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asylum seekers
Sensible Immigration Policy Begins With Understanding, Not Gaslighting
Seriously addressing this country's ongoing immigration crisis will require policy change, and to get to that point, there needs to be a narrative shift in this country away from indiscriminately criminalizing all undocumented people to humanizing them.
Feb 04, 2026
By now, we have heard the mantra that President Donald Trump was right to close the border, but wrong in his heavy-handed approach to immigration enforcement. We are also told that if he would have simply done what most Americans wanted, that is, arrest and deport violent criminals, then his poll numbers would be higher, and his administration wouldn’t find itself embroiled by crisis in the aftermath of two killings at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis.
But this claim—that the problem with Trump's immigration agenda is mainly about enforcement tactics—is flawed.
Seriously addressing this country's ongoing immigration crisis will require policy change, and to get to that point, there needs to be a narrative shift in this country away from indiscriminately criminalizing all undocumented people to humanizing them.
To put this in perspective, we need to realize that for America to enforce its way out of our current immigration disaster would trigger events like what's happening in Minneapolis all over the country.
The enforcement-first rhetoric put forth by this administration and its supporters is dangerous for the violence it exacts on immigrants and citizens alike.
Considering two sets of numbers makes this clear.
The first is how apprehensions at the border have dropped to zero. Beginning with asylum restrictions put into place at the end of Biden’s term in 2024, the flow of people into the US has fallen steadily. This becomes an issue when noting another figure, specifically, the Trump administration's goal of making 1 million deportations a year.
Of the 14-or-so million undocumented people in the US now, according to the Pew Research Center, the majority are long-term residents with more than 15 years living in the country. Logically then, with border removals no longer a factor in deportation figures as they were in prior administrations, reaching the 1 million mark will mean going after people who have spent years, perhaps decades, living in the US without legal status.
Finding and apprehending those people who have become central to the fabric of their communities is what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is doing in Minneapolis. The chaos seen in Minneapolis will continue elsewhere, as coworkers, neighbors, and our fellow parishioners will disappear, triggering anger, protest, and perhaps worse wherever federal agents are sent.
Border Czar Tom Homan, claiming that there would be calm in Minnesota if local officials would just let ICE into its jails, and how the government is going after the “worst of the worst,” is also doing nothing more than gaslighting.
Consider Texas, where we find 1 in 4 of every immigrant who has been arrested in the country.
The Lone Star state has the second-most local law enforcement agencies, at 167, trailing only Florida, that have partnered with the federal government to carry out Trump’s immigration agenda. State law that went into effect this year states that every police department must collaborate by year’s end.
Data from Texas don’t lie—ICE is not going after the “worst of the worst.” In fact, according to the Texas Tribune’s analysis of Department of Homeland Security data, nearly 60% of immigrants detained in the state have only the immigration-related offenses of either coming to the county without legal authorization, or residing here after their permits or visas expired. Figures nationwide on the immigrants in detention are the same. Administration officials, including Homan and Kristi Noem, neglect to mention these facts as they cherry-pick individual cases of violent criminals to distract the public from the community-destroying results of their enforcement actions.
Still, even with the numbers belying the administration's official line, immigration offenses are still, well, offenses.
This is why humanizing immigrants, especially by acknowledging their pathways to the US, is needed now more than ever.
Before legislative changes can be made—and there are many options currently in Congress, such as establishing legal pathways for undocumented farmworkers, children, and spouses of US citizens—we need to note that people come to the United States for many reasons outside of their control. How economic and political crises drive people away from their homes—as they did from Mexico in the 1990s in the aftermath of NAFTA, and most recently, from Venezuela and Nicaragua—point to factors beyond individual choice. As the data on detentions show, the vast majority come not to kill people or deal drugs, but to work, escape some form of oppression, or leave natural disasters. If you want further proof of this, then look at research—from Texas—showing that undocumented people commit crimes at a rate lower than native-born people.
The fact that we live in a volatile world also should make people rethink heaping praise on the Trump administration for closing the border, which in reality only asks for humanitarian crisis to take place there. Instead, we need a more durable, flexible approach to immigration that takes into consideration the reality that the world is not perfect, crises occur, and people may consider coming to the US. Thinking that central to immigration policy is sealing the border like a jar, is at best a childish fantasy, or at its worst, ideological fodder for white nationalists.
