USCCB: $38.3B ICE detention expansion is a ‘moral inflection point for our country’

February 21, 2026

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CWN Editor's Note: The chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration described a $38.3-billion expansion of the federal immigration detention system as a “moral inflection point for our country.”

“The thought of holding thousands of families in massive warehouses should challenge the conscience of every American,” Bishop Brendan Cahill of Victoria, Texas, said in his February 20 statement. “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.”

“We implore the Administration and Congress to lead with right reason, abandon this misuse of taxpayer funds, and to instead pursue a more just approach to immigration enforcement that truly respects human dignity, the sanctity of families, and religious liberty,” he added.

In releasing Bishop Cahill’s statement, the USCCB said that the expense “amounts to nearly fifty times the annual budget for the entire immigration court system and almost five times the funding provided this year to operate the federal prison system.”

“The plan partly entails opening eight ‘mega‑centers,’ each of which would be capable of detaining 7,000 to 10,000 people,” the USCCB added. “Aside from the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in the 1940s, such facilities have no precedent in American history.”

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