CV NEWS FEED // A federal judge on Friday, April 11 sided with the Trump administration, for now, allowing immigration agents to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich in Washington, DC, found that the plaintiffs, a group of religious organizations, “lack standing, or the legal right to sue, since only a handful of immigration enforcement actions have been conducted in or around churches or other houses of worship,” according to a report from the Associated Press.
Over two dozen progressive Christian and Jewish groups, from the Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism to Unitarian Universalists, filed a federal court lawsuit in early February. The US Catholic Bishops did not join the group.
The lawsuit Mennonite Church USA et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security et al. challenged the Trump administration’s policy of allowing ICE arrests in “sensitive areas” such as courthouses, schools, and churches.
According to the lawsuit, the immigration enforcement policy “is spreading fear of raids, thus lowering attendance at worship services and other valuable church programs.” The group argued that the new regulations infringed on the groups’ religious freedom to “minister to migrants, including those in the United States illegally.”
Judge Friedrich wrote that “at least at this juncture and on this record, the plaintiffs have not made the requisite showing of a ‘credible threat’ of enforcement. Nor does the present record show that places of worship are being singled out as special targets.”
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