A record 68.5 million people had been driven from their homes across the world at the end of 2017. That total was 2.9 million more than at the end of 2016.

The U.S. bishops "cannot, in good faith, endorse" an immigration bill submitted by the House's Republican leadership, said Bishop Joe S. Vasquez of Austin, Texas, chairman of the bishops' Committee on Migration.

“About 40 percent of the people who come here speak English better than Spanish,” Father Murphy says. “They’re all Mexicans, but they got deported after being in the states 30, 40 years. Sometimes they’ll come up and ask, ‘Do you speak English?’”

None have been more outspoken, however, than the bishops with dioceses on or near the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Vice President Mike Pence all spoke at the June 14 prayer breakfast at the Grand Hyatt Washington.