WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge on Friday seemed unconvinced that she could block the Trump administration’s policy reversal that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to freely enter places of worship to arrest migrants.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said she did not see enough evidence in the record to support granting a preliminary injunction that would restore long-standing restrictions on raids in “sensitive locations” such as churches, schools, medical facilities or day cares.
The former rule, part of a long-standing “sensitive locations” policy, prevented ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents from going into places of worship unless under “exigent circumstances” or without high-level approval.
On Jan. 20, the department rescinded the sensitive locations policy and wrote in a memo that any “bright line rules” about where rules could be enforced were unnecessary. The department directed ICE and CBP officers to “use discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense.”
A coalition of 27 Christian and Jewish groups sued on Feb. 11, challenging Trump’s Inauguration Day move and arguing that it violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment by hampering their ability to freely exercise their faith.
In their suit, the coalition highlighted the Jan. 31 arrest of a Honduran immigrant named Wilson Velásquez during a church service in Georgia.
In a declaration filed on Wednesday, Bishop Robin Dease of the North Georgia Conference of The United Methodist Church specifically described another similar arrest at an Atlanta church.
There, ICE agents arrived at a day care office looking for a staff member they believed was undocumented, but the individual no longer worked there. Dease alluded to raids in two other Georgia churches and other decorations but did not provide specifics.
Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee, said the available evidence just did not support the coalition’s claim that Trump’s new rule was “unleashing ICE agents” in a way that violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the First Amendment.
Kelsi Corkran of the Georgetown Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection argued that the record was so limited because of the pending litigation challenging the rule reversal both in Washington and in Maryland, brought by a Quaker coalition on Jan. 27.
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland granted a preliminary injunction for the Quaker’s specific plaintiffs on Feb. 24.
“The Department of Homeland Security is currently under this mass deportation mandate, so I think CBP are getting as many people as possible, but they’re focusing on the low-hanging fruit, people with ankle monitors, people who are coming in for their asylum check-ins,” Corkran said. “They haven’t needed to go into sensitive locations yet to meet their quotas, but I expect that will change quite soon if we’re not able to get that injunction.”
What was on the record, she said, was that the plaintiff churches had seen a marked decrease in attendance and were considering operating their places of worship as private property, locking doors and putting up signs that they’re not open to the public.
She argued that under the prior policy, enacted by former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in 2021, agents were instructed to obtain written approval from ICE or CBP headquarters to conduct such raids. In such “exigent circumstances” where approval was impossible, the raids still had to be justifiable after the fact.
Under the Trump administration’s rule, agents have “broad discretion” to conduct the raids, with the only apparent limitation being they use “a healthy dose of common sense,” Corkran said, citing DHS Acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman’s memo.
Justice Department attorney Kristina Wolfe urged Friedrich to deny a preliminary injunction, describing the suit as a “pre-enforcement challenge” that thus had no standing for relief.
“They have pointed to nothing in the record that demonstrates the conduct they seem to be concerned about, with ICE agents or CBP agents rolling up to a place of worship during services and storming into the sanctuary, yanking people out to question them about their immigration status,” Wolfe said.
She added that the Trump administration had a compelling interest to “uniformly” enforce the nation’s immigration laws, as directed by Congress.
The new policy, Wolfe said, was the government’s effort to balance the number of people illegally entering the country with “our public safety concerns and other public welfare needs.”
Friedrich said she would issue a ruling within the coming weeks.
