FAITH groups involved in continuing lawsuits against federal immigration policies in the United States have had a breakthrough after a district judge in Massachusetts ordered restrictions on immigration raids around some churches.
Judge Dennis Saylor of the US District Court for Massachusetts has issued a preliminary injunction to protect churchgoers’ religious-freedom rights, preventing enforcement actions inside churches and within 100 feet of entrances.
The order applies to member churches of Lutheran synods, the American Baptist Churches, the Alliance of Baptists, and Metropolitan Community Churches. It also applies to their Sunday schools, church car parks, and religious day-care centres in the state.
The judge wrote: “If government interference with those freedoms is ever justifiable, it is only in relatively extreme circumstances, such as an immediate threat to public safety. The routine enforcement of the immigration laws does not involve such a threat, and cannot justify the harm to religious freedom posed by the new policy.”
The case will now continue. Another case (News, 13 February), in which the Episcopal Church is one of 27 faith groups to go to court over the removal of the policy protecting schools and places of worship from immigration raids, has now gone to appeal, and a ruling is expected shortly.
President Trump’s administration removed the phrase “sensitive locations” from guidance for immigration officers about the places where raids should be conducted, triggering the legal challenges by faith groups.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Dr Sean Rowe, and the President of the General Convention’s House of Deputies, Julia Ayala Harris, have also signed on to an additional lawsuit objecting to the administration’s treatment of asylum-seekers. They have backed a class-action lawsuit objecting to the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of turning away asylum-seekers at the border on the basis of criteria that, opponents say, do not follow US immigration law.
Another lawsuit has been filed by faith leaders and religious groups in Minnesota against the Department of Homeland Security over refusal to allow faith leaders access to immigrant detainees.
Clergy say they have been denied access to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal building, which houses the local office of ICE agents. Clergy say that they have been denied access on more than one occasion, including Ash Wednesday.
The lawsuit alleges that preventing clergy from entering the facility to offer pastoral care to migrants infringes on their religious freedom.
“By categorically barring faith leaders from praying with detainees, offering sacraments, or providing spiritual guidance, the government imposes a profound and unjustified burden,” the complaint reads.
A group of Roman Catholic priests, nuns, and organisation leaders filed a similar lawsuit in Illinois last year, insisting that they be granted access to detainees at an ICE facility just outside Chicago. The refusal sparked a series of protests at the site which resulted in the arrest of eight faith leaders.