Chaput: Question ICE raids

Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 14, 2006 at midnight

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Catholics should "vigorously question the timing, manner and focus" of the Swift raids, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput said Wednesday, adding that the tactic won't solve the immigration problem.

"Staged on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe and barely two weeks before Christmas, these raids have disrupted hundreds of families in the immigrant community and frightened many thousands more," Chaput said in a statement.

Chaput has traveled the state this year holding immigration forums. His first was at Our Lady of Peace parish in Greeley, which has a mostly immigrant flock and where many families affected by the Swift raid have congregated.

He's also spoken to a Vail Valley audience of immigrants and well-to-do residents; at a mainly Anglo parish in Centennial; and at a farm community church on the Plains.

Chaput questioned whether the raids were really to stop identity theft.

"Most of the real criminals - the people who steal and sell false identities so that undocumented immigrants can find work - were not among those arrested," he said.

The archbishop also repeated what he has said in his church-sponsored immigration forums: The Church "supports our nation's right to regulate immigration and secure our borders for the common good of all citizens."

However, the raids aren't serious reform, he said.

"Dramatic, get-tough arrests of more and more average workers will not solve our immigration crisis," Chaput said. "In fact, such actions often engender more confusion and bitterness, and they don't strike at the root of the real issue: an immigration system that seems disconnected from the human and business realities of the American economy."

Raids "put a human face on the flaws in our immigration system."

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