The preamble to the legal brief filed last week by religious groups against the Trump administration's decision to invade churches to enforce (contestable) immigration law is readable and short. I've stripped out a lot of citations and added some paragraphing for clarity, but here's the explanation of why they've gone to court.
Plaintiffs in this challenge are 12 national denominational bodies and representatives, 4 regional denominational bodies, and 11 denominational and interdenominational associations, all rooted in the Jewish and Christian faiths. Plaintiffs and their members are Baptist, Brethren, Conservative Jewish, Episcopalian, Evangelical, Mennonite, Quaker, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Reconstructionist Jewish, Reform Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, United Methodist, Zion Methodist, and more.
They bring this suit unified on a fundamental belief: Every human being, regardless of birthplace, is a child of God worthy of dignity, care, and love.
Welcoming the stranger, or immigrant, is thus a central precept of their faith practices.
The Torah lays out this tenet 36 times, more than any other teaching: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love them as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).
In the Gospels, Jesus Christ not only echoes this command, but self-identifies with the stranger: “For I was hungry, and you gave me food, I was thirsty, and you gave me drink, I was a stranger, and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35).
Plaintiffs’ religious scripture, teaching, and traditions offer clear, repeated, and irrefutable unanimity on their obligation to embrace, serve, and defend the refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status.
Recognizing the importance of communal religious practices “to the well-being of people and the communities of which they are a part,” the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) for over 30 years substantially restricted immigration enforcement action in or near places of worship. Although DHS has statutory authority to conduct a variety of enforcement actions—such as conducting stops and interrogations, serving process and other orders, and executing immigration arrests and raids without judicial warrant—DHS’s longstanding “sensitive locations” (or “protected areas”) policy provided that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) and Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) would do so at or near places of worship only under exigent circumstances or with prior written, high-level supervisory approval.
On January 20, 2025, DHS abruptly reversed course and rescinded the sensitive locations policy. Disavowing the need for any “bright line rules regarding where our immigration laws are permitted to be enforced,” the Rescission Memo instead directs ICE and CBP officers to “use [their] discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense” in deciding whether to conduct immigration enforcement actions at places of worship, during religious ceremonies, and at other sensitive locations. DHS’s website features a news article stating that ICE agents understand the rescission “to free them up to go after more illegal immigrants.”
The rescission reflects President Donald Trump’s goal of deporting all immigrants in the United States without lawful status during his current four-year term. To accomplish this, President Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan explained, DHS will conduct immigration enforcement actions “across the country, uninhibited by any prior administration guidelines.”
Federal officials have confirmed that the target of these enforcement actions will include undocumented immigrants with no criminal record. Over the first week of the current Trump Administration, ICE arrested over 4,500 people, including nearly 1,000 people in a Sunday “immigration enforcement blitz.”
At least one of these enforcement actions occurred at a church in Georgia during worship service. According to news coverage, an usher standing in the church entrance saw a group of ICE agents outside and locked the door. The agents said that they were there to arrest Wilson Velásquez, who had traveled to the United States from Honduras with his wife and three children in 2022.
Immediately after crossing the border, they turned themselves in to U.S. authorities and requested asylum. They were given a court date and then released after federal agents cinched a GPS-tracking monitor on Velásquez’s ankle.
After settling in suburban Atlanta, the family joined a Pentecostal church where they worshipped several times a week and helped with music. They were listening to the pastor’s sermon when ICE agents arrived to arrest Velásquez. Although Velásquez had attended all his required check-ins at an Atlanta ICE office and had a court date scheduled to present his asylum case to a judge, ICE agents arrested him anyway, explaining that they were simply “looking for people with ankle bracelets.” The pastor, Luis Ortiz, tried to reassure his congregation, but he “could see the fear and tears on their faces.”
Plaintiffs’ congregations and members face an imminent risk of similar immigration enforcement actions at their places of worship. Consistent with their call to welcome and serve all people, many have undocumented congregants and many offer social service ministries— such as food and clothing pantries, English as a Second Language (“ESL”) classes, legal assistance, and job training services—at their churches and synagogues that serve undocumented people.
An immigration enforcement action during worship services, ministry work, or other congregational activities would be devastating to their religious practice. It would shatter the consecrated space of sanctuary, thwart communal worship, and undermine the social service outreach that is central to religious expression and spiritual practice for Plaintiffs’ congregations and members.
The rescission of the sensitive locations policy is already substantially burdening the religious exercise of Plaintiffs’ congregations and members. Congregations are experiencing decreases in worship attendance and social services participation due to fear of immigration enforcement action. For the vulnerable congregants who continue to attend worship services, congregations must choose between either exposing them to arrest or undertaking security measures that are in direct tension with their religious duties of welcome and hospitality.
Likewise, the choice that congregations currently face between discontinuing social service ministries or putting undocumented participants at risk of arrest is no choice at all: Either way, congregations are forced to violate their religious duty to serve and protect their immigrant neighbors.
The brief goes on to assert that the administration's declaration of intent and ICE's actions prevent their free exercise of the dictates of their religion under the under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) and the First Amendment.
The rightwing in the United States makes much of their devotion to freedom of religious belief and practice. Often this feels like an effort to impose unpopular values on non-believers, as when they seek to suppress neutral historical and scientific information and education.
Here religious groups demand to be allowed to exercise and affirm their core values of welcome and broad inclusion of all humans as enjoined by their understanding of their religious traditions.
Sides have been drawn.
2 comments:
What happened with the Catholics
Ian: all I can say is good question. Apparently not playing with others? Have to say, the new Catholic bishop in DC seems to have been installed by the Pope because he is someone who will promote the same basic values of care for the stranger that this bunch are upholding. And the Pope himself has spoken up very strongly.
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