The Trump administration canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami for housing and caring for unaccompanied migrant children — a program that dates back more than 60 years to “Operation Pedro Pan,” which brought roughly 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to Miami in the 1960s.
The program includes the Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh Children's Village (an 81-bed shelter), foster homes, family reunification services, and trauma support. Catholic Charities says it will be forced to shut down within three months. It is unclear what happens to the children currently in care.
The timing is significant. The government reached out about the cancellation in late March, as Trump-Pope Leo tensions were already building. The story broke publicly during the most intense week of their feud — Trump calling Leo “WEAK on Crime,” posting AI images of himself as Jesus, and Vance telling the Pope to “be careful” about theology.
HHS spokesperson Emily Hillard said the Office of Refugee Resettlement is “closing and consolidating unused facilities” as unaccompanied minor numbers dropped from a Biden-era peak of 22,000 to 1,900 under Trump. This is part of a broader pattern — Heartland Alliance, a secular Chicago organization, lost $117.9 million in ORR contracts in the same period, laying off 337 employees. ORR is consolidating shelters system-wide, not exclusively targeting Catholic organizations.
But Archbishop Thomas Wenski called it “baffling” to completely shut down a program of this quality rather than scale it back proportionally. Even the Washington Examiner (right-leaning) framed the cancellation as coming “after war of words with Pope Leo.” The decision to entirely eliminate a 60-year program — rather than reduce it to match lower numbers — remains unexplained.