More churches are suing ICE over arrests in places of worship: ‘Congregations have gone underground'

Independent

3 days ago

Another group of Christian denominations is suing Donald Trump's administration to stop immigration enforcement arrests in their churches.
A lawsuit from Baptist, Lutheran and Quaker groups accuses Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of chilling First Amendment protections and infringing on religious freedoms. The groups filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to block the policy on Tuesday.
After Trump entered office, the administration rescinded previous Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that prohibited enforcement actions in sensitive locations such as places of worship, as well as schools and hospitals.
Within the last month, federal agents seized a man in front of a church, brandished a rifle at a pastor and detained a grandfather dropping off his granddaughter at a church school in Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit. Federal officers have also recently chased several men into a church parking lot and arrested a parishioner at churches across southern California, according to church leaders.
'As a result, people across the country, regardless of immigration status, reasonably fear attending houses of worship,' according to the lawsuit. 'The open joy and spiritual restoration of communal worship has been replaced by isolation, concealment, and fear.'
Attendance and donations have plummeted, and 'congregations have gone underground to protect their parishioners, eschewing in-person meetings central to their faith,' plaintiffs argued.
Baptisms are being held in private, churches have stopped advertising immigrant-focused ministries, and houses of worship 'have suddenly had to lock those doors and train their staff how to respond to immigration raids,' according to the complaint.
The lawsuit is at least the fourth filed by faith leaders against ICE policy within the last six months.
In February, more than two dozen religious groups similarly sued the administration. A federal judge ultimately partially granted a restraining order that blocked ICE from enforcement actions in roughly 1,700 places of worship in 35 states and Washington, D.C.
But in April, a Trump-appointed judge sided with the administration in a similar case brought by more than two dozen Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans.
District Judge Dabney Friedrich in Washington, D.C., argued that drops in church attendance could not be definitively linked to ICE actions, and congregants were likely staying home to avoid ICE anywhere in their own neighborhoods rather than places of worship.
'As people of faith, we cannot abide losing the basic right to provide care and compassion,' said Bishop Brenda Bos with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's California synod, among the plaintiffs in the latest legal battle.
'Not only are our spaces no longer guaranteed safety, but our worship services, educational events and social services have all been harmed by the rescission of sensitive space protection,' Bos added. 'Our call is love our neighbor, and we have been denied the ability to live out that call.'
Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the administration is protecting places of worship by 'preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and taking safe haven there because these criminals knew law enforcement couldn't go inside under the Biden Administration.'
The lawsuit arrives as Christian leadership across the country — and at the Vatican — grapples with the consequences of the Trump administration's aggressive anti-immigration policy.
With a directive from the White House to make at least 3,000 daily arrests, ICE received record-breaking funding from Congress — expanding the agency's budget to be larger than most countries' militaries — to hire more officers and expand detention space.
Miami's Archbishop Thomas Wenski condemned public officials' rhetoric praising Alligator Alcatraz, and San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas in California also issued a rare decree this month excusing parishioners from attending mass over 'genuine fear' of immigration raids.
Pope Leo XIV, who is American-born and whose papacy began less than four months into Trump's presidency, had previously criticized the administration's immigration policies and rhetoric.
Washington, D.C. Cardinal Robert McElroy has also criticized the administration's agenda of 'mass, indiscriminate deportation of men and women and children and families which literally rips families apart and is intended to do so.'
In Los Angeles, the largest archdiocese in the country, Archbishop Jose Gomez accused the administration of having 'no immigration policy beyond the stated goal of deporting thousands of people each day.'
'This is not policy, it is punishment, and it can only result in cruel and arbitrary outcomes,' wrote the bishop, who is also a naturalized U.S. citizen from Mexico. 'Already we are hearing stories of innocent fathers and mothers being wrongly deported, with no recourse to appeal.'