WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said that Trump’s policies containing illegal immigration are “saving lives,” in response to Pope Francis’ criticism.
In an interview on Raymond Arroyo’s show The World Over, Homan was asked about his response to Pope Francis’s recent letter to the U.S. bishops, in which the pope critiqued President Trump’s immigration policy.
“What the pope needs to understand is that President Trump and I have been very clear that our priorities right now are public safety threats and national security threats,” Homan said. “These are people illegally in the United States that commit horrendous crimes.”
“We’ve seen numerous young women raped, murdered, burned alive,” he stressed.
He said that illegal immigration is down 90 percent since Trump took office, which means fewer crimes are committed.
“Studies have been done that 31 percent of women that make that journey [across the border] through the cartels get sexually assaulted,” Homan stated.
“When President Trump has illegal immigration down 90 percent, how many women are not being sexually assaulted? How many children are not dying crossing the river? How many women and children are not dying from fentanyl poisonings?”
“President Trump’s policies save lives,” he stressed. “We have a right to have a secure border. We have a right to our sovereignty. Just like the Vatican has a wall around them.”
Homan, who is Catholic, told Arroyo: “I love the Catholic Church, but I think the pope has lost his way a little bit.”
“The Catholic Church has problems, please fix the Catholic Church.”
He reiterated comments he made to reporters a few days prior, telling Francis to “stay in his lane” and concentrate on the Church’s problems and let Homan and the Trump administration handle U.S. immigration.
“Let’s go back to the Catholic Church I grew up in, where you actually did call out abortion… you didn’t say that a president or someone in Congress is a ‘good Catholic’ even though they support abortion,” Homan said.
“I mean, let’s get back to the basics of what the Catholic Church is.”
“The Catholic Church of today, I’m disappointed in,” he stated.
When Arroyo mentioned that the Vatican recently toughened its penalties for people illegally entering its territory, Homan smiled and said that the Vatican’s penalties for illegal immigration are “more severe than ours.”
Catholic NGOs facilitate criminal cartels
Homan explained why illegal immigration is not a “victimless crime,” as many people falsely believe, but facilitates a criminal system that hurts both illegal aliens and American citizens.
He said that immigration court data over the past 10 years showed that almost 90 percent of asylum seekers make false asylum claims.
These false claimants and illegal aliens are overwhelming the border officers so that the cartels can use that opportunity for sex trafficking children, bringing in drugs, and committing other crimes, Homan explained.
Catholic Charities, which has received hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government each year, is tasked to resettle many of these false asylum seekers and are therefore helping in facilitating these crimes, Homan argued.
READ: USCCB, Catholic Charities accept ‘blood money’ when they facilitate illegal immigration
“When you make the process easier for illegal aliens coming across the border […] you are feeding a monster that kills thousands of people every year,” he said.
“Illegal immigration has a whole ugly underbelly,” Homan stressed.
The border czar recalled horrible stories of dead children and sex trafficking, including a year-old girl that was raped by multiple men from the Mexican cartel as a price to cross the border.
Homan announced that there will be investigations into how the millions of dollars received by Catholic Charities to resettle illegal immigrants were spent and that they “will be held accountable.”
READ: USCCB, Catholic Charities received $449 million for unaccompanied migrant children: report