U.S. Vice President JD Vance participates in a fireside chat with Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on Nov. 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 20, 2025 / 14:25 pm (CNA).
Vice President JD Vance called border security “humanitarian” in response to comments from Pope Leo XIV about immigration policy in the United States.
“Border security is not just good for American citizens,” Vance said in an interview with Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle on Nov. 20. “It is the humanitarian thing to do for the entire world.”
Pope Leo XIV on Nov. 18 asked Americans to listen to U.S. bishops’ message opposing “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and urged humane treatment of migrants.
“No one has said that the United States should have open borders. I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter,” the pope said.
Vance said he has followed the Holy Father’s comments closely as “a devout Catholic.”
“You may not know it, judging purely from the comments of some people on social media, but the Catholic Church’s views on this are actually quite clear,” Vance said.
“It’s that, yes, you must treat immigrants humanely,” Vance said. “On the other hand, every nation has the right to control its borders. And obviously, how you strike that balance is very important, but there’s a lot of room there to actually control your own borders for the sake of your own people.”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) special message affirmed that countries have a “responsibility to regulate their borders and establish a just and orderly immigration system.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “the more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner.”
U.S. bishops said they lamented the conditions in detention centers and lack of access to pastoral care. Bishops also said they “are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants.”
Vance said “open borders” do not promote “[human] dignity, even of the illegal migrants themselves,” and cited drug and sex trafficking.
“When you empower the cartels and when you empower the human traffickers, whether in the United States or anywhere else, you’re empowering the very worst people in the world,” Vance said.
“My priority, my charge is to look after the people of the United States of America, and you cannot do that if you’re flooding the country with a ton of illegal immigrants and the drugs and the crime that they bring,” Vance said.
According to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem this year, as of October 2025, nearly half a million immigrants without legal status in the country had been arrested. “70% of those individuals have criminal charges against them or have been convicted of those criminal charges,” Noem said.
The administration provides regular updates on “the worst of the worst” criminals they apprehend among the immigrant population without legal status in the country.
Meanwhile, multiple research studies have shown that overall, immigrants do not commit more crimes than U.S.-born people and are actually less likely to commit crimes. Stanford University economist Ran Abramitzky found that since the 1960s, immigrants are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born people.
A study by the libertarian Cato Institute that reviewed more than a decade of data found that immigrants, including those who enter the country illegally, have a lower crime rate than the native-born population.
For example, in 2023, the incarceration rate for native-born Americans was 1,221 for every 100,000 people. For legal immigrants, it was 319 for every 100,000, and for immigrants in the country illegally, it was 613 for every 100,000.
“Despite obstacles and prejudices, generations of immigrants have made enormous contributions to the well-being of our nation,” the U.S. bishops said.
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