To appreciate this story, you need to understand what the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is, who Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami is, who they serve, and the mind of Donald Trump. Only the first two are understood.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is the federal agency responsible for caring for those who come to the United States seeking protection, with a particular focus on immigrant children. It sits within the Department of Health and Human Services under the Administration for Children and Families, meaning it is a human-services agency, not an immigration-enforcement agency. ORR’s mandate comes from the Refugee Act of 1980, which charged the federal government with providing housing, medical care, education, and resettlement assistance to refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of trafficking, special immigrant visa holders, Cuban/Haitian entrants, and unaccompanied border crossing children.
ORR does not run its own shelters; Instead, it contracts with nonprofit, faith-based groups and state-licensed child-welfare agencies, Catholic Charities, to provide day care. Its work begins after the Border Patrol transfers a child into ORR custody, which must occur within 72 hours. ORR then places the child in a licensed facility, provides schooling and medical care, and works to find and screen a family sponsor, usually a parent or relative already in the US. The agency oversees these contracted programs through inspections, audits, licensing requirements and congressional oversight. In effect, the ORR operates as a national child-welfare system for unaccompanied minors, operating with humanitarian obligations rather than enforcement powers.
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami was founded in 1931, at the tail end of the Great Depression, to serve the most vulnerable people in South Florida. Its primary work focuses on families in crisis, single mothers, children in need of foster care, and immigrants facing deportation. As Miami became a major gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America, Catholic Charities became one of the most important humanitarian institutions in the region. In the 1960s, it became nationally known for its role in Operation Pedro Pan, caring for more than 14,000 Cuban children whose parents had fled Castro’s regime and sent them to the United States. Over the next several decades, the agency expanded its services to include addiction treatment, elder care, HIV/AIDS housing, homeless shelters, and comprehensive support for Haitian and other Caribbean immigrant communities.
Within this larger mission, Catholic Charities has been a long-standing federal partner in caring for unaccompanied immigrant children, operating shelters under contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for more than 60 years. In this role, the agency acted as a child-welfare provider: offering safe housing, schooling, medical care, counseling, and case management while ORR worked to find and vet a suitable family sponsor, usually a parent or relative already living in the United States.
Catholic Charities’ facilities were state-licensed and operated under federal child-protection standards, which make them part of the national safety net for unaccompanied minors arriving at the border. For decades, the Miami program was considered a stable, reliable partner in this system, reflecting the organization’s larger purpose: to serve vulnerable people regardless of religion, nationality or immigration status, guided by the principle that “we serve people not because they are Catholic, but because we are.”
Donald Trump is a little bitch who wants to bring all the pain he can’t control. He is currently at loggerheads with Pope Leo XIV, who has the nerve to call for peace while Trump starts a war of choice, I say to distract from the Epstein files, but that’s just my opinion.
An example of how Trump operates is his treatment of American colleges and universities, pulling or freezing federal research grants from schools like Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern and Brown until they do his bidding. He threatened to defund his own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. No wonder he wasn’t invited to the reunion.
Trump is losing the PR battle in his little war with the Pope. Trump is calling names while the Pope is quoting the Gospel. Trump literally said he was about the gospel as much as anyone.
“The Pope can say what he wants, and I want him to say what he wants, but I may disagree. The Pope has to understand that this is the real world.
I want to preach the gospel to him. I’m all about the gospel. I am about it as much as anyone. But I cannot allow — I am the president of the United States — I cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. And here’s the story – they won’t have it. And I think the Pope should be very pleased.”— Donald Trump
Not satisfied with the exchange of words, the Pope attempted to dribble into silence. Trump abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami. Agencies that contract with the government undergo an annual federal review under which funding can be changed to meet current conditions. This was not that. Outside of the normal review period, ORR notified Catholic Charities that its contract had been terminated. There was no suggestion of fraud or underperformance. Donald Trump made a point. The archdiocese said the shelter must close within three months.
“The U.S. government has abruptly decided to end its more than 60-year relationship with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski wrote in a statement for the Miami Herald editorial board.
Catholic Charities operates a system equivalent to a federally funded foster-care system nationwide. By defunding the Miami program. He is not harming the Catholic Church or the Pope. He is taking away essential services from thousands of people, most of whom are brown and black.
I’m writing this as another warm-up story on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who made a statement on a podcast calling for every black child to be taken from their parents and “re-parented.” Kennedy denied ever making the statement while testifying before Congress, but he is on videotape. If I seem a little angrier than usual during this story about Trump and Catholic Charities, I’m just warming up. stay tuned
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This post was Previously published in Culture.
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