‘Romeros for today’ must oppose US deportations

The Salvadoran-born Bishop Evelio Menjivar cited Óscar Romero’s final homily, in which he urged government agents to ‘reclaim your conscience’ and ‘stop the repression’.

A Salvadoran-born bishop said the US needs “more Óscar Romeros today” to speak out against the Trump administration’s “grievous assault on human rights and dignity”.

Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, an auxiliary in the Archdiocese of Washington, said immigrant and refugee communities were experiencing the Passion “in a tangible and personal way” through the threat of deportation.

“It seems that no one is safe now from arbitrary nullification of his or her protected status, visa, or green card,” he wrote in the archdiocese’s Catholic Standard on 11 April. “This has left many terrified that they or their loved ones might be seized and disappear without warning.”

He said that as with Christ’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, “this suffering includes not only the abuse inflicted upon migrants and refugees by the government, but the lack of noticeable support by people they considered to be friends”.

Bishop Menjivar entered the US without documents as a 20-year-old in 1990, hidden in the boot of a car crossing the border from Mexico into California. After working in janitorial and construction jobs, he entered seminary and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington in 2004, two years before he became a US citizen. He became a bishop in 2023.

Speaking to EWTN in March this year, he said his journey was “a testimony that many people cross the border with good intentions”, contrary to current policy whereby “people are just treated like criminals”.

Writing in the Catholic Standard last week, Menjivar condemned the deportation of “suspect” individuals, without reference to the courts, to the Terrorism Confinement Centre in Tecoluca, El Salvador, the site of alleged human rights abuses. He cited St Óscar Romero’s final homily before his assassination, in which he urged government agents to “reclaim your conscience” and “stop the repression”.

“I urge government officers and support staff in the present situation to heed these words which echo through history,” Menjivar said.  

“It is time now for you to reclaim your conscience. What you are doing is worth nothing if it is stained with unjust cruelty. That is not what America stands for. You too can and should speak out against this terror and infliction of suffering on people.”

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On Tuesday, a federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, after he was mistakenly deported to the Tecoluca prison last month, issued a further order for officials to make sworn testimony that they had complied.

This followed an apparently unanimous decision by the Supreme Court that US District Judge Paula Xinis’ order on 4 April “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’” the release of Abrego Garcia.

The Salvadoran national had been detained in an immigration raid in Maryland, despite the fact he was in the US legally with a valid work permit, is married to a US citizen and has fathered a child who is also a US citizen. He was deported to El Salvador and placed in the notorious Centre for Terrorism Confinement.

The court also ordered the Trump administration to “ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”. Within days, the administration released a statement that Abrego Garcia is “alive and secure” but did not disclose any details about his return to the US.

The Supreme Court’s decision was unsigned and there were no dissents, a rare unanimous decision by the ideologically divided court.

On Monday, however, White House advisers claimed they did not have the authority to bring Abrego Garcia back. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele also claimed it was not within his power to return him to the US. Judge Xinis dismissed these claims in her order the next day.

In another case, the Supreme Court dismissed a case seeking to allow immigrants who have been detained to challenge their detention in any federal court. The migrants also sought to question whether the Trump administration had the right to invoke an eighteenth-century law to justify their mass deportation policy.

The court sided with Trump by insisting that habeas corpus motions be filed in the districts where the person is being detained, and it did not go on to assess objections to the constitutionality of the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.

By not resolving the latter challenge, the court effectively allows the administration to continue to use it to justify deportations. The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision and were joined in part by the Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Immigration advocates immediately filed a more precise challenge to the law.

With both chambers of the US Congress led by Republicans, the courts are now the only venues where challenges to Trump’s executive orders can progress.

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