I am grateful to The Scalabrini International Migration Institute, The Klau Institute for Civil and Human Rights at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, and the Pontifical Urbaniana University for the invitation to be with you today. I am joining you from the San Diego-Tijuana border region, where I volunteer with FAITH,[1] a court accompaniment ministry led by Bishop Michael Pham of San Diego, the Jesuit Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and the San Diego Organizing Project. FAITH stands for Faithful Accompaniment In Trust and Hope. Our mission is to bear witness, build trust, and offer pastoral presence to immigrants in court. We are grappling with the task of Christian witness amidst the mass deportations that are currently underway across major cities in the United States. That pastoral experience of accompaniment and others like it mark my theological stance. Therefore, while my stance is committed to a global perspective, it remains very much grounded in the place where I accompany migrants and their loved ones: at the border. I look forward to continuing to share our different perspectives as we build bridges of understanding and support, with and for migrants, to create more just and inclusive societies. With that in mind, I dedicate these words to my 400 fellow volunteers, including those from other religious traditions, who serve in love and hope with FAITH.
My participation does not aim to offer a fully developed account but simply, as the task set before me states, to outline a perspective for the future in support of our conference’s objectives. I will do so in two moments. First, I will identify the assumptions that inform my views. Then, I will offer a short, medium, and long-term perspective for the future, alongside a pastoral and theological-ethical implication for each. May the following words support our discernment.
First Moment. My assumptions.
Regarding my use of terms: please note that unless I specify otherwise, I refer to migrants in the broad sense to include emigrants, those in transit, immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and returnees; children, women, men, and families; and those escaping poverty, war, or both. Migration processes are multigenerational and complex. Nevertheless, experience and research draw me to Cardinal Baggio’s statement on the Church’s commitment to the global compacts on migration and refugees: “migration is increasingly composed of mixed flows; and migrants and refugees, before being such, are persons inherently possessed of fundamental human rights and inalienable dignity [… The aim is] to respond more adequately and seamlessly to the needs of each vulnerable person on the move.”[2]
The following theological, political, and theoretical assumptions inform my perspective. Theologically: that our Church’s faith in the Triune God and the discipleship it grounds through baptism is deeper and broader than any political ideology. Even as Catholicism may inspire political positions, our faith does not belong to any political party—a position that is increasingly difficult to hold in the U.S. right. Politically: that the institutional purpose of political authority in a constitutional democracy is to mediate between opposing political, economic, and cultural interests. It follows that the protection and promotion of human dignity in pursuit of the common good, especially in the context of the immigration debate, is fraught with the reality of conflict. In the U.S., that includes acknowledging that a majority of voters (a slim one, but still a majority)[3] supports deporting undocumented immigrants, even if they are wrestling with the Trump administration’s tactics. Theoretically: that although multiple migration theories are necessary to analyze the complexities behind global population movements, migration systems theory is particularly helpful for theological-ethical reflection in the current context. It is attentive to the fact that migrations reflect and further historically bound relationships across peoples and borders, even when voters don’t perceive them. In the words of Castles et al, “migratory movements generally arise from the existence of prior links between sending and receiving countries based on colonization, politics influence, trade, investment, and cultural ties.”[4] The United States is no different: the presence of 13.7 million undocumented immigrants per the Migration Policy Institute’s latest numbers (most of them still from Mexico) is a testament to those relationships.[5] So are the 14 million U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status who live with at least one undocumented immigrant. With the above in mind, let us now turn our gaze to the future.[6]
Second Moment. Perspective for the Future
In the short term, one to three years, I see signs of further erosion of the human right to residence and nationality. In the medium term, three to ten years, I see the potential for increasing return migrations. In the long term, ten to twenty-five years and beyond, population movements will likely be shaped by the coming global population peak. Each of these perspectives suggest theological-ethical and pastoral implications. Please note that the longer the view, the more superficial the perspective. Additionally, please be mindful that these are potential developments I see from a U.S.-Mexico border-informed perspective. Other contexts across the globe will likely align in some ways but not others.
