US Roman Catholic bishops on Wednesday charged that immigration raids on US workplaces break up families and disrupt communities, without addressing the country's flawed immigration system.
"The humanitarian costs of these raids are immeasurable and unacceptable in a civilized society," Bishop John Wester, chairman of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) committee on migration, said.

"I call upon the Department of Homeland Security and President (George W.) Bush to reconsider the use of these worksite enforcement raids, and without the implementation of necessary human rights protections, to please abandon them," he told a news conference.

"We ask them and the country, including the presidential candidates, to again turn their energies for building support for a comprehensive overhaul of our broken immigration system," he said.

The Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has focused on rounding up illegals in raids and sending them home since attempts to reform US immigration laws fell apart last year, said Wester.

In a single raid in Mississippi last month, some 595 illegal immigrants -- many of them Latinos -- were arrested by ICE agents, the agency says on its website.

In the past 10 months, thousands of illegal workers have been netted in the raids, according to news reports.


The bishops complained that the "sweeping nature of the raids -- which often involve hundreds of law enforcement personnel with weapons -- strike fear in immigrant communities and make it difficult for those arrested to secure basic due process protections, including legal counsel."

The raids disrupt communities, including legal permanent residents and US citizens, and brutally break up families, often Hispanics, who make up the largest immigrant group and nearly half of whom are Catholic.

"Husbands are separated from their wives, children from their parents. Many families never recover; others never reunite," Wester said.

"Imagine a child coming home from school and his primary care-giver is not there," he said.

But the bishops rigorously denied they were pushing for immigration reforms out of fear the crackdowns would whittle away at congregation sizes.

"The issue that we're trying to recruit and fill our pews is not based in reality. The reality is that people are showing up at our parishes, our social services programs, seeking assistance," said Latino Bishop James Tamayo, whose diocese is located on the border between the United States and Mexico.

Tamayo expressed support for immigration officials who undertake a difficult but essential task, but insisted that workplace raids violated human dignity.

"The Catholic church has always supported the right of a nation to protect its sovereignty and to secure its borders," he said.

"Such enforcement must be tempered, however, in a way that balances the national interest with the basic God-given right and dignity of human beings. These raids fail to meet this test," he said.
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