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During interviews Tuesday Border Czar Tom Homan responded to questions about the recent open conflict between President Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV.
Homan specifically addressed his concerns regarding both Leo’s apparent continuation of Pope Francis’ stance that illegal immigrants – whom he characterized as refugees or asylum-seekers – should be welcomed in any nation, and the Holy Father’s support in November of a letter in which the U.S. Catholic bishops’ condemned what they called the Trump administration’s “indiscriminate mass deportation of people” in the country illegally.
“Speaking for myself, a lifelong Catholic, I wish they’d stay out of immigration,” Homan asserted. “They don’t know what they’re talking about because, if they wore my shoes for 40 years, and talked to a nine-year- old girl who was raped multiple times, or stood in the back of a tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet – including a five-year-old boy that baked to death – if they understood the atrocities that happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change.”
“I welcome discussion with any of them, because they don’t understand,” the border czar continued. “Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. President Trump has the most secure border in the lifetime of this nation. Right now, lives are being saved. He’s saving thousands of lives a year because he has a secure border.”
“Human traffickers are out of business, right? The cartels are, are going bankrupt because of that secure border,” Homan added. “I wish they’d understand that, because, if they did, I think they’d have a different opinion.”
In February, it was announced that, on July 4 – the 250th birthday of the United States of America – Pope Leo will travel to the southern Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, where many who are migrating land after crossing the seas.
“Pope Francis chose Lampedusa as the destination of his first official visit outside Rome on July 8, 2013, when he prayed for victims lost at sea and decried indifference toward migrants,” reported ACI Stampa via EWTN News English. “Leo’s planned visit also comes after he has spoken publicly about the U.S. migration debate, supporting a letter by the U.S. Catholic bishops last year opposing the mass deportation policy of the Trump administration and calling for humane treatment of migrants.”
Catholic News Service (CNS) also confirmed that “Pope Leo XIV will not travel to the United States this year, the head of the Holy See Press Office said Feb. 8.”
“Vatican observers had speculated about whether the first American pope would return to the United States during his first full year as pontiff, particularly as some news outlets reported that he might visit in September to coincide with the U.N. General Assembly in New York, a meeting attended by each of his three most recent predecessors during their pontificates,” CNS reported. “But, Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office, told reporters that no U.S. trip is planned for 2026.”
Appearing on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, Homan reiterated that he is a “lifelong Catholic.”
“Look, I spent a whole life in a Catholic church, but I’m disappointed that they want to win on political issues like this,” he said. “There are enough problems with the Catholic Church, and I know because I’m a member of the Catholic Church – that they need to fix and concentrate on and leave politics alone.”
“They don’t believe in a secure border,” Homan said. “They support open borders. However, if you cross the wall at the Vatican, you’re going to prison, and the penalties are much worse there than they’re here.”
“We want to sit down and even explain to them why a secure border is a safer border, and a secure border gives, gives us stronger national security,” the border czar added. “I think they’re talking from a position of not knowing what I know, what happens behind the scenes on illegal immigration. I’d be willing to sit down with them. I’m disappointed they’re taking this position.”
In his article dated February 2025 – during the last months of Pope Francis’ reign, canon lawyer Father Gerald E. Murray, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in New York City, wrote at The Catholic Thing about Francis’ assertions that deporting people “damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”
“I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,” Pope Francis said in a letter to the American bishops.
“If this is the case, then the Vatican City State laws are discriminatory and cruel,” wrote Murray, adding:
The Church has never taught that people have an infinite dignity that outweighs, and renders void, any legal restrictions on their movements. No one has a right to camp out in the Vatican Gardens, or to demand a room in the Apostolic Palace. No one has a right to illegally enter the United States or any other nation. No migrant has a right to claim that his removal violates his dignity, which “surpasses” any laws regulating entry into the country.
“Countries have borders that they control. It is up to them to decide who is allowed to enter and remain,” Murray concluded. “The exercise of such a basic function of government is not canceled out by a supposed superior claim of infinite human dignity that entitles foreign nationals to illegally enter and remain in the country of their choice. That is the case for Vatican City State, and for every other country.”
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