In February, Pope Francis used choice words when asked about presidential candidate Donald Trump’s desire to increase border security in the United States. “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” he said about the presumptive GOP nominee. “This is not the gospel.”
The leader of the Catholic Church also held a February mass in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a notorious border city that had the highest murder rate in the world in 2009 due to cartel violence. He asked American and Mexican politicians to have “open hearts like the Ninevites, open to [God’s] call heard in the suffering faces of countless men and women. No more death. No more exploitation!”
No government wants to see a beloved religious leader harmed on their watch, so it is a no-brainer to take the necessary steps to protect him. Meanwhile, the lax border policies that are in place at all other times have created crime spikes in both the European Union and the United States, affecting hundreds of thousands of citizens. These politicians willingly enact common-sense immigration policies in order to protect a high-profile figure, but are hypocritically hesitant to provide the same protection for the citizens they’re sworn to protect.