At Least 65 Clergy Detained Since 2025, and R-1 Religious Workers Have Little Margin Left

Immigration authorities have detained at least 65 pastors, priests, imams, rabbis and other religious figures since January 2025, according to a count Newsweek published on Oct. 11. The tally covers asylum seekers, green card holders and people living under old removal orders, but several cases involve clergy who came on R-1 religious worker visas, and they show how quickly a congregation’s foreign minister can slide from lawful status into detention.

There is no official count of detained clergy. Newsweek built its figure from court filings, news reports and public records, and the administration supplied histories for 42 of the 65, of whom 14 had prior arrests or convictions. By the outlet’s tally, 30 have been released, 18 deported and 14 remain in custody, and one, an imam who held a green card, died in custody in December 2025.

The Department of Homeland Security rejects the idea that clergy are being singled out. “What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is whether or not they are illegally in the U.S.— full stop,” a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, has called for a congressional investigation.

Where a religious worker’s status runs thin

The R-1 program was never built for long waits. A worker can stay at most five years, an initial 30 months plus one 30-month extension. For most of the program’s history that was enough time for a congregation to file a Form I-360 and for the worker to get an EB-4 green card.

That stopped being true in December 2022, when the Visa Bulletin began imposing EB-4 waits on applicants from every country. By DHS’s count, fewer than 63,000 approved EB-4 petitions were waiting for a visa at the end of fiscal 2022; by March 2025, about 217,500 were.

In an interim final rule published Jan. 16, 2026, DHS dropped the 1991 requirement that an R-1 worker who hits the five-year limit spend a full year abroad before returning. The worker must still leave the United States and cannot get a further extension, but can now come back once a new petition is approved. The rule cut the wait abroad. It did not change the five-year cap, which is set by statute.

The program is small but not marginal. DHS counted roughly 19,000 R-1 approvals for new or continuing employment between November 2020 and April 2023, about 21 percent of the 91,770 religious workers in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ May 2023 estimate.

Fiscal year	R visas issued (workers and family)	Of which, workers
2019	6,288	4,583
2020	2,399	1,732
2021	2,777	1,942
2022	5,904	4,098
2023	8,009	5,330

Source: Congressional Research Service, “Religious Worker Immigration: In Brief” (R48829, Jan. 27, 2026), compiling State Department visa issuance data for FY2019 to FY2023.

What the individual cases show

In the R-1 cases Newsweek describes, the trouble starts with a decision on paper. Yehonatan Ovadia, a rabbi detained in New York on Aug. 28, 2026, had his extension request denied by USCIS on discretionary grounds that cited a 2023 protest arrest. His attorney says the State Department renewed his R-1 visa in 2024 after he disclosed the incident. DHS told Newsweek he has a record that includes criminal mischief and a charge of conspiracy as a hate crime, and that he overstayed a period of permitted stay that ended Nov. 2, 2025.

Other cases arose at routine appointments. Newsweek reports that a Presbyterian pastor from South Korea was detained at a USCIS interview in California in February and later released with GPS monitoring. A Ugandan pastor and asylum seeker in Vermont, Steven Tendo, was freed after 16 days when a federal judge found ICE had not followed its own rules on re-detention, an outcome New England Public Media also reported.

Nothing in the record points to a policy aimed at clergy, and the administration’s data on 42 cases show a third had arrest or conviction histories. The sharper lesson is about margins. When an extension is denied, especially on discretionary grounds, an R-1 worker can lose status almost immediately. With EB-4 waits now running past the five-year cap, a worker has no backup plan, and a USCIS appointment or check-in has become a place where enforcement can happen. Congregations that rely on foreign clergy have little room for a late filing or an unexplained old arrest.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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