In the short term, I see further erosion of the human right to residence and nationality, including for naturalized and birth-right citizens. In early 2025, the Trump administration enacted immigration policies and institutional changes with the aim of deporting one million people each year and weakening birthright and naturalized citizenship. Those actions have led to the detention of asylum-seekers, permanent legal residents, and U.S. citizens (at least 170 so far)[7]with the stated goal of recovering control over U.S. borders. Instead, they are tearing at the fabric of families and communities, highlighting how deeply the lives of immigrants and citizens are bound together.
I recognize the complexity of the immigration laws, policies, and regulations that govern the U.S. immigration system. I also acknowledge the dizzying speed at which the Trump administration is changing their interpretation and execution. Nevertheless, the physical spaces of the San Diego federal building where FAITH takes on its court accompaniment ministry offer some clarity: the waiting rooms, the courtrooms, and the hallway.
We accompany migrants in the courts’ waiting rooms. There, I have met men and women who are tired and afraid; trying to understand why, after living in San Diego for so long (sometimes for over a decade) the government is suddenly moving to revoke their legal status or dismiss their cases. Many have U.S.-born children and spouses. All are in the system. They had presented themselves to the government in years past, trusting that eventually an immigration reform would succeed. Instead, they are now facing expedited removal.
We pray in the hallways to be present when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detain migrants once their cases have been dismissed. The first step towards expedited removal. The officers rarely wear a uniform. Most times their faces are covered. Most I’ve seen appear to be Hispanic and African American men in their late-twenties to mid-thirties. A few are women. This is a good job for many of them. ICE offers up to $50,000 as a signing bonusalongside student loan forgiveness.[8] We practice balanced distance with ICE: neither direct opposition nor friendliness towards them. Our mission is to accompany migrants at court—even as they are being detained. I hope that our presence strengthens migrants while reminding ICE officers to treat their fellow human beings with dignity and respect. ICE will become more prevalent across the country. President Trump signed a recent law that includes $170 billion for border security and immigration enforcement over the next five years; $76.5 billion of that will go to ICE (ten times its current annual budget); $30 billion is for hiring 10,000 or more staff.[9]
FAITH also accompanies migrants and bears witness inside immigration courts during hearings that are open to the public. There, immigration judges do what they can to remain independent and impartial when adjudicating between the Department of Homeland Security and migrants. That is becoming increasingly difficult. In the U.S., immigration judges are not part of the judicial branch. Instead, they are part of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which belongs to the Department of Justice that now fully answers, like the Department of Homeland Security, to the President.[10] The federal building in San Diego has nine courtrooms, at least three of them don’t have immigration judges. President Trump has cut over 80 so far this year: some because they refused to follow policies that help his administration achieve one million deportations per year.[11] The Department of Defense has confirmed it is sending up to 600 military attorneys to serve as temporary immigration judges.[12]
The weakening of birthright and naturalized citizenship, the ease with which the government can remove a person’s legal status with limited due process, the growing budget dedicated to immigration enforcement, the decline of immigration judges’ autonomy—all in pursuit of one million deportations per year—point to the further erosion of the right to residence and nationality. Those developments alongside Pope Francis’ four-verb teaching (welcome, protect, promote, integrate) in Fratelli tutti and, as I argue elsewhere, the history of U.S. immigration policy, suggest a need to shift the focus of the immigration debate from the right to immigrate to the right to residence and nationality.[13]
With the above in mind, a fundamental pastoral and theological-ethical challenge in the near future is this: like most Americans, Catholic leaders in the U.S. tend to frame the immigration debate in terms of a foreigner’s right to immigrate versus the government’s right to enforce borders. The implication is that, in the best of cases, immigration reform depends on finding a solution that balances both sets of rights. In the worst of cases, which we are in, immigration reform is a zero-sum game that requires complete border control—the justification for increasing the presence of ICE (and other immigration enforcement agencies) across the country. That framing also has the effect of putting Catholic leaders, including bishops, in a weaker position of having to explain why the Church’s is not an open-borders position. It also furthers the incorrect presumption that immigrants and citizens lead fully separate lives.
