Pope Francis slams Trump’s deportations in letter to US bishops

VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis sharply criticized US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in an unusual open letter sent to America’s Catholic bishops on Tuesday.

The pope, who earlier this year called Trump’s plan to millions of migrants a “disgrace”, said it was wrong to assume that all undocumented immigrants were criminals.

“I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church … not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,” said the pontiff.

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Francis, pope since 2013, has been sharply critical of Trump’s immigration policies, and in 2016 said the president was “not Christian” in his views on immigration.

In Tuesday’s letter, the pontiff called the immigration crackdown a “major crisis” for the US.

“What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly,” said the pope.

Trump, a Republican, stormed back into the White House promising to deport millions of immigrants in the US illegally.

He issued a flurry of executive actions to redirect military resources to support the mass deportation effort and empowered US immigration officers to make more arrests, including at schools, churches and hospitals.

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Likewise, Germany is also planning deportation of a group of convicted criminals of Afghan nationality to their home country for the second time since the Taliban took power, newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported earlier on January 24.

The newspaper quoted the interior ministry as saying it was working on the measure with the help of a regional partner and eyeing a departure shortly before Germany’s February 23 general election.