Open Letter to the Mayors of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago all State / Local Officials of Good Will, Individual Police Officers and to the Youth of our Nation

To our Nation's Mayors / State and Local Officials: In the name of God and then all that is good in our Country, I ask you to categorically refuse to allow, without any exception whatsoever, the Resources and Personnel under your Jurisdiction, Command or Control to be put into service of any program for the mass round-up / deportation of undocumented aliens in / around your Jurisdiction. 

One of the particular Horrors of the Nazi-era Holocaust was that the Nazis often utilized local police forces to help them in the round-up of Jews.  Notably, the Nazis used occupied Paris' own police force to round-up the city's Jews for them and then used the city's facilities like Stadiums to hold them and process them before "deporting them East" ... in cattle cars ... to Auschwitz ... to die.

Significant numbers of police officers in our major cities are Hispanics.  There are few assignments that would cause more obvious morale problems / divisions in the nation's police forces than compelling local law enforcement officials to help in the round-up / deportations of people who could be (or in any case were just like) their relatives or friends.

To individual police officers / law enforcement officials: The Catholic Church recognizes the right to selective conscientious objection, the principle being that NO ONE should be compelled to do something that is fundamentally against one's conscience.  It should seem self-evident that MANY OF YOU will have FUNDAMENTAL ISSUES OF CONSCIENCE with ripping kindly, Rosary praying grandmothers from their homes, or parents from their children to deport them.  Many of you would sincerely be able to say that you simply _did not_ "enter into the academy" to do that kind of "work."  The Catholic Church recognizes your Right to refuse to do that kind of "work," or even to assist in such operations in _any_ way (like simply "standing around" providing "crowd control" while some "elite squad" does this kind of action "down the block.")

Finally, to our nation's youth: Please do not volunteer and please refuse assignment to any "elite force" tasked with this kind of "work."  There are a limited number of grandmothers or desperate parents that you can rip from their sobbing children before this will _change you_.  Do not become the Gestapo that ALL OF US have learned to hate.

I ask all of this in the name of a God who looks down upon us, loves all of us and does forgive us our sins when we fall.  Let us _not_ go down a path before us that looks ALL TOO MUCH like that of Germany in 1933.

In Christ,


Fr. Dennis Kriz, OSM
pastor honestly by chance of a small / lovely / random parish
St. Philip Benizi, Fullerton, CA
who will have to put myself in front of deportation squads if the nightmares I see come to pass.