In Minnesota, US cardinals and pope’s ambassador decry mass deportations and call for reconciliation

ST PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Two American cardinals and the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S. denounced the mass deportations in Minnesota under the federal government's immigration crackdown, but they urged everyone to repair strained relations and work together toward humane solutions.

In St. Paul on Friday, Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington addressed growing concerns with immigration enforcement while highlighting the need to be peacemakers on the polarizing issue after a Mass for migrants he celebrated with his fellow prelates and the Twin Cities’ archbishop.

McElroy depicted this winter’s enforcement surge as “almost a siege” that unfolded in “literally the heartland of our country.”

“Catholic teaching supports the nation’s right to control its border and, in these cases, to deport those who’ve been convicted of serious crimes,” he said. “Seeking to deport millions of men and women and children — families who often lived here for decades, many children who don’t know other countries — is contrary to Catholic faith and, more fundamentally, contrary to basic human dignity.”

McElroy joined Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey; Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States; Archbishop Bernard Hebda of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and more than two dozen other Catholic bishops for the Mass. A part of their show of solidarity with migrants, the morning service was held in the chapel of the University of St. Thomas, where they were attending a conference.

“I’m very proud, personally, to see our church, you know, be on the side of those who suffer,” Pierre said, adding that Pope Leo XIV agreed with the U.S. bishops’ support of migrants.

In his homily, Hebda spoke of his anger when migrant communities were too fearful to come to church while “ masked men ” — a reference to federal law enforcement — roamed the streets and violence erupted during this winter’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.

But he encouraged the faithful — including seminarians, members of the college community and school principals packing the pews — to cultivate kindness and focus on peace.

“That ministry of reconciliation has to be ours, in the Twin Cities and around the world,” Hebda preached.

Minnesota became a global flashpoint of tensions over arrests and deportations. An immigration enforcement surge saw thousands of federal officers in daily confrontations with activists and protesters, two of whom — Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens — were killed in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Many faith leaders across denominations joined the protests, including about 100 clergy who were arrested after refusing orders to disperse at Minnesota’s largest airport during one of the biggest days of mobilization last month.

The local Catholic leadership, however, struck a more conciliatory tone.

In the immediate aftermath of both fatal shootings, Hebda highlighted the need “to lower the temperature of rhetoric” and “to rid our hearts of the hatreds and prejudices that prevent us from seeing each other as brothers and sisters.” He pointedly noted that held true “for our undocumented neighbors” as much as “for the men and women who have the unenviable responsibility of enforcing our laws.”

Similarly, on Friday, the prelates spoke of praying for everyone who has been affected — from the families of those killed to migrants and those assisting them to “the ICE men and women, too,” in McElroy’s words referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

“We all need to engage in healing and reconciliation,” he added. “It will take a long time.”

Asked whether Catholics — the majority of whom voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 — might see advocacy for migrants as involving the church in politics, the cardinals said religion and politics both should be about the good of society.

The first allegiance is to God alone, Tobin added, but Scriptures exhort more often to do no harm to the foreigner and welcome the stranger than to love one’s neighbor.

“The Creator figured that there was a better chance we’d love people who we thought looked like us. We had to be reminded frequently about everybody else,” Tobin said.

Advocacy for migrants was a priority for the late Pope Francis, who had sparred over U.S. border policies with Trump ever since the latter was first a candidate for the White House a decade ago.

Under Leo, the first U.S. pontiff, the Catholic Church has continued to call for the humane treatment of immigrants around the world and for immigration reform in the United States specifically — something that has eluded Congress for decades.

“The longer we refuse to grapple with this issue in the political arena, the more divisive and violent it becomes,” Hebda had remarked in January.

McElroy and Tobin, alongside Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, recently took to task the Trump administration over morality in foreign policy. In a January statement, they said U.S. military action in Venezuela, threats over Greenland and cuts in foreign aid risked bringing vast suffering instead of peace.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas before Catholic cardinals and bishops celebrated a Mass in solidarity with migrants in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell'Orto)

Seminarians, members of the University of St. Thomas and school principals participate in a Mass in solidarity with migrants celebrated by three Catholic cardinals and the Twin Cities' archbishop at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell'Orto)

From left, Catholic Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin celebrate a Mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell'Orto)

Cardinal Robert speaks to reporters after a mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin celebrate a mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Cardinal Christophe Pierre speaks to reporters after a mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre and Joseph Tobin celebrate a mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

Cardinals Robert McElroy, Christophe Pierre, Joseph Tobin and Archbishop Bernard Hebda, and speak to reporters after a mass in solidarity with migrants at the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas on Friday, Feb. 27, 2026 in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

DENVER (AP) — Renee Good loved sparkles and laughter and any excuse for a celebration. She loved pretty much everyone she met, and was late for pretty much everything.

“She had this way of making you feel special and loved that I didn’t even understand that until we lost her,” Donna Ganger said Friday of her daughter, who was shot and killed by an immigration officer during the federal crackdown in Minneapolis.

She was “slow to anger, quick to love, quick to care,” said her father, Tim Ganger. “That's the essence of who she was.”

Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed Jan. 7 as immigration agents surged through the Minneapolis area, sparking waves of protests. Her death and that of another protester, Alex Pretti, just weeks later sparked outrage across the country and calls to rein in immigration enforcement. Good and Pretti were both U.S. citizens.

Good's parents and two of her brothers, Brent and Luke Ganger, met AP journalists Friday in Denver for a long interview.

“It’s going to be hard in the future,” Donna Ganger said. “It’s going to be kind of a constant pain.”

Good, who graduated from college later in life, was volunteering in a local school district and working as a substitute teacher when she was killed, her parents said.

“She was working so hard to get her education, and then she was finally able to use it, and I could just tell how happy she was and how fulfilled,” Donna Ganger said.

Her family said they hoped her death, and how they spoke about her life, would help inspire change in a polarized country.

The family is “a very American blend,” Luke Ganger said in testimony to Congress. “We vote differently, and we rarely completely agree on the finer details of what it means to be a citizen of this country.”

Yet “we have always treated each other with love and respect,” he said.

Perhaps, they said Friday, they can inspire others to get along as they do.

“Our purpose through this whole tragic, difficult, unbelievable time, is to have something good come out of this," Tim Ganger said. “Otherwise the senselessness of this is overwhelming.”

On the morning of the shooting, as immigration raids and protests were flaring across the city, Good's partner, Becca Good, has said they had stopped their car in the street to support neighbors during an immigration operation.

Video shows Renee Good in a red SUV blocking part of the road and repeatedly honking her horn.

Two immigration officers get out of a truck and one orders Good to open her door. She reverses briefly, then turns the steering wheel as the officer says again, “get out of the car.” Almost simultaneously, Becca Good, standing in the street shouts, “drive, baby, drive!”

When Good begins pulling forward, an ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and fires at least two shots into the car, killing Good.

Good, her 6-year-old son and her partner — the women were not legally married, according to a family lawyer, but referred to one another as wives — had only recently relocated to Minneapolis from Kansas City, Missouri, settling a quiet residential street in a tight-knit neighborhood known for its activism.

In social media accounts, Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.

FILE - Flowers and photos are left at a memorial site for Renee Good on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)