In a one-of-a-kind interview, Vice President JD Vance opened up to fellow Catholic Ross Douthat about his personal faith and how it informs his perspective on the deportation of illegal immigrants like Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, a controversial figure and alleged MS-13 gang member who was championed by the left after his deportation.
For context, in an interview on Ross Douthat’s podcast “Interesting Times” on May 21, 2025, Vice President JD Vance broke down his beliefs about the ethics of deporting an illegal immigrant criminal like Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, whose deportation was a lightning rod for controversy and backlash from the left. A devout Catholic, the vice president explained that he believes that, while hard to swallow, certain Christian doctrines make it clear that Abrego-Garcia’s deportation was justified.
In the interview, Vice President Vance acknowledged that many aspects of Christian doctrine are difficult to grasp, saying, “If you take the teachings of our faith seriously, they are hard. I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t struggled with some of this, that I haven’t thought about whether, you know, we’re doing precisely the right thing.” He added, “There has to be some way in which you’re asking yourself, as you go about enforcing the law…that you’re consistent with…the Catholic Church’s moral dictates and so forth.”
Continuing, the vice president told Douthat that he was “hardly an expert in…every single case that has become a viral sensation or that people have criticized us over,” referring to the outcry over Abrego-Garcia’s deportation, before adding, “But I am, you know, pretty well-read on some of the cases.” Vance went on to say that because of the controversy surrounding “viral” deportation cases, they are “hard to take seriously,” clarifying that the complex nature of such situations “doesn’t absolve me from…doing my duty as an American leader, and hopefully as a Christian leader, too.”
Building on his previous point, the vice president said that he struggled to “take seriously the extraordinarily emotive condemnations of people who don’t care about the problem that I’m trying to solve and that the president is trying to solve.” He then clarified to Douthat, “That’s not you. It’s why I actually take your concerns seriously.”
Moving on, Vice President Vance shared his personal perspective on Abrego-Garcia, saying, “I think this guy was not just a gang member, but a reasonably high-level gang member in MS 13. I think he had engaged in some pretty ugly conduct. Legally, he had had multiple hearings before an immigration judge.”
In addition, Vance called attention to the fact that Abrego-Garcia “had a valid deportation order,” adding, “What he also had was a sort of exception, what’s called a withholding order, that basically said, Yes, you can deport this guy. No one doubts that we could have deported this guy.” He later added that President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador said of Abrego-Garcia, “I don’t want to take this guy back. I think he’s a bad guy. He’s my citizen, he’s in a prison in El Salvador.”
Concluding his comments on the situation, the vice president said that his response to President Bukele’s statements regarding Abrego-Garcia was, “Okay, what are we really gonna do? Are we gonna exert extraordinary diplomatic pressure to bring a guy back to the United States who is a citizen of a foreign country, who we had a valid deportation order with?” He added, “It’s hard to take serious when so many of the people who are saying we made a terrible error here are the same people who made no protests about how this guy got into the country in the first place, or what Joe Biden did for four years to the American Southern border.”
Watch a clip from the interview:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video