Pope Leo XIV appears to be taking a page out of President Trump’s very successful immigration handbook and promoting the need for legal immigration during a trip to the port of Arguineguín.
According to Breitbart, Pope Leo XIV is referring to President Trump as the reference point in immigration politics with a similar stance to the Republicans. During an appearance at the port of Arguineguín in Spain’s Canary Islands, Pope Leo XIV denounced human traffickers and defended the right not to be forced to leave one’s homeland.
Pope Leo XIV had said that human dignity “requires legal and safe routes, rescue and assistance, real cooperation against traffickers, effective protection for victims, serious processes of welcome and integration, and policies that allow each person to live with dignity in his or her own land.”
The emphasis on legal is something that President Trump has been focused on since entering office, with a stricter, enforcement-first approach that solved the country’s historic illegal immigration crisis during the previous administration. Pope Leo XIV also echoed President Trump’s often stated point that countries need to clean up their own messes that are causing citizens to leave in the first place.
He wrote on social media platform X, “Every boat that arrives brings a question along with the migrants: what kind of world have we built, if so many brothers and sisters must risk death to seek life?” He added, “We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead. Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.”
Pope Leo XIV argues that while there is a right to seek refuge, it does not solve the initial problem. He added, “The right to remain in one’s own home without hunger, without war, without persecution, without violence, without the land becoming uninhabitable, without corruption stealing the bread of the poor, without weapons destroying the future of children.”
Pope Leo XIV’s wording during his appearance at the “dock of shame” is reminiscent of President Trump’s enforcement-first approach to immigration. It’s becoming clear that President Trump’s framework remains a central point in the global immigration debate.
