The archbishop continues to tediously push the talking points of the democratic socialists.

I applaud the efforts of the City of San Antonio in taking legal action against the proposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility on the city’s east side, as the federal government has refused to supply information and repeatedly ignored compliance with obtaining environmental assessments or receiving local permits.

The 640,000 square-foot warehouse could contain as many as 1,500 beds and has elicited concerns that it will negatively impact the city’s sewage and water systems, along with raising concerns for the impacts on the public health, safety, and the provision of emergency services.

The proposed facility has also elicited public protests in addition to this recent lawsuit.

As the city states in its civil complaint against the Department of Homeland Security and ICE, the warehouse was designed for the storage and transloading of commercial goods – not for any human residence.

“Defendants are purchasing warehouses nationwide to retrofit them into immigration detention and processing centers capable of holding tens of thousands of immigrants to facilitate ICE’s stated goal of running deportation operations ‘like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings,” reads the city’s civil action.

“The thought of holding thousands of families in massive warehouses should challenge the conscience of every American,” said Bishop Brendan J. Cahill of Victoria, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration. “Whatever their immigration status, these are human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and this is a moral inflection point for our country.”

At least eight facilities in Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and three in Texas — including the building on the east side of San Antonio — have already been acquired.

The “mega centers” would each be capable of detaining 7,000 to 10,000 people, with the estimated cost for the ICE’s “new detention center model” being $38.3 billion.

Bishop Cahill noted, “Aside from the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in the 1940s, such facilities have no precedent in American history.”

“The federal government does not have a positive track record when it comes to detaining large numbers of people, especially families, and the proposed scale of these facilities is difficult to comprehend,” he said.

In their legal filing seeking relief from the courts, the city of San Antonio writes, “In their rush to convert warehouses into Amazon-life store-and-ship facilities for immigrants, Defendants have trampled over federal law designed to protect the city and other stakeholders’ interests.”

ICE detention centers have been cited for unsanitary conditions, lack of basic care, and instances of violence and death, as well as denial of pastoral visits and access to legal counsel. In just the past few months, two separate ICE facilities in Montana and Texas had measles outbreaks. Incidents such as these endanger public health and would require a response by city health officials.

American prelates have expressed alarm over reports of pregnant mothers not getting medical care they need while in immigration detention, tragically resulting in miscarriage in some cases, as well as reports of nursing mothers being separated from their babies when detained by ICE.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis recently filed a lawsuit against the federal government over a policy it said prohibits priests from distributing Communion and hearing confessions to ICE detainees. The lawsuit said a no-contact policy at a detention center ICE uses for migrants awaiting deportation proceedings has refused to accommodate clergy seeking to provide sacraments to migrants held there. In a statement, the archdiocese said it “steadfastly supports the right of all Catholics and the priests who serve them to practice their Catholic faith.”

In 2025, 32 people died while in ICE detention — the largest number in over two decades, according to a report by The Guardian.

The Church reaffirms the centrality of the understanding of human dignity, as the Incarnation itself “tells us who God is and where He chooses to dwell.” Christ unmistakably identifies Himself with the displaced in Matthew 25:35: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Earlier this year, I and other bishops of border states echoed comments from the USCCB that plans to convert warehouses into mass detention centers is “deeply troubling.” In our view, the use of detention should be minimized, not expanded, and alternatives to detention be pursued.

As the bishops and many across the country have advocated for decades, Congress should repair the U.S. immigration system by placing hard-working immigrants and their families on a path to citizenship and by improving access to the legal immigration system.

As always, we stand ready to work to create an immigration system which ensures public safety, protects human rights, encourages economic growth and justice, and upholds our heritage as a nation of immigrants.

I applaud and support the city’s initiative to ensure that proper procedures are being followed for the protection of all involved, especially our migrant brothers and sisters in Christ.