Religious groups who sued over the raids have not met the threshold for an injunction, the judge said.
A federal judge on April 11 declined to prevent Department of Homeland Security agents from conducting immigration raids at churches.
“At least at this juncture and on this record, the plaintiffs have not made the requisite showing of a ‘credible threat’ of enforcement,” U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
wrote in an opinion.
The ruling came in a case brought by religious groups, including the Mennonite Church USA.
The federal government’s new policy,
announced after President Donald Trump took office, rescinded a policy labeling churches and schools as sensitive places, making it easier for agents to carry out immigration enforcement at these locations.
The groups said the policy unconstitutionally interferes with their exercise of religion.
“Immigration agents already have begun exercising this newfound authority to snare worshippers and other visitors at Plaintiffs’ places of worship, inflicting grave harm on Plaintiffs’ ability to freely exercise their religious beliefs and to assemble,” the plaintiffs
said in a motion for a preliminary injunction, or an order blocking the policy. “Absent preliminary relief, these enforcement activities in and near sacred spaces will multiply and so, too, will the intense burden this government action places on Plaintiffs’ religious exercise.”
Government lawyers
said in a filing in response that the groups’ only outlined possible injury from future immigration raids, which was insufficient to prove standing. They also said that “those speculative harms are outweighed by the Government’s strong interest in immigration enforcement and avoiding interference with discretionary law enforcement decisions.”
Friedrich noted that just one enforcement action has taken place at one of the plaintiffs’ churches, with another four reporting immigration agents having conducted surveillance at or near their premises. She said that the evidence presented by the parties showed that churches and other places of worship are not being singled out as special targets by DHS agents.
“Absent evidence of specific directives to immigration officers to target plaintiffs’ places of worship, or a pattern of enforcement actions, the Court finds no credible threat of imminent enforcement,” she wrote. “Accordingly, the plaintiffs lack standing to assert a pre-enforcement challenge.”
Friedrich also said that the religious organizations have not shown that drops in attendance are linked to the new policy, as opposed to the government’s broader effort to arrest illegal immigrants. Evidence exists indicating congregants are staying home not to avoid agents at churches, but because agents may be in their neighborhoods, she said.
The denial means the policy will remain enforceable as the case proceeds. The court could eventually rule in favor of the plaintiffs.
A separate case challenging the same policy,
lodged by Quakers in federal court in Maryland,
resulted in a different U.S. judge ruling that immigration agents cannot make arrests at churches belonging to the plaintiffs.
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, the judge, wrote in his order that the policy lacked “meaningful limitations or safeguards” on enforcement and “likely does not satisfy these constitutional and statutory requirements as to Plaintiffs.”
