Religious groups sue to prevent Trump -Administrator from arresting migrants in worship sites

A coalition of 27 Christian and Jewish groups representing millions of Americans filed a trial on Tuesday that challenged a Trump administration that enabled federal immigration enforcement to make arrests in worship sites.

The federal trial filed in the US District Court in Washington was brought on behalf of a number of religious groups, including Episcopal Church, Union for Reform Judaism, Mennonites and Unitarian Universalists.

The trial challenges an order from President Donald Trump, who turned a bit -administration policy that prevents agents from arresting illegal migrants in sensitive places such as churches, schools and hospitals.

According to the trial, Trump’s new policy has aroused fear of attack, which has led to lower participation in worship and other church programs. Because of this influence on participation, the trial claims that the policy violates the religious freedom of groups, especially their ability to serve migrants, including those in the United States illegally.

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“We have immigrants, refugees, people who are documented and undocumented,” the most pastor Sean Rowe, the presidential bishop of the episcopal church, told Associated Press.

“We can’t worship freely if some of us live in fear,” he added. “By participating in this trial, we seek the ability to gather and fully practice our faith, follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors as ourselves.”

A similar trial was brought on January 27 by five Quaker congregations, which later became with Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a Sikh temple. This case is currently awaiting the US district law in Maryland.

The new trial names the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration enforcement agencies as defendant.

“We protect our schools, worship sites and Americans participating by preventing criminal aliens and members from taking advantage of these locations and taking a safe harbor there because these criminals knew that under the previous administration that law enforcement could not go in , could not go in “DH’s Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement.

“DHS’s Directive gives our law enforcement the opportunity to do their jobs,” she said.

A memorandum filed on Friday by the Ministry of Justice, which opposed the argument in the Quaker Case Case could also apply to the new trial.

DOJ claims that the applicants’ request to block the new immigration enforcement policy is based on speculation about hypothetical future damage, as the department says, makes the insufficient reason why the courts can sit with quakers and issue an injunction.

In the note, DOJ said that immigration enforcement affecting worship places was allowed for decades and that the new policy announced last month stated that field agents should use “common sense” and “estimates”, but now could carry out immigration enforcement operations in worship houses without forguarding houses from a supervisor.

Part of this memo may not apply to the new trial as it claimed that Quakers and their colleagues have no basis for seeking a nationwide order to protect all religious groups from the new policy.

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“Any relief in this case must be adapted exclusively to the named plaintiffs,” the DOJ memo said, arguing that any injunction should not apply to other religious organizations.

The applicants in the new trial represent a significantly larger number of US worshipers, including more than 1 million supporters of reform Jewish, about 1.5 million episcopalis, more than 1 million members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the estimated 1.5 million active members by the African Methodistic Episcopal Church among others.

“The massive scale of the suit will be difficult for them to ignore,” the main council Kelsi Corkran, a lawyer at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told Associated Press.

Corkran said the applicants joined the trial “Because their writing, teaching and traditions offer undeniable unanimity for their religious obligation to embrace and serve refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in their midst, without regard to documentation or legal status.”

Before Trump’s change in federal politics, CORREKRAN said immigration agents generally needed a legal arrest warrant or other special permission to carry out operations in places such as places for worship, schools and hospitals.

“Now it goes everywhere,” she said. “Now they have broad authority to hover in – they have made it very clear that they get any undocumented person.”

The lawsuit outlined how some of the plaintiffs’ operations can be affected. Some, including the Union of Reform Judaism and Mennonites, said many of their synagogues and churches host food on site, meals, homeless shelters and other support services for illegal migrants who may now be afraid to participate.

A plaintiff, Latino Christian National Network, described fears among migrants in the wake of the new Trump administration policy.

“There is deeply sitting fear and distrust of our government,” the network’s president, Pastor Carlos Malavé, a priest of two churches in Virginia, told Associated Press. “People fear going to the store, they avoid going to church. … The churches are increasingly doing online services because people fear for their families’ well -being.”

A religious group that did not participate in the new trial is the US conference with Catholic Bishopes leading the country’s largest denomination, although criticized Trump’s mass portation plan.

On Tuesday, Pope Francis criticized the administration’s immigration policy and said that the powerful removal of people due to their immigration status deprives them of their inherent dignity and that doing so argued, “will end poorly.”

However, many conservative faith leaders and legal experts across the country share no concerns about immigration enforcement targeting of worship sites to arrest migrants.

“Worship sites are for worship and are not sanctuaries of illegal activity or of having people dealing with illegal activity,” Mat Spells, founder of the conservative Christian legal organization Liberty Counsel, told Associated Press.

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“Fugitives or criminals are not immune to the law, only because they go into a place of worship,” he said. “This is not a matter of religious freedom. There is no right to open the law and obey law enforcement.”

Associated Press contributed to this report.