Vance Says Catholicism Blesses His Border Crackdown. It Doesn’t.

It’s a claim as bold as it is baseless: Vice President JDj Vance says the Trump administration’s hardline immigration crackdown is actually in line with Catholic teaching.

In a New York Post interview aboard “Pod Force One,” Vice President Vance offered a two-part defense — one that hinges on a distortion of Church teaching and a dubious definition of “dignity.”

Speaking to columnist Miranda Devine, Vance suggested that Catholic leaders’ concern for migrants was a newer emphasis “especially under Pope Francis,” implying the Church’s stance might have shifted.

As a self-described “new Catholic,” he argued that the faith actually permits strict border control: “nations are allowed sovereignty, they’re allowed to control their own borders.”

The fallacy here is glaring. Far from inventing novel doctrine, Pope Francis has only reaffirmed perennial Catholic teaching on the dignity of immigrants — a teaching championed by popes for generations.

In fact, Francis issued a pointed letter to U.S. bishops in early 2025, decrying the “major crisis” of “mass deportations” and warning that no “rightly formed conscience” can justify equating a migrant’s illegal status with criminality.

As I wrote in Newsweek in June, Vatican sources even revealed that then-Cardinal Robert Prevost — now Pope Leo XIV — helped draft that very letter, underscoring its continuity with the Church’s core values.

The truth is the Church’s teaching didn’t “change” under Francis; it is Vance’s interpretation that is out of step.

As Pope Francis stressed — echoing the Gospel — the “true ordo amoris” (order of love) recognizes every person as a neighbor, just as the Good Samaritan did.

In plain terms: Catholicism has long taught that we must welcome and protect the vulnerable stranger, even while nations prudently manage their borders.

Vance’s attempt to cast this as a new or naive view fails to acknowledge that Pope Francis (and now Pope Leo) are standing firmly in the ancient, unchanging tradition of a Church that sees Christ in the migrant.

“Dignity” vs. Deportation Memes

Vance’s second claim is that the administration’s enforcement is somehow imbued with respect for human dignity. “Yes, you can enforce your borders… You also have to try to remember that all 8 billion people…are God’s creatures.

We owe them a certain respect and a certain dignity,” he insisted.

He even portrayed himself as mindful that migrants “are human beings” and that he tries to “remember their humanity” amid enforcement.

These words could have been reassuring — if they weren’t so starkly contradicted by this administration’s own actions and attitudes.

In practically the same breath, Vance bragged about the sheer scale of removals, confirming “about two million people” have been expelled or pushed to leave, and bluntly adding: “We’re trying to remove as many as we possibly can… We’re just gonna keep on working at it.”

Such triumphalism about mass expulsion hardly squares with seeing migrants as God’s creatures deserving respect.

Just look at how the administration actually talks about immigrants.

As National Catholic Register editor Jonathan Liedl noted on social media, it’s hard to take Vance’s pious rhetoric seriously when the White House and DHS are literally turning deportation into a punchline.

In recent months, official channels have rolled out a series of callous memes and videos celebrating migrant removals.

One Department of Homeland Security post paired footage of shackled detainees boarding a plane with a cheeky caption, “When ICE books you a one-way Jet2 holiday to deportation. Nothing beats it!” — set to a jaunty vacation jinglewired.com.

Another video gleefully declared “Next stop: Literally anywhere but here” over clips of migrants being loaded onto a flight, all to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me”wired.com.

There’s even an official meme nicknaming a Florida detention center “Alligator Alcatraz,” complete with cartoon gators in ICE hats.

Far from showing solemn respect for those being removed, the administration has embraced what Taylor Swift aptly calls “casual cruelty” — using viral humor to dehumanize people seeking refuge.

A White House spokeswoman, when pressed, didn’t deny it; she doubled down, proudly saying they won’t apologize for posting “banger memes” about deportations.

This propaganda-by-meme strategy lays bare the reality behind Vance’s words. You cannot claim to uphold migrants’ dignity while your administration treats their suffering as social media fodder.

The Church, by contrast, calls us to a far higher standard. Pope Francis, in that February letter, reminded us that every migrant is a person with inviolable dignity, not a pawn in a political drama.

And Pope Leo XIV — the first American pope, who intimately understands our political culture — has continued this clarion call for compassion.

The Catholic message is consistent with Jesus Christ’s words in Matthew: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

No amount of cheeky music or cartoon gators can drown out that Gospel truth.

Ultimately, Vance’s interview reveals more about his own formation than it does about Catholic teaching.

Tellingly, after getting pushback from Pope Francis and the U.S. bishops earlier this year, Vance struck a humbler tone, admitting “I recognize very much that I am a baby Catholic… there are things about the faith that I don’t know… I’m not always going to get it right.”

That was a necessary confession — yet this week’s performance shows just how much the vice president still doesn’t get it.

Treating migrants with dignity isn’t a polite add-on to enforcement; it’s a moral imperative that stands in judgment of the very policies he’s championing.

If Vance truly wants to live his Catholic faith in public life, he’ll need to move beyond partisan talking points and embrace the fullness of what the Church actually teaches.

Until then, Pope Leo and the bishops will rightly keep calling him (and all of us) back to the basic tenets of our faith: welcoming the stranger, not exploiting or expelling them.

In the face of political spin, the Church must continue to proclaim that human dignity has no borders.

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