The Trump administration claims its spy mission in a Baptist church did not violate an injunction barring immigration actions on or around the property because its operative infiltrated a gathering other than a worship service, according to an Aug. 23 court filing.
The accusation stemmed from an undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent entering University Baptist Church in Minneapolis in May to secretly audio record participants in what the federal government apparently considered to be a “left-wing martial arts group.” It has since come to light that the Department of Homeland Security spied on numerous churches and civic groups it believed help organization anti-ICE protests earlier this year in Minnesota.
But UBC and other Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches USA are among more than 20 faith groups granted a preliminary injunction earlier this year in New England Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, et al. v. DHS, a federal lawsuit filed to protect sensitive locations such as churches, hospitals and schools from immigration enforcement raids.
“The government now argues that DHS’s infiltration of a class inside University Baptist Church did not violate the court’s preliminary injunction because the spying occurred in gymnasium instead of the sanctuary.”
Plaintiffs in the litigation are represented by Democracy Forward, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Gilbert LLC.
“The Trump-Vance administration does not get to turn houses of worship into sites of secret surveillance — and it certainly does not get to disregard a federal court order protecting these spaces,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said after attorneys filed a motion requesting an order to show cause for violating the terms of the injunction. A U.S. district judge in Massachusetts granted the order Aug. 24 just four days after a motion was filed over violations of the injunction.
“This order requires the administration to answer for sending an undercover ICE agent into a protected church and repeatedly surveilling people at and around it. No one should have to fear that entering a church, practicing their faith, or gathering in community will put them under government watch,” Perryman said.
DHS targeted UBC, labor unions, climate change groups and other churches as part of an operation that resulted in the indictment of 15 anti-ICE activists in Minnesota whom it accuses in United States v. Sant of assaulting or attempting to assault federal immigration officers. DHS has not prosecuted ICE and Border Patrol agents who have murdered Americans including Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
The government has developed a new rationale for invading congregations protected by the injunction in New England Synod v. DHS, attorneys for the churches said in their latest motion: “The government in United States v. Sant now argues that DHS’s infiltration of a class inside University Baptist Church did not violate the court’s preliminary injunction because the spying occurred in the gymnasium instead of the sanctuary and because ‘the use of the church on that day’ was not ‘central’ to the church’s ‘mission.’”
But the administration failed to raise those justifications during preceding legal hearings, the motion added. “The gymnasium that ICE infiltrated is a part of the church building itself, immediately below the sanctuary. That building has been identified as a ‘place of worship’— not an ‘adjacent protected facility” as DHS claims.
Nor is it right or within the ability of DHS and ICE to judge what is and isn’t crucial to a congregation’s ministry, the complaint states. “Once plaintiffs have properly designated a location as a protected area under the order, as plaintiffs did here for University Baptist Church, its protection does not vary from hour to hour based on whether DHS believes what’s going on inside at that moment is ‘central’ enough to a plaintiff’s religious mission.”
The lawsuit in play in this case is different from Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. DHS, in which the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and other religious groups were granted immunity from immigration actions in 2025.
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