Brothers and sisters, fellow Americans,
Eight years ago, in the days after the first election of Donald Trump as President, I wrote a similar open letter asking that state and local officials, their law enforcement agencies and if need be individual law enforcement officers refuse to participate _in any way_ in mass deportation efforts that may be demanded of them by the incoming Trump Administration, not even in providing “crowd control” while other, federal, agents / units did the actual arresting and taking away of undocumented individuals.
I noted then that one of the less talked about horrors of the Holocaust was that the Nazis generally forced the local law enforcement agencies to do the initial dirty work for them, notably that Paris’ Jewish community was rounded-up by Paris’ own police force under, of course, the occupying authorities’, the SS’s, supervision. Even then a fair number of local police officers “called in sick” in those times in order to avoid participating in such moral horrors.
While we are being told that “the initial wave” of arrests in the now more certain wave of mass deportation promised by the returning Trump administration will involve “only criminals,” there is SIMPLY NO WAY that ANY OF US CAN BE CERTAIN THAT THIS WILL ACTUALLY BE THE CASE, and this goes for the local law enforcement officers who will be asked to participate or otherwise support such a task.
Further it’s a more or less clear “shell game” / “bait and switch.” While _some_ officials talk of deporting “only criminals” others ENTHUSIASTICALLY (including U.S. Senators) talk of “arresting and deporting ALL ‘illegals.’”
I CAN TELL EVERYONE WITH 100% CERTAINTY that if the mission becomes deporting ALL undocumented persons in this country, then our nations’ law enforcement agencies will be asked to collaborate in the kicking down of doors and arresting otherwise smiling, rosary in their hand praying, happily-from-ear-to-ear tamale (or perogi, or pansit) making grandmothers. They will also be arresting honest, 16-hour a day, EVERYDAY, hard working family men and women who are here only because they were guilted to do so by their families asking that they “man up” (!) and do what every other young man or woman of worth in their village had also done to support their families – to come here.
As such, our nations’ police and perhaps military are going to be asked to arrest and destroy MANY, MANY Holy Families.
To this I PRAY NO !!
So I again ask the nation’s major cities and states to REFUSE TO COLLABORATE _in ANY WAY_ with ANY Mass deportation operation ordered by the returning Trump Administration.
I further ask that INDIVIDUAL MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL utilize their RIGHT TO SELECTIVE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION articulated in the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ 1983 Pastoral Letter “The Challenge of Peace” to individually NOT PARTICIPATE in such operations.
As I wrote 8 years ago, there are only so many otherwise smiling rosary praying grandmothers that one can arrest, only so many children weeping for their papi and mami that one can watch, before this nightmare necessarily changes one.
Arnald Schwarzenegger, an Austrian immigrant to this country and child of post-war Austria has repeatedly talked about the AWFUL SILENCE that he heard from his father’s generation about what they did in the war, because they were ashamed.
Please DON’T DO THIS TO YOURSELVES, DON’T DO THIS TO YOUR OWN CHILDREN. Stop. DON’T PARTICIPATE …
In the name of Almighty God and all that is GOOD, do not embark on this path,
Sincerely and in Christ, who himself was a refugee,
Fr. Dennis Kriz, OSM,
Pastor, St. Philip Benizi Parish,
Fullerton, CA
