Trump’s mass deportation plan is a ‘disgrace’

Pope Francis said Donald Trump’s plans to deport illegal migrants from the US would be a “disgrace” if they came to fruition.

Speaking to an Italian television program from his Vatican residence, Francis said that if the plans went ahead, Trump would make “the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill”.

“That’s not right. That’s not how problems are solved,” he said.

Trump has promised to begin the largest-ever deportation of undocumented immigrants in US history soon after taking office.

In a message to Trump released on Monday, Pope Francis offered him “heartfelt greetings” and called on him to lead a society in which “there is no place for hatred, discrimination or exclusion” and to promote “peace and reconciliation among nations.”

It is known that the Pope cares about the problem of migrants. During a public audience in August last year, he said that “systematically working by all means to expel migrants” was a “grave sin”.

In 2016, before the first presidential election won by Trump, Pope Francis said that “a person who only thinks about building walls … and not about building bridges is not a Christian.”

Referring to Trump’s promise to build a wall on the border with Mexico to prevent migrants from traveling to the US, Francis said: “I’m just saying that this man is not a Christian if he said such things. We’ll have to see if he’s said things like that and I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”

Francis and Trump later met when Trump and his family visited Rome in 2017.

Before the 2024 US presidential election. the pope declined to say whether people should vote for Trump or his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris, simply urging people to choose the “lesser evil” according to their conscience.

During the interview on Sunday night, Francis also touched on the issue of migration to Europe, saying there is “a lot of cruelty” and that everyone has “the right to stay at home and the right to emigrate.”

The pope also added that some of the southern European countries that receive the most arriving migrants “don’t have children and need labor.”

“In some of these countries there are whole villages that are empty. A good, well-thought-out migration policy would also help countries like Italy and Spain,” he said.

In another part of the interview, Francis was asked about the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and said he did not know why achieving peace was so difficult.

“I don’t know why … it was as if there was an international drive for self-destruction,” the pope said.

Francis, 88, has been in office since 2013, when he was chosen to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.