27 religious groups suing the Trump administration

Do US immigration officials have the right to raid religious services?

Over two-dozen Christian and Jewish groups, including the Episcopal Church and the Union for Reform Judaism, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against a Trump policy that allows immigration agents greater freedom to make arrests at houses of worship.

The lawsuit reaches into one of the paradoxes of the right in US politics. Although they largely claim to be based on Christian values, the actions of the new administration are drawing increasing levels of criticism from Christian bodies.

Pope Francis already denounced the president’s plan for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants on an Italian talk show. “If it is true, it will be a disgrace because it makes the poor wretches who have nothing pay the bill for the imbalance,” the pope said.

The lawsuit contends that the new policy is spreading fear of raids, thus lowering attendance at worship services and other church activities. The result, says the suit, infringes on the groups’ religious freedom — specifically their ability to minister to migrants, including those in the United States illegally.

“We have immigrants, refugees, people who are documented and undocumented,” said the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. “We cannot worship freely if some of us are living in fear,” he told The Associated Press.

Homeland security and enforcement

The DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, offered this response to Associated Press via email: “We are protecting our schools, places of worship, and Americans who attend, by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and take safe haven there because these criminals knew that under the previous Administration that law enforcement couldn’t go inside.”

The plaintiffs in the new lawsuit represent more than 1 million followers of Reform Judaism, the estimated 1.5 million Episcopalians in 6,700 congregations nationwide, nearly 1.1 million members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), and the estimated 1.5 million active members of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church — one of the country’s oldest predominantly Black denominations.

(ML. Source: La Vie, AP et al. Photo : Unsplash)