Trump’s anti-migrant plan would be a ‘calamity,’ Pope says

Pope Francis said Sunday that US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for large-scale expulsions of undocumented migrants would be “a calamity.”

“If it is true, it will be a calamity, because it would make poor unfortunates who have nothing pay,” the pope said in an interview on Italian television.

Donald Trump, who begins his second term on Monday, has pledged to adopt an uncompromising stance towards the approximately eleven million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

He has promised to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history,” although any deportation program faces possible legal challenges and the potential refusal of some countries to accept deportees.

Pope Francis, who received Donald Trump at the Vatican during his first term in 2017 for a half-hour interview, has already criticized him for his positions against migrants.

In February 2016, he said: “Anyone who only wants to build walls and not bridges is not a Christian.”

Last year, he made a rare intervention in the US election campaign by calling anti-migrant attitudes “madness” and criticizing right-wing US Catholic figures for their overly conservative positions.

Donald Trump also promised to end birthright citizenship, which he called “ridiculous” despite being guaranteed by the Constitution.