ICE Arrests at Churches: Appeals Court Revives Challenge

A divided D.C. Circuit panel ruled Oct. 20 that 27 Christian and Jewish groups can press their challenge to ICE arrests at churches and synagogues. Nothing changes at the church door yet.

A federal appeals court on Oct. 20 revived a lawsuit by 27 religious organizations against the Trump administration’s decision to allow ICE arrests at churches and other houses of worship. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that the groups, led by Mennonite Church USA, have standing to challenge the January 2025 memo that scrapped longstanding limits on immigration enforcement at “sensitive locations,” according to Courthouse News and Bloomberg Law. The decision does not restore those limits. It sends the case back to U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich to decide again whether to block the policy for the plaintiffs while the suit goes forward.

The ruling matters less for what it orders than for the bar it removes. Friedrich denied preliminary relief in April 2025, concluding that “at least on the present record, the plaintiffs have not established a substantial likelihood of Article III standing.” The appeals court majority disagreed. Judge Florence Pan, joined by Judge Robert Wilkins, found that the groups’ members face a “credible threat” of enforcement and that enforcement had already begun at or near congregations as a “direct result” of the policy change, Bloomberg Law reported. Judge Neomi Rao dissented.

How DHS’s own announcement became evidence

The policy at issue dates to October 2021, when then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told officers that, “to the fullest extent possible,” DHS should not take enforcement action in or near protected areas, including places of worship. Officers needed headquarters approval first unless exigent circumstances applied, such as hot pursuit. Acting Secretary Benjamine Huffman rescinded that guidance on Jan. 20, 2025, telling officers to rely on discretion “along with a healthy dose of common sense.” A DHS spokesperson announced the change by saying that “criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest.”

That framing worked against the government on appeal. The Justice Department argued that the groups needed specific information that a particular church would be raided. The majority instead treated the administration’s announced plan to step up enforcement at sensitive locations as proof that the threat was real, and it rejected the idea that the old guidance had no practical bite, noting that courts “generally assume that agencies comply with their announced administrative policies,” according to Bloomberg Law. In dissent, Rao wrote that the groups “offer only speculation” that bringing back the Biden-era guidance would change how officers behave, and the rescission was “just one relatively minor part” of a broader enforcement approach.

Both readings find support in the record. The 2021 policy was guidance with broad exceptions, never a flat ban. But having billed the repeal as opening churches to enforcement, the government will find it harder to argue that the repeal changed nothing.

ICE arrests at churches: protection depends on the congregation

Can ICE make arrests at a church today? In most of the country, yes. No nationwide rule bars it. The only binding limits come from court orders that protect named plaintiffs. In August, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a Maryland injunction requiring DHS to follow the 2021 policy at places of worship tied to six Quaker yearly meetings, Sikh Temple Sacramento and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. That order is not nationwide, and it does not restrict arrests backed by an administrative or judicial warrant. In that record, one Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation reported a 66 percent drop in attendance at its English as a second language program. DHS has published no figures on how often its officers have acted at or near houses of worship since the change.

A win on remand in the D.C. case would most likely follow the same pattern, extending the 2021 rules to places of worship connected to the 27 plaintiff groups rather than to every congregation in the country. The Supreme Court’s 2025 decision in Trump v. CASA, which curbed universal injunctions, makes broader relief hard to get, and the Justice Department is now asking the justices to limit universal vacatur as well. The practical result: an immigrant’s exposure at weekly services can turn on which denomination the congregation belongs to.

The government can ask the full D.C. Circuit to rehear the case or take it to the Supreme Court. If it does neither, Friedrich will reconsider the injunction request with standing settled, and the fight shifts to whether the groups are likely to win on the merits. Related fights over how ICE operates include a dispute over ICE body cameras, a House bill on wrongful detention of citizens and a planned worksite enforcement push.

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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