ICE Can Raid Churches Now. A Federal Judge Says So.

[douglas9]

A Trump-appointed judge gives immigration agents a free pass into America’s houses of worship. Congregations now brace for raids at the altar.

WASHINGTON—In a decision that struck like a thunderclap through America’s sanctuaries, a Trump-appointed federal judge has given U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents the legal greenlight to carry out enforcement operations in churches, mosques, temples, and other houses of worship. The decision—a pointed rebuke to more than two dozen Christian and Jewish organizations—effectively erases a long-standing norm: that places of worship are off-limits in the war on undocumented migrants.

The ruling came from U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, who, with the stoicism of a jurist unseduced by theology or even historical context, rejected the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction. Her rationale? The plaintiffs failed to prove ICE had directly targeted their congregations or that the policy had caused a “concrete” harm—like a dip in attendance.

Friedrich’s decision, rendered in a D.C. courtroom whose architecture reveres Enlightenment ideals, is rooted in the Trump-era rollback of a Homeland Security memo that once treated churches, schools, and hospitals as “sensitive locations”—essentially, no-go zones for enforcement unless national security was at stake. That memo was replaced with guidance instructing ICE agents to exercise “common sense and discretion,” two attributes rarely praised in ICE performance reviews.

Religious leaders had argued that the mere possibility of a raid inside a church was enough to frighten migrants away from congregations and community centers. It chilled faith, they said. It made communion dangerous. But the court demanded more—quantifiable metrics of spiritual attrition, perhaps. In the absence of that, the judge ruled that there was no “imminent injury,” and so no case.

https://migrantinsider.com/p/ice-raids-churches