Border czar Tom Homan speaks during a news conference about ongoing immigration enforcement operations on Jan. 29, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. | Scott Olson/Getty Images
White House border czar Tom Homan is urging the Vatican to “stay out of immigration,” insisting that “they don’t know what they’re talking about” when it comes to the consequences of illegal immigration.
Speaking with reporters outside the White House Tuesday, Homan was asked about the now-deleted image President Donald Trump shared on social media over the weekend depicting him healing a man. Critics accused Trump of blasphemy by depicting himself as Jesus Christ, while the president insisted that he was merely portraying himself as a doctor.
Homan responded to the inquiry about the controversial image by identifying himself as a “lifelong Catholic” and weighing in on another one of the top stories of the week: Trump’s comments about Pope Leo XIV. “I wish they’d stay out of immigration,” Homan said, referring to the Vatican.
“They don’t know what they’re talking about because if they wore my shoes for 40 years and talked to a 9-year-old girl that got raped multiple times or stood in the back of a … tractor trailer with 19 dead aliens at my feet, including a 5-year-old boy that baked to death, if they understood the atrocities that happen on an open border, I think that their opinion would change,” he insisted. “They don’t understand. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.”
According to Homan, “When President Trump had the most secure border in the lifetime of this nation, right now, lives are being saved. He’s saving thousands of lives a year because he has a secure border. Human traffickers are out of business, right? The cartels are going bankrupt.”
While the Vatican has not weighed in on Trump’s immigration policies recently, Pope Leo XIV expressed concern about the administration’s mass deportations last year. Homan is not the only Trump administration official to suggest that the Vatican should refrain from weighing in on immigration policy in the United States.
During an interview on “Fox and Friends” Monday, Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that “the Pope has been critical of our immigration policy” while stressing that “ultimately, the immigration policy of the United States is set by Donald Trump.”
Vance urged the Vatican to “stick to matters of morality, to stick to matters of … what’s going on in the Catholic Church and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy.”
The comments from Homan and Vance come after Trump criticized the pontiff as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy” in a social media post over the weekend, specifically highlighting his disapproval of the conflict in Iran. Trump also described Pope Leo as “a very liberal person” and indicated that he was “not a fan” in subsequent remarks to the press.
For his part, the pontiff responded to Trump’s criticism by vowing to “continue to speak loudly against war.”
Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, made similar remarks about the Trump administration’s mass deportations earlier last year, which also drew a response from Homan. “I’ve got harsh words for the pope,” Homan said at the time. Accusing him of engaging in hypocrisy, Homan asked a series of rhetorical questions: “He’s got a wall around the Vatican does he not? So, he’s got a wall around to protect his people and himself, but we can’t have a wall around the United States?”
As he concluded his remarks about Francis’ comments about the Trump administration’s immigration policies last year, Homan remarked “I wish he’d stick to the Catholic Church and fix that and leave border enforcement to us.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com