Massachusetts judge pauses ICE policy allowing enforcement in churches

(CN) — A Massachusetts district judge found that updated guidance allowing federal immigration enforcement in and around houses of worship illegally burdens religious exercise in more than 5,000 congregations nationwide.

“It is of course true that the presence of millions of illegal immigrants within the borders of the United States justifies a substantial government response,” U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV said in the 62-page opinion. “But the need to address that problem cannot override the fundamental liberties on which our nation was founded.

Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a preliminary injunction late Friday that disallows immigration enforcement in or around churches and other places of worship where there are no exigent circumstances or warrants without purely returning to the status quo.

The plaintiffs in the underlying action are regional bodies or synods of several religious groups, including Baptists, Quakers and Evangelical Lutherans, representing in total more than 5,600 congregations and countless individuals across the country.

They brought their lawsuit in July 2025, challenging a memo issued by then-acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman that reversed 30 years of immigration enforcement guidance by giving individual agents discretion to decide whether they will enter sensitive locations to conduct arrests or searches.

The guidance stripped the guardrails upheld in most recently in 2021 that disallowed enforcement in “protected” areas such as houses of worship, schools and funerals and instead instructed officers only to use “a healthy dose of common sense.”

While the organizations asked the court for a wholesale reversal back to the previous policy, and to enjoin DHS from carrying out immigration operations in or near houses of worship, Saylor’s injunction is extremely narrowly tailored to comport with the specificity requirements of the federal civil procedure rules.  

They staked their claims on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the First Amendment right to expressive association and the Administrative Procedure Act — the new policy inhibits their ability to freely exercise their religion and arbitrarily reverses prior policy without reasoning.

Saylor agreed with their restoration act argument, finding that the Huffman memo would allow immigration officers to interrupt Catholic mass to question parishioners or set up a citizenship checkpoint just outside the front door.

Without question, Saylor said, these activities would “substantially burden” their ability to attend service or religious schools regardless of citizenship status and without a compelling government interest.

“The prospect that a street-level law-enforcement agent — acting without a judicial warrant and with little or no supervisory control — could conduct a raid during a church service, or lie in wait to interrogate or seize congregants as they seek to enter a church, is profoundly troubling,” Saylor said.  

Having already found the likelihood of success required for an injunction in the organizations’ first claim, Saylor declined to consider their First Amendment freedom of expressive association argument.

He rejected their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act altogether, finding that the memo was not a “final agency action” as defined by the APA and cannot be barred as such.

Friday’s injunction does not simply toss the Huffman memo. It only prohibits warrantless enforcement actions inside or at the entrance of a house of worship, a religious education facility, a religious social service facility or on adjacent church property.

It also bars enforcement within 100 feet of the entrance to a house of worship without exigent circumstances or supervisory approval and bars law enforcement from knowingly setting up checkpoints to interrogate persons on their way to or from those areas.

Saylor took care to note the injunction does not apply nationwide, nor does it apply to immigration operations in which the agents are armed with either an administrative or judicial warrant.

It doesn’t even apply to all of the plaintiffs, three of which failed to establish standing by showing concrete injury-in-fact, such as financial harm or severely decreased attendance.

Of the 11 organizations, the San Francisco Friends Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, the Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and the North Pacific Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends each failed the standing test.

Their 44-page complaint details the harms rippling across the remaining eight organizations, including a sizeable decrease in attendance across the hundreds of congregations represented by the plaintiff organizations — some noting a 50% drop since the new policy was enacted.

This, they say, has forced many congregations to reduce certain services due to decreasing donations, increase spending on education about legal rights and avoid speaking up about immigration issues if they can safely attend services at all.

“Plaintiffs, whose religious beliefs mandate they welcome immigrants without regard to immigration status, now face the risk of immigration enforcement actions at or near their places of worship — and some members have already had this happen,” the organizations said in the complaint.

Two Minnesota school districts and a major teachers union also sued DHS over the Huffman memo in early February over increased presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on school property, leading to at least one violent clash with students.

The plaintiff organizations could not be immediately reached for comment.

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