Trump’s plan for mass migrant deportation is ‘disgraceful’

Pope Francis has said that Donald Trump’s plans to deport illegal immigrants from the US would be “shameful” if they were to come to fruition.

Speaking on Italian television from his Vatican headquarters, Francis said that if the plans go ahead, Trump would make “unfortunate people who don’t pay the bill”.

“That’s not right. That’s not how you solve problems,” he said.

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

In a message to Trump on Monday, Pope Francis offered him “greetings” and asked him to lead a society “with no room for hatred, discrimination or exclusion” and to promote “peace and reconciliation between peoples”.

It is known that the Pope loves the subject of immigrants. In a public hearing last August, he said it was a “grave sin” to “systematically work in every way to keep immigrants away”.

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

Referring to Trump’s promise to build a wall along the Mexican border to prevent migrants from traveling to the US, Francis said: “I can only say that this man is not a Christian if he said these things. We have to see if he 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.

Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, the Pope refused to say whether people should vote for Trump or Democratic challenger Kamala Harris, only asking people to choose the “lesser evil” according to their conscience.

In the conversation on Sunday evening, Francis also touched on the issue of migration to Europe, he said that there is “a lot of cruelty” and that everyone had “the right to stay at home and the right to emigrate”.

The Pope added that some of the southern European countries that receive the most arrivals of migrants “do not have children and need labor”.

“In some of these countries, there are entire towns that are empty. A good and well-thought-out migrant 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 he said he did not know why it was so difficult to make peace.

“I don’t know why… it’s as if there is an international push for self-destruction,” the Pope said.

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