When Archbishop Fulton Sheen was beatified last month, I wrote about what he said about toxic empathy. More than 60 years ago, Sheen accurately predicted exactly what we're seeing today.
"False compassion. False compassion, which is gradually growing in this country, is a pity that is shown not to the mugged, but to the mugger; not to the family of the murdered, but to the murderer. Not to the woman who was raped, but to the rapist. Not to the poor girl who's given a shot of dope, but to the rich boy who happens to come from a fine family," Sheen said.
"There are some judges, some in some of our courts. There are some social workers, not all. There are sob sisters. There are the social slobberers who insist on compassion being shown to the muggers, to the dope fiends," he continued. "To the throat-slashers, to the beatniks. To the prostitutes. To the homosexuals. To the punks."
I thought of this when I saw "60 Minutes" contributor Gianna Toboni asked James Percival, General Counsel for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about compassion.
I explained the relationship between compassion and justice to @60Minutes pic.twitter.com/6ZlZrNNBN7
— James Percival (@DHSGenCounsel) October 27, 2026
"And I wonder if there's any part of you that feels compassion for folks who, you know, don't have a violent criminal record, who are being separated from their families, parents who are being deported and their U.S. citizen children growing up without them," Toboni said.
"The people I have the most compassion for are the American victims who we're protecting," Percival said. "What I would say more broadly is that justice is about doing things that might be unpleasant to protect people. I mean, nobody always feels good about dispensing justice, but strong leaders have the stomach to dispense justice to protect people. And so we always have compassion, but our fundamental compassion is to the victims."
What a refreshing and morally correct thing to hear.
This starts with the rule of law. Illegal aliens — even if they've committed no other crimes — are criminals. They chose to break our immigration laws, some of them for decades. The consequence of doing that is deportation. They chose to bring their children here, or to give birth to children while they were here, knowing full well those children are U.S. citizens by birth and they could be separated at some point down the road.
They made a choice, and they must face the consequences for it. And it's not a victimless crime. Many illegal aliens have to use fraudulent paperwork to get jobs, many likely don't pay taxes, and others are taking welfare dollars from American citizens who need it. Sure, it's not violence, but it is abusive and harmful.
More than that, the criminals aren't the victims here. The men, women, and children killed by illegal aliens are. The family of Stephanie Minter, the Virginia mother stabbed to death at a bus stop by Abdul Jalloh were permanently separated from her. We have an entire network — Angel Families — comprised of families forever broken and separated by illegal aliens. Why do leftists have no compassion for them?
We see this time and again with the American Left: their amount of compassion is always inversely proportional to the innocence of the person in question. It's why they celebrate the abortion of innocent children (including those conceived in rape) but are appalled at the notion of sentencing rapists to death for their crimes.
Justice is the root of compassion, and justice means enforcing the law.
