U.S. Bishops Pick Trump Immigration Critics to Lead Conference

America’s Catholic bishops elected two defenders of migrants as their new leaders. The move, encouraged by Pope Leo, signals that welcoming the stranger is now core to the Church’s pro-life mission.

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As President Trump’s aggressive deportation raids sweep the country, the U.S. Catholic bishops have chosen leadership that is boldly challenging his immigration agenda.

Meeting in a hotel ballroom in Baltimore on Tuesday — their first major gathering under Pope Leo XIV — the bishops elected Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City as conference president and Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Tex., as vice president.

The timing is striking: Pope Leo himself has been urging the American Church to “speak out with one voice” against the cruelties inflicted on migrant families.

Now, with Coakley and Flores at the helm, the bishops are heeding that call.

Archbishop Coakley, 70, is often seen as a conservative, yet he has also emerged as a persistent critic of Trump’s mass deportation tactics.

Back in January, days after Trump took office, Coakley reminded Catholics that Jesus himself was a refugee.

More recently, he warned that the administration’s sweeping ICE raids are “creating fear and even distress for our immigrant, migrant and refugee neighbors” who came seeking the American dream.

While affirming that nations have a right to secure their borders, Coakley pointedly noted that “the majority of undocumented immigrants…are upstanding members of our communities and churches, not violent criminals.”

In short, blanket portrayals of immigrants as dangerous are false — a message squarely at odds with Trumpist rhetoric.

Coakley’s election to a three-year term as USCCB president comes at a moment when such moral clarity on immigration is urgently needed.

Even as he supports traditional teachings, Coakley has signaled he will press for more humane immigration policies from the Trump administration.

Bishop Flores, 62, brings a complementary moral voice as the new vice president — and one very much forged on the front lines of the border.

As the bishop of Brownsville, Texas, Flores pastors a flock living the daily reality of immigration crises. He has long been the U.S. bishops’ leading voice for migrants, often literally meeting refugees at the Rio Grande.

Flores nearly won the presidency himself — falling just 19 votes short — a strong sign of the conference’s commitment to his cause.

Like Coakley, Flores firmly upholds Church orthodoxy’s on hot button issues, but as a Latino prelate serving a border community, he is outspoken in his defense of migrants and attuned to the human toll of social ills.

After the Uvalde school massacre in 2022, for instance, Flores famously denounced America’s gun idolatry as a “pro-life” issue too.

“Don’t tell me that guns aren’t the problem… We sacralize death’s instruments and then are surprised that death uses them,” he lamented, adding that guns have become “easier to obtain than aspirin” in this country.

Such words resonate with Pope Leo’s broad ethic of life: a consistent concern for human dignity from the womb to the border to the death row, as Leo has put it.

By elevating Flores, the bishops amplified that consistent-life message, signaling that pro-life values must extend beyond abortion to protecting all vulnerable lives.

Broadening the “Pro-Life” Mission

Coakley and Flores both represent a growing effort to broaden the Church’s pro-life focus to encompass issues like immigration, the death penalty, and gun violence.

Archbishop Coakley, for example, has been a leading opponent of capital punishment in a state (Oklahoma) that executes more inmates per capita than any other. “The use of the death penalty only contributes to the continued coarsening of society and to the spiral of violence,” Coakley said in 2022.

He has implored state leaders to end executions, emphasizing that one cannot truly uphold the sanctity of life while the state itself is taking lives. Coakley’s stance aligns with Pope Leo XIV’s teaching that from conception to natural death, no life should be deemed disposable — a teaching that challenges politicians of both parties.

Likewise, Bishop Flores has connected the dots between Catholic reverence for life and issues like rampant gun violence. In calling out America’s obsession with firearms, he effectively asked fellow Catholics: How can we claim to be “pro-life” if we tolerate the routine slaughter of children in schools?

For Flores, protecting life means addressing whatever threatens it – whether in the womb, in a classroom, or at the border. This holistic approach is remaking the public witness of the U.S. Church.

Not long ago, the bishops’ conference was often criticized for narrowing pro-life to a single issue (abortion) while ignoring other threats. The election of Coakley and Flores signals a shift.

Together, they embody Pope Leo’s call for a “Church of the Beatitudes” — one that cares for “the least of these” across every stage and situation of life.

“We face a growing worldview that is so often at odds with the Gospel mandate to love thy neighbor,” the bishops wrote in a letter to Pope Leo this week.

