On June 20 — World Refugee Day — an interfaith group of clergy entered the federal courthouse in San Diego as two immigration cases were about to be heard. Among them was Bishop Michael Pham, Pope Leo’s first U.S. appointee and the first Vietnamese-American diocesan bishop in U.S. history.
Inside the building, ICE agents waited to detain the migrants once the hearings concluded. But as Bishop Pham and his brother priests approached the courtroom, the agents backed off. “They kind of scattered and went away,” Pham recalled. One witness likened it to the Exodus: “The Red Sea parted.”
This is precisely what Pope Leo envisioned — a Church that stands with the marginalized.
Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, Pham fled the country at age 13 on a makeshift rice barge. Pursued by communists, he drifted for days without food or water, surrounded by death. Resettled in Minnesota with his siblings, he eventually made his way to San Diego, studied engineering, and later entered the seminary. He calls San Diego “heaven on earth,” but the pain of exile and state violence never left him.
Now a bishop, he identifies deeply with those detained and deported in silence. “It reminds me of my childhood,” he said, recalling when people in Vietnam were taken without explanation.
Bishop Pham is not alone. Pope Leo has said the Church must be “a place of refuge where God’s mercy is revealed.”
Pham is taking action. He’s launching a ministry to accompany migrants to their hearings and pledges to return to court with clergy as often as needed.
The broader Catholic leadership is mobilizing. Bishops like Alberto Rojas in San Bernardino and Archbishop Jose Gomez in Los Angeles — once skeptical of Pope Francis’s direction — are now publicly condemning ICE raids and detention tactics that sow fear in parishes.
As Trump enforces a hardline deportation quota and pushes Catholic allies to choose sides, it’s clear that this moment is different. Trump may want a photo-op with Pope Leo — but with bishops like Michael Pham rising, he may instead get a reckoning.
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