Dozens of religious groups sue to stop Trump admin from arresting migrants in places of worship

A coalition of 27 Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a Trump administration action allowing federal immigration enforcement to make arrests in places of worship.

The federal lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, was brought on behalf of a range of religious groups, including the Episcopal Church, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Mennonites and Unitarian Universalists.

The lawsuit challenges an order by President Donald Trump that reversed a Biden administration policy barring agents from arresting illegal migrants in sensitive places like churches, schools and hospitals.

According to the lawsuit, Trump’s new policy has sparked fear of raids, which has led to lower attendance at worship services and other church programs. Because of this impact on attendance, the lawsuit argues the policy infringes on the groups’ religious freedom, particularly their ability to minister to migrants, including those in the U.S. illegally.

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“We have immigrants, refugees, people who are documented and undocumented,” the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, told The Associated Press.

“We cannot worship freely if some of us are living in fear,” he added. “By joining this lawsuit, we’re seeking the ability to gather and fully practice our faith, to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

A similar lawsuit was filed Jan. 27 by five Quaker congregations that was later joined by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a Sikh temple. That case is currently pending in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The new lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration enforcement agencies as defendants.

“We are protecting our schools, places of worship, and Americans who attend, by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and take safe haven there because these criminals knew that under the previous Administration that law enforcement couldn’t go inside,” DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement.

“DHS’s directive gives our law enforcement the ability to do their jobs,” she said.

A memorandum filed Friday by the Department of Justice, opposing the argument in the Quaker lawsuit, could also apply to the new lawsuit.

The DOJ claims that the plaintiffs’ request to block the new immigration enforcement policy is based on speculation of hypothetical future harm, which the department says makes for insufficient grounds for the courts to side with the Quakers and issue an injunction.

In the memo, the DOJ said that immigration enforcement affecting places of worship had been allowed for decades and that the new policy announced last month stated that field agents should use “common sense” and “discretion” but could now carry out immigration enforcement operations in houses of worship without pre-approval from a supervisor.

One part of that memo may not apply to the new lawsuit, as it argued the Quakers and their fellow plaintiffs have no basis for seeking a nationwide injunction to protect all religious groups against the new policy.

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“Any relief in this case should be tailored solely to the named plaintiffs,” the DOJ memo said, arguing that any injunction should not apply to other religious organizations.

The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit represent a significantly larger number of American worshipers, including more than 1 million followers of Reform Judaism, around 1.5 million Episcopalians, more than 1 million members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the estimated 1.5 million active members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, among others.

“The massive scale of the suit will be hard for them to ignore,” lead counsel Kelsi Corkran, who is a lawyer with the Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told The Associated Press.

Corkran said the plaintiffs joined the lawsuit “because their scripture, teaching, and traditions offer irrefutable unanimity on their religious obligation to embrace and serve the refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants in their midst without regard to documentation or legal status.”

Before Trump’s change to federal policy, Corkran said immigration agents generally needed a judicial warrant or other special authorization to conduct operations in locations like places of worship, schools and hospitals.

“Now it’s go anywhere, any time,” she said. “Now they have broad authority to swoop in — they’ve made it very clear they’ll get every undocumented person.”

The lawsuit outlined how some of the plaintiffs’ operations may be affected. Some, including the Union for Reform Judaism and the Mennonites, said many of their synagogues and churches host on-site foodbanks, meal programs, homeless shelters and other support services for illegal migrants who may now be fearful of participating.

One plaintiff, the Latino Christian National Network, described the fear among migrants in the wake of the new Trump administration policy.

“There is deep-seated fear and distrust of our government,” the network’s president, Rev. Carlos Malavé, a pastor of two churches in Virginia, told The Associated Press. “People fear going to the store, they are avoiding going to church. … The churches are increasingly doing online services because people fear for the well-being of their families.”

One religious group that did not join the new lawsuit is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which leads the nation’s largest denomination, although it has criticized Trump’s mass deportation plan.

On Tuesday, Pope Francis criticized the administration’s immigration policies, saying that the forceful removal of people because of their immigration status deprives them of their inherent dignity and that doing so, he argued, “will end badly.”

Many conservative faith leaders and legal experts across the country, however, share no concerns about immigration enforcement targeting places of worship to arrest migrants.

“Places of worship are for worship and are not sanctuaries for illegal activity or for harboring people engaged in illegal activity,” Mat Staver, founder of the conservative Christian legal organization Liberty Counsel, told The Associated Press.

“Fugitives or criminals are not immune from the law merely because they enter a place of worship,” he said. “This is not a matter of religious freedom. There is no right to openly violate the law and disobey law enforcement.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.