The point is that the enforcement-first rhetoric put forth by this administration and its supporters is dangerous for the violence it exacts on immigrants and citizens alike. The problem our country has with immigration is not enforcement tactics, but vision and basis for the policy area in the first place.
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UK Labour to Let Authorities Take Jewelry From Asylum-Seekers as Part of Sweeping New Immigration Crackdown
"Labour won't redistribute wealth from billionaires," said former party Leader Jeremy Corbyn. "But they will seize belongings from those fleeing war and persecution."
Nov 17, 2025
A new asylum policy announced Monday by the UK Labour Party will allow authorities to confiscate the jewelry and other belongings of asylum-seekers in order to pay for their claims to be processed.
The policy, which some critics said was "reminiscent of the Nazi era," was just one part of the Labour Party's total overhaul of the nation's asylum system, which it says must be made much more restrictive in order to fend off rising support for the far-right.
In a policy paper released Monday, the government announced that it would seek to make the status of many refugees temporary and gave the government new powers to deport refugees if it determines it to be safe. It also revoked policies requiring the government to provide housing and legal support to those fleeing persecution, while extending the amount of time they need to wait for permanent residency to 20 years, up from just five, for those who arrive illegally.
The UK government also said it will attempt to change the way judges interpret human rights law to more seamlessly carry out deportations, including stopping immigrants from using their rights to family life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to avoid deportation.
In an article for the Guardian published Sunday, UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood called the reforms "the most significant and comprehensive changes to our asylum system in a generation." She said they were necessary because the increase in migration to the UK had stirred up "dark forces" in the country that are "seeking to turn that anger into hate."
Nigel Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform UK Party, is leading national polls on the back of a viciously anti-immigrant campaign that has included calls to abolish the UK's main pathway for immigrants to become permanent residents, known as "leave to remain."
Meanwhile, in September, over 100,000 people gathered in London for an anti-immigrant rally led by Tommy Robinson, a notorious far-right figure who founded the anti-Muslim English Defence League (EDL). The event saw at least 26 police officers injured by protesters.
Last summer, riots swept the UK after false claims—spread by Robinson, Farage, and other far-right figures—that the perpetrator of the fatal stabbing of two young girls and their caretaker had been a Muslim asylum-seeker. A hotel housing asylum-seekers was set on fire, mosques were vandalised and destroyed, and several immigrants and other racial minorities were brutally beaten.
Mahmood said that if changes are not made to the asylum system, "we risk losing popular consent for having an asylum system at all."
But as critics were quick to point out, the far-right merely took Labour's crackdown as a sign that it is winning the war for hearts and minds.
Robinson gloated to his followers that "the Overton window has been obliterated, well done patriots!" while Farage chortled that Mahmood "sounds like a Reform supporter."
Many members of the Labour coalition expressed outrage at their ostensibly Liberal Party's bending to the far-right.
"The government should be ashamed that its migration policies are being cheered on by Tommy Robinson and Reform," said Nadia Whittome, the Labour MP for Nottingham East. "Instead of standing up to anti-migrant hate, this is laying the foundations for the far-right."
In a speech in Parliament, she chided the home secretary's policy overhaul, calling it "dystopian."
"It's shameful that a Labour government is ripping up the rights and protections of people who have endured unimaginable trauma," she said. "Is this how we'd want to be treated if we were fleeing for our lives? Of course not."
The UK has signed treaties, including the ECHR, obligating it to process the claims of those who claim asylum because they face persecution in their home countries based on race, religion, nationality, group membership, or political opinion. According to data from the Home Office, over 111,000 people claimed asylum in the year from June 2024-25, more than double the number who did in 2019.
The spike came as the number of people displaced worldwide reached an all-time high of over 123.2 million at the end of 2024, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council, with desperate people seeking safety from escalating conflicts in Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and across the Middle East.
In her op-ed, Mahmood lamented that "the burden borne by taxpayers has been unfair." However, as progressive commentator Owen Jones pointed out, the UK takes in far fewer asylum-seekers than its peers: "Last year, Germany took over twice as many asylum-seekers as the UK. France, Italy, and Spain took 1.5 times as many. Per capita, we take fewer than most EU countries. Poorer countries such as Greece take proportionately more than we do."
The Labour government, led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, already boasts that it has deported more than 50,000 people in the UK illegally since it came to power in 2024, but it has predictably done little to satiate the far-right, which has only continued to gain momentum in polls despite the crackdown.
Under the new rules, it is expected that the government will be able to fast-track many more deportations, particularly of families with children.
