Maybe you could have added something about the appalling mistreatment of would-be immigrants themselves at the hands of the coyotes.
And this brings us to one more issue from a Catholic point of view: the scandal of lawlessness.
Most people from Mexico and Central America who enter this country illegally, do so, even from the outset, by becoming enmeshed in a web of criminal conspiracy, either as cooperators or as victims, and usually both.
They pay international criminal traffickers to guide them across into the U.S. On the way, since they’ve put themselves into the hands of truly vicious men, they’re often sexually exploited or raped or robbed or beaten. Perhaps they arrive in debt to the coyote, who then makes them an offer they can’t refuse: you can become a “mule” and transport drugs, weapons and other contraband; or you can be a prostitute and work the customers until your debt is paid. Or you could end up in a ditch with a bullet in your head. Your choice, amigo.
Then the illegals turn to the professional crooks, often acting in concert with systematically corrupted U.S. officials, to get fraudulent papers, because none of them are truly “undocumented” for long. They engage in the ”necessary” forgery, fraud, and identity theft. "Honest and young and just looking for a job" --- as some, or many, may have been in the beginning --- they are drawn deeper and deeper into moral disintegration.
From the point of view of the one essential thing--- the person’s soul --- what is the real cost? Multiply lying and fraud: initially under duress, at first with shame, then for advantage, then habitually, then cynically, then callously, then --- you have a subculture corrupted from top to bottom, from the Catholic Bishops of Mexico to the Democratic and Republican National Committees in Washington, DC, down to Chico from Michoacan with a little bag of cocaine sewn into his backpack, and the youngest whore on the streets of Phoenix.
Multiply this by a million. Call it a “Structure of Injustice.” Please. Call it “Institutionalized Violence.” But don’t call it “America Welcomes the Immigrant and the Stranger” because this is not America’s heritage as a Nation under Law and this is not God’s commandment.