By CHRISTOPHER MANION
A recent exchange between two prominent figures in Florida has exposed a seamy underside of the pro-illegal immigration efforts of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy and their connections with Joe Biden supporters.
In the early 1960s, a clandestine American effort spirited some 14,000 Cuban children between the ages of six and twelve out of Cuba after Castro seized power. Most of them came to Florida, where they were cared for by agencies including the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami. The effort was dubbed “Operation Pedro Pan” (Spanish for “Peter Pan”).
This past February 7, pro-life Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Lt. Gov. Jeanette M. Nunez, and Attorney General Ashley Moody hosted a meeting with Cuban-Americans who had benefited from the operation. Gov. DeSantis sharply criticized the Biden administration’s “largest human smuggling operation in American history,” noting Biden’s cooperation with Mexican Coyote drug cartels that traffic not only illegal aliens, but massive amounts of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the country.
These illegals have “no papers . . . nobody knows who the hell any of these people are,” DeSantis said. Moreover, he said, “this is not like Mexicans coming across by and large. These are people from all over the world. I mean, when we were [on the Texas border with Mexico], we saw people from Africa, the Middle East, South America, you name it.”
When they’re asked at the border, where do they want to go, “a lot of them said, ‘Florida’,” — but the government of Florida has no idea who they are or where they’re going.
“You interdict and then you give them to the feds and then the feds will . . . fly people in the middle of the night . . . and drop them off. They will provide [buses]. . . and then put into different communities” without the permission or knowledge of local officials.
They’re clearly not “refugees,” DeSantis continued. Like untold millions of other people worldwide, “they just want to be in America.” For that reason, it’s “Florida’s position that we don’t want to be facilitating [these] very harmful policies, not only in terms of the rule of law, not only in terms of what drug cartels may be introducing into our country, but also the treatment of people who were basically being trafficked.”
Mexico’s lethal Coyote smuggling gangs are in full control of the flow of illegals through Mexico to the U.S. border. They charge some $5,000 per illegal. The women and children are often abused, assaulted, or even recruited to be prostitutes or “mules” carrying lethal drugs across the border to earn a discount in their fare.
In one crucial observation, DeSantis rejected a comparison often made by advocates of illegal immigration. “[T]here’s a lot of bad analogies that get made in modern political discourse, but to equate what’s going on with the southern border with mass trafficking of humans, illegal entry, drugs, all this other stuff, with Operation Pedro Pan, quite frankly, is disgusting. It’s wrong. It is not even close to the same thing.”
Sixty years ago, he said, “we had people that were coming, because they were fleeing a Communist dictatorship that was persecuting them. Those are not illegal immigrants. These are people that were sanctioned to come by the United States government. We were doing it because it was the right thing to do. But it was also consistent with our national interest in fighting Communism.”
Those being trafficked by the Biden administration, on the other hand, are not refugees. “These are basically illegal entrants,” he said. And “it’s important to point out though, when they talk about ‘children,’ most of these people are what would be considered in most parts of the world military-age males — from fifteen to seventeen.
DeSantis mentioned the case of one such illegal, Yery Noel Medina Ulloa, age 24. In 2021, Medina had come illegally from Honduras, often called “the murder capital of the world.” He was arrested last October in Jacksonville, Fla., “after allegedly killing Francisco Javier Cuellar, 46, a father of four who had taken in the immigrant. . . . Medina told authorities he was 17,” an investigation by the New York Post revealed. Apparently, Medina had even bragged to his mother about the successful ruse, she told Univision after his arrest.
“Lying Is A Sin”
Catholic Charities, USA is one of the major taxpayer-funded agencies coordinating Biden’s domestic trafficking, and Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski took offense at DeSantis’ remarks.
We outline the governor’s extensive remarks above because, in his attack on the governor three days later, Wenski ignored them all — but for one key phrase, which Wenski adroitly misquoted.
Here again are DeSantis’ words:
“[T]o equate what’s going on with the southern border with mass trafficking of humans, illegal entry, drugs, all this other stuff with Operation Pedro Pan, quite frankly, is disgusting. It’s wrong. It is not even close to the same thing.”
Here is Wenski’s “Official Statement” at his February 10 press conference, held in the offices of the Pastoral Center of the Archdiocese of Miami.
“At Governor DeSantis’ Monday meeting with a few former Pedro Pan kids in Miami’s Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, he described any comparison of unaccompanied minors from Cuba in the early 60s with those from Central America today as ‘disgusting.’ This was a new low in the zero-sum politics of our divisive times. Children are children — and no child should be deemed ‘disgusting’ — especially by a public servant.”
