Louisiana Voice

As if the Catholic Church did not have enough of an image problem with the ongoing litigation in the Archdiocese of New Orleans over long-running, rampant sex abuse, now comes news that the longtime refugee resettlement program may be coming to an end, along with hints that the program may have been unknowingly abetting human trafficking.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) announced on Monday that it is terminating its half-century partnership with the federal government to serve refugees and children because of the Trump administration’s sudden ending of funding for the program.

Adding to the disappointment of seeing the program terminated was the banner headline by the Gateway Pundit that accused the program of trafficking “hundreds of thousands” of victims, including children.

THE GATEWAY PUNDIT, launched in 2004, is the fifth-largest conservative news website in the U.S. and is known for publishing falsehoods, hoaxes and conspiracy theories. It also settled a defamation lawsuit with two Georgia election workers. It attempted to unsuccessfully in 2020 to declare bankruptcy but a federal judge said the company was acting in “bad faith” and was attempting to abuse bankruptcy protections in order to evade potentially huge legal bills from the defamation lawsuits.

Still, with the New Orleans lawsuits against the archdiocese demanding front pate coverage, and with the clutter of other lawsuit against various archdioceses across the map, the inference by The Gateway Pundit has to be given some consideration even if its claim isn’t exactly original.

Trafficking is an admitted problem in society and it’s getting worse. The big surprise is in learning that most human trafficking is not sex trafficking, but labor. Victims’ passports (if they even have passports – many don’t) are often seized by the traffickers, leaving them trapped with no place to run or hide. Thus, they are forced into arduous, never-ending labor. Many of those forced into labor are children.

Last August, a REPORT by the inspector general for Homeland Security conceded that the agency could not account for more than 320,000 unaccompanied migrant children who it considered to be at “higher risk for trafficking, exploitation or forced labor.”

The USCCB and Catholic Charities reaped billions of dollars from the U.S. government in resettling illegal and undocumented persons in recent years – $1.4 billion in 2024 alone.

“As a national effort, we simply cannot sustain the work on our own at current levels or in current form,” conference President Archbishop Timothy Broglio, said in a statement. “We will work to identify alternative means of support for the people the federal government has already admitted to these programs.”

The program is projected to shut down by the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30)