By broadening their moral agenda, the bishops are directly challenging that anti-Gospel worldview, whether it manifests in a throwaway culture’s treatment of the poor or in the partisan impulse to ignore suffering outside one’s favored issue.

No More Silence in the Face of Injustice

The rise of Coakley and Flores also illustrates a clear rejection of the silence and caution that have hampered some Church leaders in confronting Trump-era injustices.

A case in point is Bishop Robert Barron, the media-savvy cleric who was widely seen as a frontrunner for higher office in the conference. Barron — arguably the nation’s most famous bishop due to his Word on Fire ministry — was on the ballot for president this week.

But when the votes were tallied, Barron didn’t even make the runoff. Many observers can’t help but link this outcome to Barron’s faltering moral leadership on immigration.

For 287 days after Trump returned to power, Bishop Barron said nothing publicly about the administration’s hardline deportation agenda.

As migrant families were being torn apart in parishes across America, Barron maintained silence — a stark contrast to the courageous stand taken by peers like Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, who released a video declaring the Church cannot stay silent before injustice.

It was only on the eve of the bishops’ election that Barron finally broke his silence, and even then his response was notably timid. He revealed that he had been in private contact with Trump officials and assured Catholics that their concerns were “under careful review” by those in powerthelettersfromleo.com.

Nowhere did Barron directly condemn the morality of snatching children from their parents, or the reports of immigrants held in squalid detention. His update read more like a government press release than a prophet’s rebuke — essentially repeating that the issues are “under review,” without demanding any change.

For many Catholics, this was too little, too late.

As my Letters from Leo column put it bluntly, “on the plight of real families being kidnapped off the streets and held in squalid detention, Barron said nothing.”

That abdication of moral voice did not go unnoticed. In choosing Coakley and Flores, the U.S. bishops turned the page on such reticence.

They opted for leaders who have proven they will speak up for the voiceless — even if it means calling out policies backed by a president popular with many conservative churchgoers.

It’s a sign that Pope Leo XIV’s influence is shifting the tone at the highest levels of the American Church.

The era of equivocation is slowly ending; a new era of clarity and moral courage may be dawning.

Just after the votes, the bishops approved a rare special message on immigration, and they dispatched a letter to Pope Leo pledging solidarity with him on this front.

“We will continue to stand with migrants and defend everyone’s right to worship free from intimidation,” they wrote, explicitly condemning the climate of fear enveloping immigrant communities.

While affirming the need for secure borders and lawful order, the bishops admitted “we cannot remain silent…while the right to worship and the right to due process are undermined..”

It was an extraordinary statement — effectively the U.S. hierarchy’s collective vow that they will not be chaplains to a policy of cruelty.

Whether that vow translates into concrete action will be the true test of this new leadership. The challenge ahead is steep.

President Trump shows every intention of doubling down on hardline immigration measures.

His vice president, JD Vance — himself a Catholic convert — has been a vocal apologist for the crackdown.

State-level officials continue to bar clergy from ministering to detainees in some cases, as recently happened in Chicago when priests were blocked from delivering the Eucharist to immigrants in custody.

Confronting these realities will require not only statements, but sustained prophetic witness. Archbishop Coakley acknowledged as much in an interview after his win, noting a great deal of unanimity among the bishops about protecting immigrant families, and hinting that the conference will push for practical measures on issues like religious worker visas and family reunification.

Bishop Flores, for his part, has framed the immigration crisis as a test of the nation’s soul. “

What happens to you matters to me,” he says simply echoing the Catholic belief that we must attend to the people in front of us, no matter their origin.

In the end, the U.S. bishops’ new direction can be summed up in the Gospel verse that Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly put before them: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

By elevating two men who have made that mandate central to their ministry, the bishops are asserting that the Church will not be a bystander in the face of injustice.

The contrast with just a few years ago — when conference elections and statements prioritized culture-war battles and partisan litmus tests — could not be more dramatic.

An “intense focus on immigration,” as the Associated Press described it, now eclipses those old priorities.

Even some of the most traditionally conservative prelates have been moved to unite behind the cause of migrants

“When it comes to immigration, there’s a remarkable unity among all the bishops… Now is really a crisis situation,” observed conservative Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Indiana.

That unity – fragile and hard-won – will be tested in the months ahead.

But with Coakley and Flores at the forefront, backed by Pope Leo’s moral clarity, the American Church is poised to offer something sorely needed in these times: a Christian witness that transcends politics and truly loves thy neighbor, no matter where they come from.

And make no mistake, while we will pray for them, we, too, will hold their feet to the fire on achieving that mission.

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