The Department of Homeland Security recently tapped an anti-immigrant zealot as its top communications official. The man, Chad Pecknold, is reportedly close to Vice President JD Vance and has claimed that the Catholic faith demands support for President Donald Trump’s racist immigration crackdown.

“I am excited to confirm I’ve joined the Trump Administration as the Principal Director for Cultural Outreach at the Department of Homeland Security,” Pecknold said in a statement to MS NOW. “It is truly an honor to serve my country in this capacity.” DHS said in a statement that it’s “excited” to welcome him to the role.

It’s not clear what his duties entail. Neither DHS nor Pecknold immediately responded to MS NOW’s request for additional information. DHS currently has an office of “partnership and engagement” that says it conducts “strategic engagements and outreach” with various entities, including “the private sector, faith-based and mission driven organizations, academia, and communities.”

But it seems like Pecknold, who has taught theology at The Catholic University of America since 2008, will fit right in working for DHS, which has become a megaphone for white supremacist propaganda under Trump.

Put plainly, Pecknold appears to be the kind of person a regime would hire if it were attempting — as Trump’s is — to inject bigoted theology into its political agenda, in ways that erode constitutional separations between church and state. He also sounds like the kind of person a regime would hire if it were looking to ramp up its war on compassionate Catholicism.

The National Catholic Register describes Pecknold as a professor who has argued that the Catholic faith justifies mass deportation and that it opposes the idea of birthright citizenship or what he has described as “the progressive goal of ‘open borders,’” echoing MAGA conspiracy theories that have no basis in reality.

Catholic news service EWTN News reported on Pecknold’s appearance at a Febraury symposium on mass migration at the Hungarian Embassy in Washington:

Pecknold said the wealth of nations is not simply the GDP but rather, in Christian terms, has been “providentially given” by God and said the erosion of borders, heritage, language, customs, and religion is an “attempt to deconstruct the very belief of God as the providential provider” of families and nations.

Pecknold also contended that mass migration has negative impacts on family for both the immigrants and the native-born population.

For migrants, he said “it almost inevitably breaks up the family,” with some leaving their home country and others staying behind or sometimes trying to enter illegally. He said it also hurts the American family by filling the workforce with cheap labor, saying: “You actually are taking jobs away from … young Americans who deserve those jobs.”

While Donald Trump has sought to portray himself as a messianic figure, he, his vice president and other figures in the MAGA movement have launched public attacks against the pope and various Catholic organizations that have shown compassion to immigrants swept up in Trump’s crackdown. These attacks have placed the administration at odds with the conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. And the Register’s report specifically refers to Pecknold’s public opposition to the bishops filing an amicus brief arguing against Trump’s legal gambit seeking to end birthright citizenship for children of immigrants.

The Register’s report also notes Pecknold’s ties to Vance and other conservative so-called postliberals, specifically the academics Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen:

Pecknold co-founded the Substack “Postliberal Order” with Notre Dame political science professor Patrick Deneen and Harvard constitutional law scholar Adrian Vermeule. Pecknold is also known to be close to Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert and self-described postliberal. The background image of the professor’s X social-media profile is a photo of Pecknold with Deneen and Vance.

As the Trump administration faces widespread backlash over its anti-immigrant crackdown, it’s easy to see why propagandists like Pecknold may prove useful. He has shown an eagerness to veil the MAGA movement’s anti-immigrant cruelty with scripture, in an effort to legitimize an assault many Americans find unconscionable.

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