To be clear: I am not suggesting that we should cease making a case for the right to immigrate—an instrumental right in the Catholic human rights tradition. I am suggesting that the current context calls us to make a clearer case for the social right to residence and nationality—a more fundamental right in our tradition (please see my analysis of the rights of movement in the Catholic tradition in “Dignity and Conflict: Immigration”).[14] That shift in focus may also make it possible to create room for Catholic leaders, including bishops, to find compromise in a debate fraught by the reality of conflict among opposing political, economic, and cultural interests. On that point, my argument aligns with the findings of Alexander Kustov’s research (who also presented at this conference).[15] I also hope to see a just and compassionate immigration reform happen in my lifetime. Pacem in terris, the Catholic human rights magna carta, states: “When there are just reasons in favor of it, [human beings] must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there” (No. 25). That second part of the Church’s teaching is mostly absent from the Catholic discourse in the U.S. and, perhaps, other parts of the global North.
In the medium term, three to ten years, I see the potential for increasing return migrations. Last spring, over a series of conversations at UCSD’s Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, it became evident that shelters on the Mexican side of the border were increasingly empty of people who were attempting to cross the border into the U.S. At the same time, colleagues from OSMECA, the Observatorio Socio-Pastoral de Movilidad Humana de Mesoamérica y el Caribe, were sharing reports of increasing reverse migration flows, including through the Darian Gap. Some migrants were attempting to find their way home, even amidst the region’s drug-related violence.[16]
Although they tend to be ignored, return migrations are an integral part of migration history. Between 1850 and 1913 one in three immigrants returned from the U.S. to Europe.[17] I am still uncertain to what extent they were forced returns or freely undertaken—the moral theologian in me suspects that it is likely a combination of both. And yet, there are migration scholars who are starting to suggest that a shift is underway. Quoting extensively from Diego Chaves-González et al:
The prospect of mass deportations from the United States threatens to magnify the vulnerabilities of integration systems [of returnees] in Latin American and Caribbean countries. If past is prologue—and fully 87 percent of all U.S. interior removals during fiscal years (FY) 2021-24 were to Mexico and northern Central America—the sharp rise in immigration enforcement in U.S. communities may result in a significantly greater number of returnees to the region in the months and years ahead. These governments have long-established reception and reintegration programs to assist returnees, but any sudden or large returns of their nationals may overwhelm their uneven capacities, especially as they manage other migration pressures.[18]
As Emilce Cuda reminded us yesterday, South-South migrations are large, increasing, and changing. For Mexico and other countries throughout Latin America, that means not just receiving returnees but also becoming themselves more important destination countries within new or existing migration systems (see here for background).[19] Likewise, we need to be mindful of Graziano Batistella’s research at the Center for Migration Studies, which shows just how complex return migrations can be.[20]
What of the pastoral and theological-ethical implications? Several come to mind, but I wish to highlight just one: those for mixed status families. In the U.S., spouses or partners are facing the prospect of being separated or remaining unmarried due to a lack of legal status. Undocumented parents are also facing the prospect of leaving their citizen children behind when they get deported. Some are considering the possibility of bringing their U.S.-born citizen with them; children who may then be in an irregular situation in the parents’ home country themselves. The pastoral and theological-ethical challenge is this: the number of mixed-status families who experience the wounds brought on by our borders and immigration policies will likely increase and surely test the Church’s commitment to applying pastoral mercy amidst what Amoris Laetitia calls imperfect situations. Within those deepening wounds our families will need the hope that the balm of mercy brings.
As for the long term, ten to twenty-five years and beyond, I expect that population movements and immigration debates will increasingly be shaped by the coming population peak. The U.S. Census Bureau expects the U.S. population to peak at 370 million in 2080.[21] The U.N. expects the global population to peak at 10.3 billion at around that time.[22]The number of seniors will far outpace infants in many countries, and their wellbeing will increasingly depend not just on robotics and Artificial Intelligence—they can only do so much to heal the body, mind, and spirit—but on immigrants. Facing such a scarce resource, perhaps countries in the global South will enforce emigration controls as European countries once did.[23] The pastoral and theological ethical implication? Aside from the Church’s stance on the human right to migrate, the likelihood that the compenetration of cultures and religions through migration will only deepen. If not by desire, then by sheer need. Our future calls us to a greater openness to the gift of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. Our fellow Catholics in Asia, especially the Philippines and Vietnam, are already showing us the way. And when the time is right, I trust that in the Spirit, Catholics in the United States and across other parts of the global North will finally have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to understand.
