Gospel imperative to love and protect the vulnerable stands at the heart of our faith, far above any political calculus.

As deportation raids intensify, the Catholic response is crystallizing into what it was always meant to be: radical hospitality and unwavering moral witness.

Priests may risk their visas to comfort an anxious family. Parishioners may risk arrest to attend Mass or run a soup kitchen. Bishops may swap polite silence for prophetic outrage.

All of it embodies Pope Leo’s simple pledge: “You stand with me. And I stand with you.”

In the face of fear, the Church is choosing to stand with her people – especially those huddled in the shadows.

And as Pope Leo XIV has emphasized, a Church that stands with migrants is nothing less than a Church standing with Christ himself.

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