The Trump administration must prove to a federal judge that its surveillance of a Baptist church and other congregations did not violate an injunction barring the government’s clandestine efforts.
U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor in Massachusetts scheduled a Sept. 4 video hearing to determine if the Department of Homeland Security violated his February restraining order exempting plaintiffs in New England Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, et al., v. DHS from immigration enforcement actions on or near their properties as the lawsuit progresses.
But in court documents filed last month, DHS acknowledged spying on Baptist, Episcopal, Lutheran and Unitarian Universalist congregations in Minnesota’s Twin Cities and on another Lutheran parish in Michigan. The operation was part of an investigation and eventual criminal case against 15 activists who protested President Donald Trump’s violent anti-immigrant campaign in Minnesota.
Interim Pastor Cody Sanders
“It is deeply disturbing that churches can become targets of government surveillance precisely because they care for their neighbors, provide safe places for people to gather and work together for justice,” said Cody Sanders, interim pastor at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis.
His congregation is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches USA, both of which are plaintiffs in New England Synod and covered by Saylor’s injunction. Despite that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement monitored the church multiple times and in late May sent an undercover agent inside to spy on members of a martial arts class.
“As a society, we should agree that sacred spaces and the community life that takes place within them should not become targets of government infiltration,” Sanders said, adding that UBC will not be deterred from its calling to serve marginalized people. “In doing so, we resist xenophobia and the idea that lives on the margins are disposable. We will continue to insist that solidarity with our most vulnerable neighbors is one of the clearest ways we follow Jesus in the world.”
Learning of the spy operation has retraumatized clergy and members of targeted churches who lived through “Operation Metro Surge,” ICE’s early-2026 occupation of the Twin Cities that led to thousands of arrests and the killings of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti, said Susie Hayward, minister of justice organizing at Creekside United Church of Christ in Minneapolis.
Susan Hayward
“Houses of worship are intended to be places of safety, freedom from fear, healing, and holy freedom. When our federal government disregards the sanctity of these spaces — and even posted notices stating that federal agents may not enter without a warrant — it violates not only constitutional protections but a moral code many of us believe is divinely ordained,” she said. “Faith communities here in Minnesota — and religious leaders across the country — are now watching closely to see whether the courts will uphold the protections they have already ordered. The freedom of religious communities to worship, minister, and care for our neighbors cannot depend on whether the government approves of where our faith leads us.”
The Trump administration’s strategy is a direct attack not only against churches but also against the freedom of assembly, speech and religion enshrined in the First Amendment, said Minister JaNaé Bates Imari, co-executive director of ISAIAH, a multi-race and multi-faith pro-democracy movement serving Minnesota.
“This winter, Minnesotans of faith responded to extraordinary federal violence with prayer, song, nonviolent action and love of neighbor,” she said. “For the federal government to respond by surveilling churches and the people gathering inside them is not only an attack on religious freedom, it is an attempt to intimidate people out of exercising their most basic constitutional rights. The church does not exist by permission of the government, and our sacred spaces cannot become places where people must wonder whether practicing their faith or standing with their neighbors will put them in a federal file.”
The Trump administration needs to learn that standing up for constitutional rights is not anti-American, Sojourners President Adam Russell Taylor said.
Adam Russell Taylor
“Exercising their First Amendment religious freedom, congregations will sometimes be inconvenient to those in power. That is as it should be. Government surveillance of churches should concern Americans across the political and theological spectrum,” Taylor said. “Democracy depends on institutions strong enough to exercise conscience and challenge abuses of power, and Christian faith requires the church to answer to something higher than the state. Religious leaders across the country will be watching closely to see whether the protections the courts have established for houses of worship are actually upheld.”
DHS has denied it violated the court injunction because it wasn’t spying or intruding on actual religious services and because the secret surveillance wasn’t an immigration enforcement action but an attempt to prevent activists from conducting criminal activities. The department also has refused to provide agents’ notes and other records about the program to defendants in its criminal case against activists. DHS also claims the churches it targeted suffered no actual harm in the process.
Justice Department attorneys said in an Aug. 21 response that “defendants have not met their burden of making a threshold showing of selective prosecution, vindictive prosecution or outrageous government conduct. Courts are cautious in considering selective prosecution claims as it calls for the judiciary to exercise power over the charging decisions of the executive branch, as such, the threshold is a demanding one.”
But it is plain the government’s actions were “egregious violations of the temporary injunction,” according to the New England Synod plaintiffs represented by Democracy Forward, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and Gilbert LLC.
DHS’ violations include “deploying an undercover ICE agent into one of plaintiffs’ protected churches to surveil and record people inside” in a “blatant and repeated” operation resulting in “harm to fundamental rights of religion and expressive association, and the threat of future similar violations,” attorneys said in a motion to enforce the injunction. The motion also urges Saylor to hold the federal government in contempt for violating the injunction.
“Alarming evidence has shown that despite a court ordering them not to do so, ICE agents continue to invade churches and other places of sanctuary, terrorizing the people who seek refuge and respite within them,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said. “It is clear that the government will stop at nothing — including at church doors — in its campaign to stoke fear in communities across the country, so we are asking the court to hold them accountable for this intrusion.”
A coalition of religious groups including the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship are operating under a court injunction in Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends v. DHS, a separate lawsuit filed in January 2025.
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