To appreciate this story, you’ll have to understand what the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is, who the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami is, who they serve, and the mind of Donald Trump.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is the federal agency responsible for caring for people who arrive in the United States seeking protection, with a special focus on unaccompanied migrant children. It sits within the Department of Health and Human Services, under the Administration for Children and Families, meaning it is a human‑services agency, not an immigration-enforcement arm. ORR’s mandate comes from the Refugee Act of 1980, which charged the federal government with providing housing, medical care, education, and resettlement support for refugees, asylees, trafficking survivors, Special Immigrant Visa holders, Cuban/Haitian entrants, and children who cross the border without a parent.
ORR does not run its own shelters; instead, it contracts with nonprofits, faith‑based groups, and state‑licensed child‑welfare agencies, organizations like Catholic Charities, to provide day‑to‑day care. Its work begins after Border Patrol transfers a child to ORR custody, which must happen within 72 hours. ORR then places the child in a licensed facility, provides schooling and medical care, and works to locate and vet a family sponsor, usually a parent or relative already in the U.S. The agency oversees these contracted programs through inspections, audits, licensing requirements, and congressional oversight. In practice, ORR functions as a national child‑welfare system for unaccompanied minors, operating with humanitarian obligations rather than enforcement powers.
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami was founded in 1931, at the tail end of the Great Depression, with a mission to serve the most vulnerable people in South Florida. Its early work focused on families in crisis, unwed mothers, children needing foster placement, and immigrants facing deportation. As Miami became a major gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America, Catholic Charities evolved into one of the region’s most important humanitarian institutions. During the 1960s, it became nationally known for its role in Operation Pedro Pan, caring for more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children who were sent to the United States by parents fleeing Castro’s regime. Over the decades that followed, the agency expanded its services to include addiction treatment, elder care, HIV/AIDS housing, homeless shelters, and comprehensive support for Haitian and other Caribbean immigrant communities.
Within this broader mission, Catholic Charities has been a long‑standing federal partner in caring for unaccompanied migrant children, operating shelters under contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for more than 60 years. In this role, the agency functioned as a child‑welfare provider: offering safe housing, schooling, medical care, counseling, and case management while ORR worked to locate and vet a suitable family sponsor, usually a parent or relative already living in the United States.
Catholic Charities’ facilities were state‑licensed and operated under federal child‑protection standards, making them part of the national safety net for minors who arrived alone at the border. For decades, the Miami program was considered a stable, reliable partner in this system, reflecting the organization’s broader purpose: to serve vulnerable people regardless of religion, nationality, or immigration status, guided by the principle that “we serve people not because they are Catholic, but because we are.”
Trump is currently in a spat with Pope Leo XIV, who has the nerve to call for peace while Trump has started a war of choice. Imagine that.
An example of how Trump operates is his treatment of American colleges and universities, pulling or freezing federal research grants from schools like Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, and Brown until they agree to do his bidding. He threatened to defund his own alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.
Trump is losing the public relations battle in his little war with the Pope. He is calling names while the Pope is quoting the Gospel. Trump literally said he’s about the Gospel as much as anyone.
“The Pope can say what he wants, and I want him to say what he wants, but I can disagree. The Pope has to understand that this is the real world.
I want him to preach the Gospel. I’m all about the Gospel. I’m about it as much as anybody can be. But I can’t allow — I’m the president of the United States — I can’t allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And here’s the story — they won’t have. And I would think the pope should be very happy.”
Not being satisfied with an exchange of words, Trump is essentially telling the Pope to shut up and dribble. He abruptly terminated an $11 million contract with the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami. The entities that contract with the government undergo annual federal reviews under which funding may be altered to meet current circumstances. This was not that. Outside the normal review period, ORR notified Catholic Charities that its contract was canceled. There was no suggestion of fraud or underperformance. Donald Trump was making a point. The Archdiocese said the shelter would have to shut down within three months.
“The U.S. government has abruptly decided to end more than 60 years of relationship with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski wrote in a statement for the Miami Herald editorial board.
“The Archdiocese of Miami’s services for unaccompanied minors have been recognized for their excellence and have served as a model for other agencies throughout the country.
Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched. Yet, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities’ services for unaccompanied minors has been stripped of funding and will be forced to shut down within three months.” — Archbishop Thomas Wenski
Catholic Charities nationwide operates a system equivalent to a federally funded foster-care system. By defunding the Miami program, he isn’t harming the Catholic Church or the Pope. He’s taking away needed services from thousands of people, most of whom happen to be brown and Black.