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“Nothing Could Be Less Catholic” — Trump Is Suing the Church to Remove Shrine for Border WallRep. Veronica Escobar’s Mount Cristo Rey Protection Act would halt the federal seizure of 14 acres of diocesan land beneath a 29-foot statue of Jesus. A week after she filed it, not one colleague has signed on.
The statue of Christ the King crowns Mount Cristo Rey at sunset above Sunland Park, New Mexico, where Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua meet. The Trump-Vance administration is suing the Diocese of Las Cruces to take 14 acres at the mountain’s base for a border wall.
Last week, Rep. Veronica Escobar, the El Paso Democrat, introduced the Mount Cristo Rey Protection Act, a bill to stop the federal government from taking Catholic Church land for Donald Trump’s border wall. Not a single member of Congress has joined her as a co-sponsor. That empty list should trouble anyone who claims religious liberty as a cause, because the story behind the bill is stark: the Trump-Vance administration is suing the Catholic Church to seize the ground beneath a statue of Jesus Christ. Through my own reporting, I can tell you the bill has more life than the co-sponsor count suggests. Congressional insiders describe a genuine effort to build support for Escobar’s legislation, with hopes of attaching its protections to a must-pass spending bill later this year. A pilgrim kneels with a child at the Our Lady of Guadalupe shrine along Mount Cristo Rey’s pilgrimage trail. More than 40,000 people climb the mountain every year, many pausing at shrines like this one. At Letters from Leo, we are working to raise awareness of this fight and the broader assault on migrants it belongs to. Start with the mountain itself. Mount Cristo Rey rises above Sunland Park, New Mexico, at the point where Texas, New Mexico, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet. A 29-foot limestone statue of Christ the King has crowned its summit since 1939, carved on-site by the Catalan sculptor Urbici Soler. More than 40,000 pilgrims climb the mountain every year, chiefly on Good Friday and the Feast of Christ the King — some barefoot, a few finishing the ascent on their knees. On May 7, the Department of Justice filed a condemnation lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces, which owns most of the mountain. The government wants 14.259 acres at its base — a strip roughly 190 feet wide along the border, where contractors are building 1.3 miles of 30-foot steel bollard wall under a $95 million contract. For the land, the government deposited $183,071 with the federal court in New Mexico. Its own appraisers valued a neighboring 7.3-acre parcel belonging to the state at $798,500 — half the acreage at more than four times the price. The machinery moved long before the lawsuit did. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem waived more than 20 federal laws at the site in June 2025, including the National Historic Preservation Act. Blasting began on the mountain’s southern flank this spring, even though 211 of the 224 public comments submitted to Customs and Border Protection opposed the project. Border Patrol uploaded video of the blasts to social media; an earlier post had boasted that the mountain was getting a “face lift.”
The diocese answered with the Constitution and with canon law. Its lawyers — the same Georgetown team that defended a South Texas chapel against the first Trump administration’s wall — argue that walling off a pilgrimage site substantially burdens the free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that church property of this significance cannot be surrendered without the Holy See’s consent. On July 6, the diocese demanded a jury trial. The Justice Department’s reply came Monday, in a motion for judgment on the pleadings before Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales: “federal law recognizes no other valid objection that a landowner may lodge to prevent the Government’s use of its eminent domain power.” A hearing set for July 23 in Las Cruces was postponed. Sit with that claim for a moment. Lawyers for the United States told a federal judge that the worship of 40,000 pilgrims raises no objection the law can hear. Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces has met the bulldozers with liturgy. He celebrated Mass at the summit on June 28 beside hundreds of pilgrims and El Paso’s Auxiliary Bishop Anthony Celino, weeks after warning that “the erection of a physical symbol of division and dehumanization on the holy site of Mount Cristo Rey would shatter the sacredness of that cherished place.” Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces celebrates Mass at Mount Cristo Rey, where he led hundreds of pilgrims on June 28. He has warned that a wall would “shatter the sacredness of that cherished place.” His chancellor, Deacon Jim Winder, needed fewer words: “Our symbol was there first. The wall is an in-your-face insult.” The diocese’s legal brief is stark: “The wall is a physical manifestation of this government’s attitude toward migrants. Nothing could be less Catholic.” El Paso’s Bishop Mark Seitz, whose people have climbed the mountain since the statue rose, endorsed Escobar’s bill as a demand that the federal government “set aside a heavy-handed abuse of power against this sacred place.” Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, wearing a stole bearing the image of St. Óscar Romero, joins fellow bishops in a march for migrants through downtown El Paso. One sign behind them reads, “Their humanity is my humanity.” Pope Pius XI created the Feast of Christ the King in 1925, three years after Mussolini seized power in Italy, through the encyclical Quas Primas. The feast teaches the baptized that no state holds their final loyalty. A century later, the American government intends to run a steel wall beneath the statue that bears the feast’s name — and its lawyers insist that nobody may lodge a valid objection. Pope Leo XIV has already told the world what he thinks of walls. In Madrid last month, during a visit that drew more than a million people into the streets, the first American pope urged the faithful to tear down the walls that divide. He spent America’s 250th birthday among the migrants of Lampedusa. At a landing dock in the Canary Islands where thousands of migrants have come ashore, he said: “Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.” The administration governs as though none of that had been said. Its agents killed two Catholic workers on their way to work this month, drawing a rebuke from U.S. bishops. JD Vance, the highest-ranking Catholic in the federal government, published a book this summer about finding God; the government he helps lead now argues in open court that a mountain consecrated to Christ the King is 14 acres of right-of-way. There is a way to win. In 2019, the government went after La Lomita Chapel in Mission, Texas — the 19th-century mission church that gave the city its name. Bishop Daniel Flores refused to consent, Georgetown’s lawyers fought the case, and Congress ultimately wrote protections for the chapel into an appropriations bill. Two weeks ago, Homeland Security agreed to route new wall construction behind the chapel rather than cut it off from its people.
© 2026 Christopher Hale |