Fr. Pat Murphy, executive director of the Centro Scalabrini – Casa del Migrante, introduces the Casa’s new program – the Scalabrini Education Center for Migrants (CESFOM) – which provides migrants with further education, job training, employment certification, and opportunities for spiritual development.
This essay examines and challenges the Trump administration’s recent changes to US immigration policy, particularly the end of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain countries such as Haiti and Nicaragua. According to author Donald Kerwin, CMS’s executive director, “TPS represents a pillar of the besieged US refugee protection system because it honors, however imperfectly, the well-established responsibility of states to offer safe haven to persons who would be endangered if returned to their home countries.” However, the Trump administration has sought to “make America great again” by abandoning a central feature of the American identity – its openness to the world’s oppressed, persecuted, and imperiled.
