YAKIMA — Amid protests against mass deportations, Yakima Bishop Joseph Tyson condemned Vice President JD Vance’s recent remarks on immigration, calling them “deeply disturbing.”
Bishop Joseph Tyson of the Yakima Diocese said in a letter Sunday that in the face of hundreds of young people protesting in Kennewick and Yakima he’s disturbed by the comments of U.S. Vice President JD Vance on CBS “Face the Nation.”
Responding to concerns that a presidential executive order allowing federal agents to enter churches and states would have a chilling effect — meaning it may discourage residents from going to church or sending their kids to school — Vance said, “I desperately hope it has a chilling effect on illegal immigrants coming into our country.”
Tyson said in his Sunday letter that he is “trying to trust” that any immigration removal orders are targeting those convicted of serious crimes but also said that “early indicators suggest that over half of those caught by ICE this last week were not convicted criminals.”
An NBC News report found that nearly half of individuals detained by ICE in one day in late-January were “nonviolent offenders or people who have not committed any criminal offense other than crossing the border illegally.”
The Yakima Diocese oversees the Central Washington area serving more than 40 parishes across seven counties.
“More disturbing were the vice president’s false assertions about the ministry of the Catholic Church here in the United States to migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers,” Tyson said in his letter.
Vance said in his interview that the Catholic Church had received millions of dollars from the federal government and had not been a good partner with the government protecting the public from immigrants.
“I have spent six years leading the (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) efforts for the pastoral care for migrants and refugees,” Tyson said. “Vice President Vance’s assertion that the Catholic Church receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States government to resettle ‘illegal’ migrants is incorrect. We receive no money to resettle ‘illegal’ migrants.”
He also clarified that the church’s migrant and refugee services do have contracts with the federal government but that the church loses money on every resettlement.
Tyson also pushes back against Vance’s assertion that the church is complicit in settling migrants or refugees who were poorly screened. Tyson explained that refugees resettled by the church undergo a 12- to 24-month screening process by the federal government.
He closed his letter thanking his parishioners for any of the work they’ve done welcoming refugees or asylum-seekers in the area.
“And that is what we are talking about here when we speak of the undocumented: our fellow parishioners and our neighbors,” he said in the letter. “The vast majority come here — not out of criminal intent — but out of a desire to provide a better life for themselves and their children. Some have fled persecution and violence. That the vice president — who refers to himself in the CBS interview as a devout Catholic — would want to engender fear as a tactic is deeply disturbing. It’s also contrary to the teaching of Christ and the teachings of the Church.”
