ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Catholic bishops in Florida are asking for a pause on immigration enforcement for the holidays. They sent a letter to President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis with the request.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops made an appeal to the president and governor to pause immigration enforcement during the holidays
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Eight bishops from around Florida, including St. Petersburg and Orlando, signed the appeal
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They argue the border is secure and enforcement efforts are now leading to the arrest of immigrants who haven’t committed crimes
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A White House spokesperson has said President Trump is keeping his promise to deport criminal illegal aliens<\/p>\n
“A pause during this holy season can lower the temperature within our partisan divisions, ease the fear and anxiety present in many of our immigrant and even non-immigrant families and allow all of us to celebrate with greater joy the advent of the Prince of Peace,” the appeal reads.<\/p>\n
Eight bishops from around Florida, including St. Petersburg’s Gregory Parkes and Orlando’s John Noonan, signed it. It’s a move that’s being praised by religious leaders in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n
“I’m thrilled with what they did,” said Rev. Ben Atherton-Zeman of the Unitarian Universalist Church of St. Petersburg. “I stand side by side with my Catholic brothers and sisters on many issues, and this is one of them.”<\/p>\n
But the White House is showing no signs of backing down. A spokesperson told the Associated Press via e-mail, “President Trump was elected based on his promise to the American people to deport criminal illegal aliens. And he’s keeping that promise.”<\/p>\n
The letter from the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops argues that enforcement operations are now leading to the arrest of people who aren’t criminals.<\/p>\n
“It’s not asking them to reverse their policies, which we hope they would, but we’re just asking them for a pause so that we can get beyond the Christmas holidays without people being paralyzed by fear,” said Archbishop Thomas Wenski of the Archdiocese of Miami.<\/p>\n
The DeSantis administration has not yet indicated if they will be changing enforcement protocols during the timeframe requested in the letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Catholic bishops in Florida are asking for a pause on immigration enforcement for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1841,2287,115,139,596,99,2718,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-94480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-immigration","9":"tag-local-politics","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-orlando","12":"tag-pinellas-county","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-sarah-blazonis","15":"tag-st-pete","16":"tag-st-pete-headlines","17":"tag-st-pete-news","18":"tag-st-petersburg","19":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","20":"tag-st-petersburg-news","21":"tag-tampa","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}