Vice President JD Vance has mastered two methods of lying about President Donald Trump's immigration policies: muddying the waters by dismissing facts, and dehumanizing immigrants to justify mass detention and deportation. Now promoting his memoir 'Communion' about converting to Catholicism, Vance uses his faith to sanitize Trump's second-term agenda, potentially previewing his own presidential campaign strategy.
Record Detention Under Trump
Trump's agenda relies on cruelty. The administration set a record for immigration detention early this year, though most detainees have no criminal convictions. Only a tiny fraction have violent crime convictions. Many lack final deportation orders and are applying for asylum. The administration claims authority to jail millions indefinitely and recently asked the Supreme Court to approve a 'mandatory detention' policy. Officials admit using detention misery to pressure people into 'self-deporting.'
Muddying the Waters
In 'Communion,' Vance frames immigration policy vaguely to avoid damning specifics. He writes, 'Law enforcement is an inherently difficult business. If you arrest a person illegally in the United States, that person will sometimes resist arrest. Even if they don't, and even if everyone agrees their deportation is lawful and moral, there will still be some measure of separation and heartache.' This straw man argument ignores whether most arrests and deportations are lawful or moral.
Vance evades criticism from two popes who have condemned Trump's immigration agenda. He dismisses a U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pastoral message as 'almost too measured' without addressing its detailed concerns: mass deportation, racial profiling, 'the vilification of immigrants,' horrific detention conditions, lack of pastoral care, arbitrary loss of legal status, and arrests in sensitive zones like churches.
On 'The View,' Vance deflected questions about ICE deaths, sub-human detention conditions, and racist language by saying law enforcement 'is always inherently not a very pretty process,' especially with 'violent people' resisting arrest. He falsely accused the Biden administration of tolerating child sex trafficking, claiming 'tens of thousands of children that were sex-trafficked by the cartels'—a number with no evidence. He dismissed accurate criticism about refugee statistics, saying only 3 of 6,668 refugees since October were non-white South Africans, calling the number 'very skeptical.'
The Dehumanization Campaign
Vance writes that 'strict migration policy' can exist 'without dehumanizing anyone,' but his career depends on dehumanization. In 2024, he pushed the lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets, despite local officials telling his staff it was false. He admitted, 'If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.' He also falsely claimed tuberculosis and HIV had 'skyrocketed' in Springfield due to Haitians.
Trump then revoked Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, with the Supreme Court approving the move. Over 300,000 Haitians are now deportable to a dangerous home country. Historian Timothy Snyder warned, 'If there is a Springfield pogrom, JD Vance will have his first namesake policy.'
Vance recently warned against 'low-wage third-world immigrants' and said European countries risk 'committing civilizational suicide' through immigration. In his book, he refers to 'the social instability inherent in assimilating one population into another.' He claims 'too much immigration actually destroys the social cohesion necessary to form labor unions,' despite opposing the Protecting the Right to Organize Act as a senator because it would give power to 'aggressively anti-Republican' union leadership.
Religion and Immigration
Vance suggests immigrants make America less Christian, writing that 'churchgoing kept declining just as Biden-era immigration policy caused a skyrocketing increase in the foreign-born share of the population.' However, Pew Research Center's 2025 Religious Landscape Study shows immigrants value the Bible and attend religious services more than U.S.-born citizens. A 2024 Pew report found 70% of migrants to the U.S. are Christian, compared to 64% of the U.S. population. Religiosity decline is unrelated to immigration status. Most undocumented migrants are from the Americas, which are more Christian than the U.S. Stephanie Kramer of Pew noted, 'Catholic immigrants are being differentially impacted by these policies.'
Vance has not expressed regret for backing Trump's anti-immigrant crusade. In his book, he calls his 'childless cat ladies' remark 'boneheaded,' but offers no apology to the Haitian community he slandered.
