A federal judge has ruled against Fellowship Southwest, the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas and more than two dozen other plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the legality of immigration raids in churches and other sensitive locations.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich in Washington, D.C., refused to grant a preliminary injunction to block U.S. Immigration and Enforcement and Customs Enforcement from arresting undocumented immigrants in houses of worship, schools and health care facilities.
Stephen Reeves
“While we are disappointed, this is not the end of the litigation,” said Stephen Reeves, executive director of Fellowship Southwest. “We met with our attorneys and fellow plaintiffs late Friday afternoon to review the judge’s opinion and discuss next steps. We are still currently weighing our options for the best path forward.”
The April 11 decision stands in stark contrast to the February ruling in a separate lawsuit barring immigration enforcement actions in places of worship affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and other religious organizations. The earlier relief was granted by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chang in Maryland.
Both lawsuits stem from a Jan. 21 decision by the Department of Homeland Security to lift a decades-old prohibition against ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducting raids in sensitive locations.
The directive coincided with the launch of President Donald Trump’s massive campaign of rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants.
“This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens — including murderers and rapists — who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” DHS said.
Two lawsuits were filed in response to the directive in February. The suit CBF joined with a coalition of Baptists, Quakers and Sikhs contends the immigration policy reversal violates their rights to religious freedom and expression.
The subsequent restraining order “reinforces our effort to restore the sensitive location protections that have allowed our congregations to worship and minister freely. While our work continues, we celebrate this victory as a testament to the bold faith that rises from freedom rather than coercion,” CBF said.
The action involving Fellowship Southwest and other Christian and Jewish organizations argues the policy made their congregations targets for raids, hurt worship attendance and forced them to pay for extra security measures to keep worshipers safe.
Dabney Friedrich
DHS, the suit argues, “ignored the serious harms that will befall communities of faith and those they serve if the government now is free to conduct immigration enforcement actions at places of worship and during religious ceremonies.”
But Friedrich ruled the plaintiffs in Mennonite Church USA v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security failed to prove the directive poses a “credible threat” to their institutions or that they have sustained actual harm due to the policy.
Her decision also held that allowing enforcement actions in religious spaces does not equate to an intentional targeting of those institutions and “does not mandate conducting enforcement activities during worship services or while social service ministries are being provided.”
However, the suit pointed to the January arrest of Honduran immigrant Wilson Velásquez at a church in Georgia and the trauma the apprehension caused to church members and his family.
The suit says immigration agents also have shown up at church food pantries, job training events and English as a Second Language classes. Separately, federal agents parked in a CBF-affiliated church parking lot in Raleigh, N.C., where ESL courses are offered but made no arrests. It was unclear if immigrants and refugees who frequent the facility were being targeted.
“Plaintiffs have not made the requisite showing of a ‘credible threat’ of enforcement.”
“Plaintiffs’ congregations and members face an imminent risk of similar immigration enforcement actions at their places of worship,” the suit contends. “An immigration enforcement action during worship services, ministry work, or other congregational activities would be devastating to their religious practice. It would shatter the consecrated space of sanctuary, thwart communal worship, and undermine the social service outreach that is central to religious expression and spiritual practice for plaintiffs’ congregations and members.”
Friedrich’s ruling cites an insufficient number of such instances to conclude faith groups are being targeted or harmed by the DHS policy: “Although four plaintiffs do allege that ICE has engaged in surveillance near their premises, they have not presented any direct link between that surveillance and an actual or pending immigration raid at a church or synagogue.”
Plaintiffs also failed to establish a link between the policy and declines in worship attendance, or to demonstrate that rescinding the directive would spark an upsurge in attendance to pre-administration levels, Friedrich wrote.
Nor did the plaintiffs prove they have had to prevent immigrants from attending their services or else make them enforcement targets, the ruling says. “In other words, absent a credible threat of enforcement, the causal link between religious welcome and an immigration raid at a place of worship is” legally speculative.
Finally, incurring security costs to protect members from ICE agents does not pose an actual harm when enforcement situations are merely anticipated, Friedrich said. “At least at this juncture and on this record, the plaintiffs have not made the requisite showing of a ‘credible threat’ of enforcement.”
Among other plaintiffs in the case are the Mennonite Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and The United Methodist Church, along with other regional Jewish and Christian groups.
The plaintiffs in this case are represented by the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, based in Washington, D.C.
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27 more religious groups sue to stop ICE raids at churches
Quakers file suit to stop ICE raids at churches like what happened Sunday
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