Notice that the statement doesn’t cite DeSantis’ full quote. Curiously, neither did most Catholic media reporting the exchange. Only the Associated Press reported the full citation, and in its story, reporter Adriana Gomez Licon correctly termed Wenski’s statement “misleading.”
Clearly Archbishop Wenski is passionate about his immigration advocacy, but he would likely deem it unjust if Gov. DeSantis were to twist the archbishop’s own statements in such a blatant manner.
But veracity was not the archbishop’s first priority. In fact, his statement’s “Big Lie” was the central ingredient in the launch of a pro-illegal alien campaign led by major figures in the Florida Democrat Party, arm in arm with Wenski’s chancery, campaigning against Republicans throughout the state.
Ever since his February 10 press conference, Wenski has done his part, waging an all-out attack on DeSantis’ efforts to protect Florida’s borders and enforce U.S. immigration law.
DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw, a Catholic, immediately saw that gravity of Wenski’s “misleading” accusation and had the temerity to confront it. On her widely viewed Twitter account, she called Wenski a “liar” and demanded he apologize.
“Lying is a sin,” she wrote.
Pushaw tells The Wanderer that “It is possible that the Archbishop was misled to believe the governor said something he did not say. In any case, the video of the governor’s remarks is clear, and it reveals that the Archbishop’s criticism was false. We hope he will publicly retract his misstatement and apologize, because he is in a position of high public trust.”
You bet he is. And a peek behind the curtain sheds an unwelcome light on the rest of the story.
Behold The
Chancery’s Strange Bedfellows
At Wenski’s press conference one Felice Gorordo, the son of an original Pedro Pan participant, told the media that it was “absurd and hypocritical” for the governor’s spokesperson to say the archbishop was lying. “I think it’s clear who has the moral authority in this matter, and I applaud and appreciate the archbishop for his steadfast leadership in pushing back and standing up to politicians like DeSantis trying to weaponize these innocent children,” he said.
Mr. Gorordo was a featured speaker alongside the archbishop — and, speaking of moral authority, he serves as a National Co-Chair of “Catholics for Biden.”
What’s going on here? Is no one doing due diligence for the archbishop? Is he so desperate to keep the taxpayer millions flowing to Catholic Charities that he showcases diehard pro-abortion politicians in his defense?
Or, as Pushaw puts it, was the archbishop “misled” by a politicized chancery staffer, in the mold of the USCCB’s notorious D.C. bureaucracy?
Wenski’s chancery office did not respond to repeated overtures from The Wanderer, but whatever his motivation, his embrace of Florida’s pro-abortion Democrat Left is a done deal. Other prominent pro-aborts quickly chimed in to cheer Wenski on, including the Miami Herald, two members of the Democrat National Committee, and a Democrat running to replace DeSantis in the November elections.
And Wenski’s campaign quickly went full-bore multi-media. Immediately his “mistake” was featured in a well-funded Spanish-language radio ad that ran throughout Florida attacking DeSantis.
Title: “¡Repugnante!”
Are these the acts of a political hack pounding his crozier? Don’t even think of it. For Wenski, it’s DeSantis’ February 7 event that was “political theater….The governor has a powerful machine in South Florida capable of mobilizing (and manipulating) a segment of our community to advance his political agenda,” his statement reads.
Your Excellency, what “powerful machine” manipulated your “mistake” into a full-fledged anti-DeSantis offensive featuring Florida’s entire pro-abortion Democrat Party leadership?
To top it off, Wenski’s chancery website features a flaccid mantra: “Children Yes! Politics No!”
Well, speaking of politics, Wenski the grateful Biden beneficiary has effectively kneecapped Florida’s Catholic bishops regarding the historic efforts of Florida pro-lifers to advocate historic baby-saving legislation now being considered in the state’s legislature. As usual, advancing those efforts will now be the task of the laity, while their bishops hobnob with their pro-abortion pals who are filling the taxpayer trough to feed the USCCB’s secular NGOs.
Two final notes.
First, isn’t it tragic that Archbishop Wenski employs stronger language to condemn Gov. DeSantis than he has ever used to call out pro-abortion, pro-infanticide Joe Biden?
And second: Both the AP headline and the Miami chancery call this contretemps a “Church-State” confrontation. It is not. A politicized bishop is not “the Church.” As Robert Cardinal Sarah puts it, “The Church, full of sinners, is herself without sin!”
On that we can all agree.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress