The first command in this Sunday’s first reading is not
about worship. It is about how we treat the person who just arrived.
“You shall not harass the newcomer, nor shall you
afflict him. For you yourselves were once newcomers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21, CPDV)
Notice the reason. God does not say, “because they have
earned it,” or “because they came the right way,” or “because they are no
trouble.” God says, remember. You know what it is to be the one at the border.
Your own story is the argument. The same Lord says it again in Leviticus: “If a
newcomer lives in your land and abides among you, do not reproach him, but let
him be among you like one native born. And you shall love him as yourselves”
(19:33–34, CPDV). And in Deuteronomy: “He loves the sojourner, and he gives him
food as well as clothing. Therefore, you also should love sojourners”
(10:18–19, CPDV).
Then, in Sunday’s Gospel, a lawyer asks Jesus for the
greatest commandment, and Jesus gives two: love God with everything you have,
and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37–39, CPDV). He
does not draw a map around the word neighbor. The law he is quoting has already
said who is inside it.
What the Record Shows
I want to be careful here, so I am using reporting I
have read and data I could check, and I am telling you where each piece comes
from.
According to the immigration researcher Austin Kocher,
using ICE’s own detention statistics, ICE held 68,990 people on January 7 of
this year, a record. Between September 21, 2025, and that date, the detained
population grew by 11,296. About 72 percent of that growth was people classed
as “Other Immigration Violators,” meaning no criminal charge, and about 20
percent was people with pending charges but no conviction. Only about 8 percent
of the growth was people with a criminal conviction. In other words, roughly 92
percent of the growth was people who had been convicted of nothing.
People are dying in that system. TIME reported in August
that more than thirty people had died in ICE detention since October 2025. A
study in the medical journal JAMA found the death rate in the first
months of fiscal year 2026 was the highest in twenty-two years: 88.9 deaths per
100,000 person-years, up from 13 in fiscal year 2023. In all of fiscal year
2022, three people died. The Department of Homeland Security says there has
been “NO spike in deaths” and that it provides comprehensive medical care. The
study’s co-author says the causes of death are “identifiable and amenable to
intervention.”
Closer to home, Denny Adán González, 33, died on April
28 at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which a private
company, CoreCivic, operates. His official cause of death is still under
investigation. Advocacy groups say he was reportedly in solitary confinement,
and they are calling for an independent investigation. That is their claim, and
the investigation has not finished. But a man is dead in our state, in our
name, and the Word says a newcomer is not to be afflicted.
The Words Come First
Nobody is detained by a policy alone. Policy is built on
a way of talking about people, and the talk comes first.
On December 19, 2023, at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa,
Donald Trump said immigrants in this country illegally were “destroying the
blood of our country.” He had used a similar phrase about “poisoning the blood”
days earlier. Extremism researchers and many public figures said it echoed the
language fascists used about racial purity. He answered, “I never read ‘Mein
Kampf.’” I do not need to settle what was in his mind. The words speak for
themselves. Blood talk is the language of contamination, and it has one purpose:
to turn a neighbor into a threat so that the harm done to them feels like
self-defense.
We should test the claim behind that language. The most
careful data I could find come from Texas, which records immigration status at
arrest and conviction. In an analysis of 2015 data, the Cato Institute’s Alex
Nowrasteh found that the homicide conviction rate for people in the country
illegally was 2.9 per 100,000, compared with 3.9 per 100,000 for native-born
Texans, and 0.51 per 100,000 for legal immigrants. Cato is a libertarian think
tank, this is one state in one year, and I offer it as one data point, not a
final word. But it does not support the picture that is painted of a criminal
tide.
Hatred stirred up by those in power does not stay on the
podium. It is heard in the parking lot and the workplace. It teaches a child in
a school hallway what some people are allowed to be called.
What the Church Has Said
In November 2025 the U.S. Roman Catholic bishops
gathered in Baltimore and approved a rare Special Message on immigration by a
vote of 216 to 5, with 3 abstentions. They said, “We oppose the indiscriminate
mass deportation of people,” and that “Human dignity and national security are
not in conflict.” They also prayed for an end to “dehumanizing rhetoric and
violence.” They told immigrants, “You are not alone!”
Pope Leo XIV, speaking to journalists at Castel Gandolfo
that month, said, “No one has said that the United States should have open
borders,” and that “every country has the right to determine who enters, how,
and when.” He also said it was troubling that people who have lived good lives
for ten or twenty years were being treated in ways he called “extremely
disrespectful,” with “instances of violence.” That is not a pope who ignores
borders. That is a pope who refuses to let borders become a reason to stop
seeing faces. This August he chose for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees,
which falls on September 27, the theme “Even Just One of These Children,” and
asked the Gospel’s question: not to calculate, but to look at even one.
The Judgment Scene
There is a reason Matthew 25 sits so close to this
Sunday’s Gospel in the same book. When the King divides the nations, the first
thing he names is not doctrine or politics: “I was a stranger, and you took me
in” (25:35, CPDV). And when the surprised righteous ask when they ever saw him
a stranger, he answers: “whenever you did this for one of these, the least of
my brothers, you did it for me” (25:40, CPDV). The reverse is stated just as
plainly a few lines later. The person in the cell, the person in the line, the
person whose name is on the list is the one in whom we are meeting Christ.
Jesus himself began life as a refugee. Matthew tells us
that Joseph took the child and his mother by night and fled to Egypt. The Holy
Family needed a country that would open its door. Whoever has told you to fear
the newcomer has forgotten whose picture is in the manger.
What We Can Do This Week
Speak accurately. When someone calls neighbors an infestation, a poison,
or a flood, say what is true and say it plainly: these are people, and the data
do not match the slander.
Learn the names. Ask the Church, a legal aid group, or an immigrant
rights organization what the people in your own community face, and listen
before you speak.
Support legal help and humane oversight. Ask your members of
Congress and your state officials to support independent investigation of
deaths in detention, access to medical care, and due process for everyone.
Welcome one person. The pope’s own word is “even one.” Our Blessing Bags,
our Connection Cards, and our door are a start.
Pray by name. For Denny Adán González and his family, for all who
have died in custody, and for those who hold the keys and the pen. Pray that
they remember what they were once, which is a newcomer in someone’s land.
A Word About Sunday
Come to Mass this Sunday, October 25, at 3:00 PM at 557
Greene Street, or join us online. We will hear God’s command to remember that
we were strangers, and Jesus’s answer to the question of who our neighbor is.
If you have been made to feel unwelcome, you are welcome here. If you have been
taught to be afraid, come hear the other teaching. Pax et Bonum, Bishop Greer |
