Religious groups sue prevent Trump administrators from arresting immigrants in places of worship

A coalition of 27 Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s actions to allow federal immigration law enforcement officers to arrest in places of worship.

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

The lawsuit challenges President Donald Trump’s order that overturns a competitive government policy that prohibits agents from arresting illegal immigrants in sensitive places, such as churches, schools and hospitals.

According to the lawsuit, Trump’s new policy has sparked fear of raids, which has led to lower attendance in worship and other church programs. Due to the impact on attendance, the lawsuit argues that policies that violate groups’ religious freedoms, especially their ability to serve immigrants, including illegal immigration.

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“We have immigrants, refugees, recorded and undocumented people,” Bishop Sean Rowe, the president of the Bishop Church, told the Associated Press.

He added: “If some of us live in fear, we will not be free to worship.” “By joining this lawsuit, we are seeking to be able to gather and fully practice our faith and follow Jesus’ commands to love us Neighbors as our own abilities.”

On January 27, five Quaker congregations filed a similar lawsuit, and later joined the Quaker congregation in Cooperation Baptist scholarship and a Sikh temple. The case is currently being tried in the U.S. District Court in Maryland.

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

“We are protecting our schools, places of worship and Americans who attend, by preventing criminal foreigners and gang members from exploiting these locations and avoiding safe havens there because these criminals know that in the case of the previous administration, law enforcement can’t do that Entering inside, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

“The Department of Homeland Security’s instructions enable our law enforcement to do the job,” she said.

The Justice Department’s memorandum filed Friday objected to the arguments in the Quaker lawsuit and may also apply to new lawsuits.

The Justice Department claims that plaintiff’s request to block new immigration enforcement policies is based on speculation about hypothetical future harm, which the department said makes the court insufficient to meet with the Quaker and issue an injunction.

Immigration enforcement has allowed to affect places of worship for decades, and new policies announced last month said on-site agents should use “common sense” and “discretionary rights” but are now available in immigration enforcement actions. Progress in. Chapel, no supervisor has pre-approved.

Part of the memorandum may not apply to the new lawsuit because it believes that the Quaker and its plaintiffs have not pursued a nationwide injunction to protect all religious groups from the new policy.

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Citizens pray on Sunday, February 2, 2025 at the centre of the Cristiano el pan de Vida, the middle church of the Gods in Kissimmee, Florida. (AP)

“In this case, any relief should be tailored to the designated plaintiffs only,” the Justice Department memorandum said.

Plaintiffs in the new lawsuit represent more American admirers, including more than 1 million followers of Reformed Judaism, approximately 1.5 million Episcopal Church, 1 million members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and an estimated 1.5 million active member of Africa Methodist Bishop Church, etc.

“The huge scale of the lawsuit will be hard to ignore,” Kelsi Corkran, an attorney at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center, told the Associated Press.

Cockland said the plaintiffs joined the lawsuit, “because their Bible, teaching and traditions provide irrefutable consistency for their religious obligations, they embraced and embraced among them without considering their documentary or legal status. Serving refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants.”

Before Trump changed federal policy, Cockland said immigration agents often need judicial arrest warrants or other special authorizations to operate in places such as places of worship, schools and hospitals.

“Now, they have broad powers to pour in – they have made it very clear that they will get every undocumented person.”

The lawsuit outlines how some plaintiffs’ actions have been affected. Some of them, including the Reformed Judaism Union and Mennonites, have many of their synagogues and churches host on-site food banks, meal programs, homeless shelters and other support services that support illegal immigration, who may be afraid to attend now. .

One plaintiff is a Latino Christian National Network, describing the fear of immigration after the new Trump administration policy.

“There is a deep fear and distrust of our government,” the network president Rev. Carlos Malavé, pastor of two Virginia churches, told the Associated Press. “People are worried about going to shops, they avoid going to churches. … The church is increasingly serving online because people are worried about the well-being of their families.”

Jean-Michel Gisnel weeps while praying with other fellow countrymen at the First Haiti Evangelical Church in Springfield, Ohio, Sunday, January 26, 2025. (AP)

A religious group that has not joined the new lawsuit is the American Catholic Bishops Conference, which leads the country’s largest denomination, despite criticizing Trump’s massive expulsion plan.

On Tuesday, Pope Francis criticized the government’s immigration policy, saying that the forceful evacuation of people due to their immigration status has deprived them of their inherent dignity and that in doing so, he believes, “will end badly.”

However, many conservative faith leaders and legal experts across the country are not worried about immigration enforcement to arrest immigrants’ places of worship.

“Stores of worship are for worship, not for people who are illegally engaged or have illegal activities,” Mat Staver, founder of the conservative Christian legal group Freedom Lawyer, told the Associated Press.

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“Fugitives or criminals are not affected by the law just because they enter the place of worship,” he said. “It is not a matter of religious freedom. There is no right to openly violate the law and violate law enforcement.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.