Editorial: If Miami migrant shelter is 'unused,' show numbers -- don't punish kids in secret

The Miami Herald Editorial Board, The Miami Herald on Apr 16, 2026

Published in Op Eds

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

Miami understands the importance of Catholic Charities’ work to help migrant children. In this community, we need only remember “Operation Pedro Pan,” an effort in the early 1960s that began with the airlift to Miami of the children of Cuban dissidents and eventually included families seeking a better life for their kids.

Those memories run deep. So it was hard to wrap our mind around the news, published Tuesday in the Miami Herald, that the Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone.

Was it a financial decision? Or was it retaliation against the church? The administration may say the program needs to be scaled back, as border crossings have dropped. But we suspect there’s more to it.

Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski is calling for a review of the decision in an opinion piece sent to the Herald Editorial Board this week. That needs to happen — publicly. If the program is being cut because there aren’t enough children in it anymore, voters deserve to know.

As Wenski wrote, “...it is baffling that the U.S. government would shut down a program that it would be hard-pressed to replicate... if and when future waves of unaccompanied minors reach our shores.”

President Donald Trump and Pope Leo, the first American pope, are openly at odds. The pope vehemently opposes the war in Iran and called Trump’s threat to annihilate Iranian civilization on Easter Sunday “truly unacceptable.” The president attacked Pope Leo, calling him “weak on crime,” falsely claiming credit for the pope’s election and saying “I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA.”

Then there was the AI-generated image Trump shared on Truth Social Sunday, in which he appeared as a Christ-like figure in robes with light streaming from his hands. He later insisted he was supposed to look like a doctor and removed the image, but that did not make the embarrassing backlash he received go away.

In Miami, Wenski, a longtime immigrants rights advocate, spoke out for Pope Leo in an interview on Monday with the Herald. “The pope doesn’t have to please anybody except the Lord,” he said. About the image Trump shared, he added: “I think he probably regrets it. The fact that it’s taken down, and now the president is saying that he thought it was an image of a doctor, says that he’s putting some spin on it.”

It’s unknown why the Miami program for unaccompanied migrant minors was targeted. It worked this way: The Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, paid Catholic Charities in Miami to house immigrant children who enter the U.S. without parents or adult supervision.

HHS’s press secretary, Emily G. Hillard, told the Herald that “ORR is closing and consolidating unused facilities as the Trump Administration continues efforts to stop illegal entry and the smuggling and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children.”

It’s also unclear how many children may be housed in the Miami program right now — the Trump administration has said the number of unaccompanied children coming to the U.S. has dropped dramatically. Wenski wrote in his opinion piece that a “facility in Palmetto Bay, named the Msgr. Bryan O. Walsh Children’s Village, can house up to 81 minors.” The program, he wrote, places some children in foster care, offers psychological care and works to reunite them with family.

He pointed out, rightly, that many of the 14,000 Pedro Pan children went on to become highly successful adults, including “business leaders, politicians (including a former senator), academics, doctors, lawyers, priests and bishops.”

If the Catholic Charities program has to shut down in three months, as Wenski wrote, we need a full explanation of why and what will happen to anyone in the program right now. We understand that immigration has become a huge flashpoint in this country. But children should not be the ones paying the price for political decisions.

___