President Donald Trump listens as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during a tour of “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, Tuesday, July 1, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci).
The Trump administration has been barred from carrying out “warrantless” immigration enforcement operations in or “within 100 feet of the entrance” to various churches across the country.
In a 62-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor, a George W. Bush appointee, rejected the need for such efforts in all but the most limited of cases in the name of religious freedom.
“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,” the judge writes. “Indeed, according to the new policy, agents could conduct a raid, with weapons drawn, at any type of church proceeding—including a regular Sunday service, a wedding, a baptism, a christening, or a funeral—subject only to the exercise of their “discretion’ and ‘common sense.'”
The 44-page lawsuit was filed in July 2025 against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by an ecumenical coalition of churches, alleging violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the First Amendment, and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).
“[P]eople across the country, regardless of immigration status, reasonably fear attending houses of worship,” the complaint reads. “Churches have seen both attendance and financial giving plummet. Congregations have gone underground to protect their parishioners, eschewing in-person meetings central to their faith.”
The court, acting on a motion for an administrative stay with an alternative request for a preliminary injunction, declined to entertain the APA claim and denied the stay while granting the injunction.
Saylor firmly rejected prioritizing the Trump administration’s anti-immigration campaign over religious freedom.
From the opinion, at length:
It hardly requires mentioning that freedom of religion is both a core American value and a basic liberty protected by the First Amendment and laws of the United States. That freedom encompasses not merely the freedom to believe, but the freedom to worship, including the freedom to attend church and to participate in sacraments, rituals, and ceremonies. If government interference with those freedoms is ever justifiable, it is only in relatively extreme circumstances, such as an immediate threat to public safety. The routine enforcement of the immigration laws does not involve such a threat, and cannot justify the harm to religious freedom posed by the new policy.
While offering a concession to the federal government’s concerns over “millions of illegal immigrants within the borders,” the court juxtaposes the necessity of a “substantial government response” with the ability of churches to conduct services and raise money.
“But the need to address that problem cannot override the fundamental liberties on which our nation was founded,” the judge goes on. “And to be clear, the new policy does not simply permit the apprehension of illegal immigrants in churches; it permits, without meaningful restraints, the disruption of church services and functions and the interrogation or seizure of anyone who may be on church property, citizen and non-citizen alike.”
The ruling, however, was not an unalloyed win.
The court found not all of the plaintiffs – led by the New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America – are able to move forward. While accepting the Lutheran, Baptist, Metropolitan Community Church plaintiffs had suffered cognizable injuries, three Quaker groups were found not to have standing.
The court’s analysis here begins with an application of the analytical framework widely known by legal scholars as “conservative standing doctrine.”
This judicial theory was created in two cases from the 1920s by conservative judges who sought to restrain the use and limits of constitutional redress. In other words, standing doctrine was created — and has over time been honed and sustained — to limit lawsuits against the government. While technically procedural in nature, as opposed to relying on the underlying merits arguments in a dispute, standing arguments tend to be fact-intensive.
To hear Saylor tell it, the Quaker groups were unable to show they had suffered decreased attendance or financial harm as a result of the new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy at issue.
While broadly rejecting the “intangible” harms of “fear and anxiety” due to ICE raids, the court found the viable plaintiffs “have suffered at least three cognizable injuries-in-fact: decreased attendance at worship services; decreased attendance at social ministries; and financial consequences.”
As the judge sees it, the crux of the dispute is guided by RFRA; while rejecting the APA claim, the court declined to reach the merits of the First Amendment claim at this stage in the litigation.
The judge offers an example:
[The new ICE policy] would permit immigration-enforcement officers to set up a checkpoint just outside a church, or to question parishioners in the middle of a Catholic Mass. Without question, those activities would substantially hinder, constrain, and inhibit individuals from attending church or religious schools or programs, regardless of citizenship status, thereby imposing a “substantial burden.”
Still, the court hinted that the plaintiffs might have some luck with their First Amendment claim down the line. The judge opined that a RFRA claim “is, essentially, a free-exercise claim that is judged against a more restrictive standard than what the…Constitution requires.”
“The preliminary injunction issued by the Court will permit such operations only in exigent circumstances, regardless of supervisory approval,” Saylor goes on. “The Court can conceive of no circumstance, outside of a true emergency, in which a law-enforcement operation to enforce the immigration laws inside a church would be justifiable under the First Amendment and RFRA.”
