The US bishops' chairman on migration speaks against a $38.3 billion plan to expand immigration detention; precedent only in WWII-era detention of Japanese Americans.
Newly released details show the US federal government intends to double federal immigration detention capacity, spending an estimated $38.3 billion from last year’s reconciliation bill to implement a new detention model by the end of Fiscal Year 2026. The funding level is nearly 50 times the annual budget for the entire immigration court system and almost five times this year’s funding to operate the federal prison system.
The proposal includes opening eight “mega-centers,” each capable of detaining between 7,000 and 10,000 people. Aside from the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during the 1940s, facilities of this size would have little precedent in U.S. history.
In response, Bishop Brendan J. Cahill, chairman of the Committee on Migration for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, urged the Administration and Congress to reconsider.
Bishop Cahill, who serves as bishop of the Diocese of Victoria, Texas, has led the bishops’ migration committee since 2023, overseeing the conference’s advocacy and pastoral outreach on immigration and refugee policy.
Warehouses for families
“These plans are deeply troubling,” Bishop Cahill said in a statement released February 20. “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. The private prison industry is who stands to gain the most from this supercharging of immigration detention.”
He noted that in November the U.S. bishops had opposed what they described as indiscriminate mass deportation and raised concerns about detention conditions, including limited access to pastoral care. The conference has repeatedly opposed the expansion of family detention, citing its harmful impact on children.
“The thought of holding thousands of families in massive warehouses should challenge the conscience of every American,” Cahill said. “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.”
He called on federal leaders to “lead with right reason,” abandon what he described as a misuse of taxpayer funds, and instead pursue immigration enforcement policies that respect human dignity, family unity, and religious liberty.
The Administration has not yet issued a public response to the bishop’s remarks.