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[1] Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish (San Diego), “FAITH — Immigration Court Accompaniment,” accessed October 24, 2025, https://www.olgsd.org/FAITH.
[2] Fabio CS Baggio, “The Church’s Commitment Towards the Global Compacts: Statement of Fr. Fabio Baggio CS (Old Synod Hall, Vatican City State, 19 October 2018)” (Secretariat of State, Holy See, October 19, 2018), https://press.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/2018/documents/rc-seg-st-20181019_meeting-diplomatici-baggio_en.html.
[3] Ruth Igielnik and Jazmine Ulloa, “Voters Favor Deporting Those in U.S. Illegally, but Say Trump Has Gone Too Far,” The New York Times, October 8, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/trump-deportation-illegal-immigrants-voters-poll.html.
[4] Stephen Castles, Hein de Haas, and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 6th ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2020).
[5] Julia Gelatt, Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, and James D. Bachmeier, Changing Origins, Rising Numbers: Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States(Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, October 2025), https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/mpi-unauthorized-immigrants-fact-sheet-2025_FINAL.pdf.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Nicole Foy, “Immigration Agents Have Held More Than 170 Americans in Detention, Many at Raids,” ProPublica, October 16, 2025, https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will.
[8] Associated Press, “ICE Entices New Recruits with Patriotism Pitch and Promise of $50,000 Signing Bonuses,” AP News, July 30, 2025, https://www.apnews.com/article/immigration-hiring-trump-border-mass-deportations-ed1580c3f5c0c2a2b5c1ebd621574365.
[9] Ibid.
[10] United States Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review (Washington, DC, accessed October 25, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/eoir.
[11] Ximena Bustillo, “Trump Administration Fires More Immigration Judges,” NPR, September 23, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/09/23/nx-s1-5550915/trump-immigration-judges.
[12] James LaPorta, Eleanor Watson, and Katrina Kaufman, “Defense Dept. to Send Up to 600 Military Attorneys to Serve as Temporary Immigration Judges,” CBS News, September 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/defense-dept-600-military-attorneys-temporary-immigration-judges/.
[13] Victor Carmona, “Theologizing Immigration,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Latinx Theology, ed. Orlando O. Espín (Wiley-Blackwell, 2025), https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119870333.ch20.
[14] Matthew R. Petrusek and Jonathan Rothchild, eds., Value and Vulnerability: An Interfaith Dialogue on Human Dignity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19m64x1.
[15] Alexander Kustov, In Our Interest: How Democracies Can Make Immigration Popular (New York: Columbia University Press, 2025).
[16] Socio-Pastoral Observatory of Human Mobility in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean (OSMECA), “OSMECA – Pastoral Network for Human Mobility in Mesoamerica and the Caribbean,” accessed October 25, 2025, https://www.osmeca.net/.
[17] Ran Abramitzky, Leah Platt Boustan, and Katherine Eriksson, “Return Migrants in the Age of Mass Migration” (Stanford University and National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2017), https://ranabr.people.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj26066/files/media/file/return-migrants.pdf.
[18] Diego Chaves-González, Valerie Lacarte, Andrew Selee, and Ariel G. Ruiz Soto, “Rising Migration in Latin America and the Caribbean Has Ushered in a Volatile New Era,” Migration Policy Institute, October 2, 2025, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/latin-america-caribbean-new-migration-era.
[19] Heaven Crawley and Joseph K. Teye, “How Global South Perspectives Challenge Thinking on Migration,” UNU-CPR Blog, January 17, 2024, https://www.unu.edu/cpr/blog-post/how-global-south-perspectives-challenge-thinking-migration.
[20] Graziano Batistella, Return Migration: A Conceptual and Policy Framework (New York: Center for Migration Studies, March 8, 2018), https://www.cmsny.org/publications/2018smsc-smc-return-migration/.
[21] United States Census Bureau, “U.S. Population Projected to Begin Declining in Second Half of Century,” press release, November 9, 2023,https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html.
[22] Ayana Archie, “The World’s Population Is Projected to Peak at 10.3 Billion in the 2080s, U.N. Says,” NPR, July 12, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/nx-s1-5037684/united-nations-world-population-report.
[23] Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).