Tom Homan, President Trump's border czar, told reporters outside the White House that he would welcome a sit-down with Pope Leo XIV, and then made clear exactly what he thinks the pontiff is missing about illegal immigration in America.

"I wish they'd stay out of immigration, they don't know what they're talking about," Homan said of Vatican leaders, as reported by Fox News Digital. The remarks came amid an escalating public dispute between the Trump administration and the Holy See over U.S. border enforcement and the Iran conflict.

Homan, a lifelong Catholic, did not mince words. He framed the disagreement not as a theological quarrel but as a gap in firsthand knowledge, the kind of knowledge that comes from decades on the border, not from behind the walls of Vatican City.

Forty years of border reality

The border czar drew on his long career in immigration enforcement to make a visceral case. He described scenes that most church officials will never witness:

"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 happened on the open border, I think their opinion would change."

That is not abstract policy debate. Those are specific horrors, a child sexually assaulted, nineteen people dead in a sweltering trailer, a five-year-old who never made it out alive. Homan's argument is that the people lecturing the administration about compassion have never had to see what an unsecured border actually produces.

He went further, crediting the current enforcement posture with saving lives. "Where President Trump had the most secure border in the lifetime of this nation, right now, lives are being saved," Homan said. He claimed Trump "is saving thousands of lives a year because he has a secure border."

The cartels, Homan added, are feeling the squeeze. "Human traffickers are out of business, right? The cartels are going bankrupt because of that secure border. I wish they'd understand that," he said. "Because if they did, I think they'd have a different opinion."

Those claims track with numbers cited elsewhere. Breitbart reported that Homan has publicly stated Trump's policies reduced illegal immigration by 96 percent. Trump's ambassador to the Vatican, Brian Burch, told the Holy See that the president "inherited a catastrophe at our border" and was elected to restore order and enforce the law.

What Pope Leo actually said

The pope has tried to stake out a middle position, at least rhetorically. "No one has said that the United States should have open borders," Pope Leo XIV told reporters. "I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter."

But his criticism of interior enforcement was sharper. The pope said that when people have been "living good lives, and many of them for 10, 15, 20 years, to treat them in a way that is extremely disrespectful, to say the least, and there's been some violence, unfortunately, I think that the bishops have been very clear in what they said." He invited "all people in the United States to listen to them."

That framing, acknowledging border sovereignty in theory while condemning enforcement in practice, is exactly the kind of contradiction that draws conservative frustration. If a country has the right to control its borders, what happens when millions of people cross those borders illegally and then settle in for a decade or two? The pope's answer appears to be: let them stay, and treat any disruption of that arrangement as disrespectful.

Homan's response cuts the other way. He wants the Vatican to understand that illegal immigration "is not a victimless crime." The victims, in his telling, are not just American communities absorbing the costs. They are the migrants themselves, the children exploited by traffickers, the families who pay cartels and die in the desert or in locked trailers.

This dispute between the White House and the Vatican has been building for weeks, touching not just immigration but also the Iran conflict and broader questions about the pope's political role.

Trump and Vance weigh in

President Trump did not hold back. On Sunday, he posted on Truth Social: "Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy." In a follow-up, Trump wrote: "Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It's hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it's hurting the Catholic Church."

Speaking to reporters, Trump broadened the critique to include the Iran situation. "We don't like a pope that's going to say that it's OK to have a nuclear weapon," he said. "We don't want a pope that says crime is OK in our cities. I don't like it."

Vice President JD Vance, himself a Catholic convert who has written publicly about his faith journey, struck a more diplomatic but no less firm tone. Vance told Fox News's Bret Baier on Monday:

"I certainly think that in some cases, it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality... and let the president of the United States stick to dictating American public policy."

Vance acknowledged the relationship remains functional. "We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time. I think that's a totally reasonable thing," he said. He has visited the Vatican twice as vice president, including a meeting with Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City on May 19, 2025.

That combination, Vance's measured language paired with a clear boundary, reflects the administration's broader posture. The White House is not picking a fight with the Catholic Church. It is telling the Vatican's leadership to stay in its lane on matters of American domestic policy.

The pope pushes back

Pope Leo XIV, for his part, showed no sign of backing down. On Monday, he told reporters: "I have no fear of the Trump administration."

He framed his public statements as moral imperatives, not political attacks. "The things that I say are certainly not meant as attacks on anyone," the pope said. He added that he would "continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to problems."

"Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there's a better way."

Noble words. But Homan's point stands: standing up and saying "there's a better way" carries more weight when you've seen the consequences of the alternative up close. The open-border years produced dead children in trailers, sexual assaults along smuggling routes, and cartel profits measured in billions. Those realities don't fit neatly into a homily about dialogue and multilateral relationships.

Newsmax reported that the clash has become part of a broader, escalating public feud between the administration and the pope over both immigration and foreign policy. Fox News Digital reached out to the Holy See for comment on Homan's remarks; no response was noted.

The tension also extends to the Iran conflict, where the pope has been vocal in criticizing the administration's posture. That thread, Pope Leo's sharp words about Trump's Iran rhetoric, has added fuel to an already contentious relationship between Washington and the Vatican.

The real divide

Strip away the headlines and the social media posts, and the dispute comes down to a basic question: Who bears the cost of lax immigration enforcement?

Vatican officials speak from a position of moral authority. They invoke the dignity of migrants. They call for compassion. They urge dialogue. All of that sounds right in a cathedral.

But the people who live with the consequences, border communities, law enforcement officers, the migrants themselves who are exploited along the way, experience something different. They experience the 9-year-old girl Homan described. They experience the 19 bodies in a trailer. They experience cartel-controlled smuggling corridors that treat human beings as cargo.

Homan said he welcomes a conversation with the pope or any Vatican leader. "I welcome discussion with any of them, because they don't understand illegal immigration is not a victimless crime," he said.

That invitation is worth taking seriously. If Vatican leaders genuinely believe they have a better answer on immigration, they should be willing to hear from the man who spent four decades picking up the pieces of the policy they prefer.

Compassion that ignores consequences is not compassion. It's a press release.