The Most Rev. Robert McElroy, Roman Catholic Bishop of San Diego, released the following statement in reaction to the announcement today in Washington that the Trump Administration is closing down the DACA (Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals) Program. DACA temporarily suspended deportation proceedings against undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country as minors and raised in the United States, with little or no contact with their family’s home country. An estimated 800,000 people will be affected by this decision:

“Today the hope that our national policies will retain any shred of humanity in their treatment of undocumented immigrants has been extinguished. The Trump Administration’s decision to initiate the process of eradicating the rights of hundreds of thousands of young men and women to legally live and work and contribute in American society not only robs them of their security in remaining in the only homeland that many of them have ever known; it also robs our nation of some of the finest young people who seek to build up our country for the next generation.

“Tonight across this great land, untold families will be weeping at such harshness. Our Lord, who was both refugee and immigrant during his journey on this earth, will weep with them. And the Church will stand in steadfast solidarity and action with them, no matter what is coming. The Catholic community has encountered too many waves of nativism in the history of our country not to know that such prejudice and divisiveness must be resisted at its root.”