In exchange with religious sister, Vance says government tries to strike ‘balance’ on immigration

Vice President JD Vance last week said the federal government is always attempting to strike a “balance” when dealing with mass illegal immigration into the country.

Vance, who is Catholic, was responding to a question from Sister Nancy Sylvester of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary religious order. The exchange took place during an Oct. 17 town hall broadcast on CBS News.

Sister Nancy told the vice president that some of the institute’s sisters minister at the southern border and that they are “constantly seeing families who are affected by our immigration policies,” including through family separations involving young children.

Speaking to Vance as a fellow Catholic, the religious sister asked him: “How would you justify to people of faith, especially those of us who try to follow the Gospel, how the behavior of the [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] men and women can constantly be justified in terms of the kind of values we want to live by?”

Telling Sister Nancy that he would pray for her, Vance responded that the government is “trying to strike the right balance” in its immigration policies.

“When you have a country where approximately 25 million illegal aliens have come in over the past 30 or so years, many of them completely unchecked and unvetted — weʼre trying to strike a balance between how [we do] law enforcement, but how do we also do it humanely, and how do we not do so little law enforcement that you actually empower some of the worst people in the world?” he said.

The Republican vice president referred to the issue as a “work in progress” that includes millions of immigrants in the country illegally and “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers.”

He admitted that federal agents make mistakes and at times “really screw up,” though he said the government “[doesn’t] always advertise” the disciplinary process.

“[W]e believe that people have to be judged in a court of law and through a normal investigatory process,” Vance said.

He cited the numerous criminal elements that sometimes accompany illegal immigration, including heavy drug trade and sex slavery. “[D]espite what some people say in the press, I promise you that we wake up every day and we try to balance law enforcement with humane law enforcement,” he said.

The Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are headquartered in Monroe, Michigan. Their ministries include hospitals, teaching, and long-term care facilities.

The order was founded by Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin, the first U.S.-born Black woman to become a religious sister.