May 4, 2025 Essay: The Shame of Our Nation

There is a genuine moral crisis in our nation today. In our name, migrant residents in this country have been sent to a foreign prison without a proper process for vetting who they are and the threat they pose. This not only violates fundamental principles that have long defined us as a nation, but also fundamental moral principles that define us as Christians.

Writing to the bishops of the United States, Pope Francis reminded them, and us, that “the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person” is the foundation stone upon which we build a just social order. When we speak of “infinite and transcendent dignity,” Pope Francis tells us, “we want to emphasize that the most decisive value possessed by the human person surpasses and sustains every other juridical consideration that can be made to regulate life in society. Thus, all the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the human person and his or her fundamental rights.”

Using this standard, it is clear that the policy of mass deportations is a gross violation of human rights. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act provided the current administration a pretext for the swift removal of Venezuelans and El Salvadorans to a prison in El Salvador. The administration argued that those who were deported were members of either the El Salvadoran gang, MS-13, or the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, whose presence in the United States represented a “predatory incursion” that threatened national security. What we have now discovered is that the designation of individuals as members of either gang was done in a way that was deeply flawed and provided no opportunity for individuals to dispute the charges made against them.

A case that currently dominates the news is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who is a 29-year-old El Salvadoran who has been living in this country since 2019 under “a withholding from removal order” intended to prevent his deportation to his homeland. With that order, Garcia obtained a work permit from the Department of Homeland Security under the first Trump administration that allowed him to become a union sheet-metal worker. Designating Garcia a member of MS-13, he was sent to the terrorist confinement center in El Salvador. The failure of the administration to take action to return him to the United States led to a stinging rebuke by federal appellate justice J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee: “It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”

Rendition of persons to a foreign prison without fair adjudication of facts is not only a shocking breach of the constitutional principles that are the foundation of our democracy, but, more importantly, a shocking breach of our obligation to protect “the infinite and transcendent dignity of every human person.” How can we live with ourselves knowing that there are persons unjustly deprived of their liberty, languishing in inhumane conditions, and that they suffer this fate due to actions of our government taken in our name?

I suspect there will come a day when persons will look back to this time and ask, “Why didn’t they act?” I know with certainty that if we don’t act, God will one day ask us, “Why didn’t you?”

— Fr. Mark Hallinan, S.J., Associate Pastor