The jewelry rule, meanwhile, has become a potent symbol of how the Labour Party has shifted away from its promises of economic egalitarianism toward austerity and punishment of the most vulnerable.
"Labour won't redistribute wealth from billionaires," said former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is now an independent MP. "But they will seize belongings from those fleeing war and persecution."
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US Bishops Issue Rare Message Denouncing Trump's 'Indiscriminate Mass Deportation' Campaign
"Not since the civil rights era—and never with such unanimity—have American bishops so directly challenged a president’s policies," wrote one chronicler of the Catholic Church.
Nov 14, 2025
More than 200 Catholic bishops joined in condemning the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants in an extraordinary statement on Wednesday.
The "special message" was issued at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) annual fall plenary, at which a majority of the nation's bishops were in attendance. They denounced the administration's "indiscriminate mass deportation" campaign, and called for an end to "dehumanizing rhetoric and violence."
Such a message is exceptionally rare. It was the first time in 12 years that the USCCB has issued such a joint statement, which it says is reserved for cases it deems "particularly urgent."
The statement was passed with 216 votes of approval, while just five bishops voted against it and three abstained. There are around 270 actively serving bishops in the US, meaning the vote represents the vast majority opinion among these high-ranking church officials. After the vote passed, the declaration was met with sustained applause.
The bishops laid out a litany of ways the Trump administration has violated the rights of immigrants over the past year and engaged in dehumanizing rhetoric directed at them.
"We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement," the bishops said. "We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school, and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones."
The White House often claims that the immigrants it targets for deportation are violent criminals and terrorists. But the latest immigration data shows that around 72% of current detainees have no criminal convictions. Previous data from the libertarian Cato Institute has shown that 93% of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) book-ins were for non-criminals and nonviolent offenders.
Members of the Trump administration often engage in openly hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, including Vice President JD Vance, whose wife's parents immigrated from India, and who is a recent Catholic convert who often speaks about the role of faith in his politics.
Vance has described immigration to the US as a “historic invasion” of the nation. He has admitted to spreading false rumors about Haitian asylum seekers, who’d fled violence and instability in their home countries to settle legally in the US; during the 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified baseless claims that the migrants were eating the pets of their American neighbors. Vance has derided the idea of people from "different cultures" moving to the US, saying it's "totally reasonable and acceptable for American citizens to look at their next-door neighbors and say, 'I want to live next to people who I have something in common with,'" including speaking the same language.
The bishops thoroughly repudiated this worldview in their statement.
"Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation. We, as Catholic bishops, love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity," they said. "Catholic teaching exhorts nations to recognize the fundamental dignity of all persons, including immigrants."
The bishops called for “meaningful reform of our nation’s immigration laws and procedures,” adding that “human dignity and national security are not in conflict” and that “both are possible if people of goodwill work together.”
"We recognize that nations have a responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system for the sake of the common good," they said. "Without such processes, immigrants face the risk of trafficking and other forms of exploitation. Safe and legal pathways serve as an antidote to such risks."
The bishops' statement follows a call by Pope Leo XIV last week for "deep reflection" about the way immigrants are treated in the United States. The Chicago-born Pope, the first American to ever serve as the church's patriarch, said that "many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”
According to the American Immigration Council, more than 80% of the undocumented immigrants in the US in 2022 had been living in the country for over a decade. Meanwhile, numerous studies have found that both undocumented and documented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.
The bishops’ denunciation comes at a time when Americans have turned considerably against Trump’s immigration policies: Where he had double-digit approval on the issue near the start of his presidency, at the beginning of November, net support for his immigration policy was at -7 according to polls from The Economist/YouGov.
As Christopher Hale, a writer who has chronicled Leo's papacy, wrote, the bishops' statement may be the strongest collective denunciation of a US president ever made by the Catholic hierarchy.
"Not since the civil rights era—and never with such unanimity—have American bishops so directly challenged a president’s policies," Hale said.
Also at the plenary, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, the chair of the USCCB's migration committee, announced the launch of the conference's "You Are Not Alone" Initiative, which aims to provide support and accompaniment to migrants at risk of deportation under the Trump administration.
"Our immigrant brothers and sisters… are living in a deep state of fear,” Seitz said. “Many are too afraid to work, send their children to school, or avail themselves to the sacraments.”
He added: "Because we’re pastors… we care about our people, and we care particularly for those who are most vulnerable and those who are most in need.”
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