An attempt by religious groups to block the Trump administration from conducting immigration raids at houses of worship will probably “lose at every step” of the legal process, one expert predicted to The Post.
A coalition of 27 Jewish and Christian groups filed suit in a Washington, DC federal court Tuesday opposing President Trump’s decision to walk back a longstanding policy that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security would only arrest illegal immigrants in houses of worship under extreme cases — recognizing religious spaces as “sensitive locations.”
The suit claims ICE raids during “services, ministry work or other congregational activities would be devastating to their religious practice” and has already caused a decline in attendance from people scared to be deported — all of which violates their constitutional rights to assemble and practice their religious faith.
But former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani doesn’t think this lawsuit — or other similar ones, including a case by Quaker groups seeking to keep ICE out of their meeting houses — have legal traction.
“It’s a very tough uphill battle,” Rahmani said. “It’s not going to work.”
“I expect them to lose at every step of the way,” he added.
“You can’t harbor a fugitive just because you’re a religious institution,” the lawyer said. “There is no legal difference between a secular business and a house of worship. Nothing about the practice of religion allows you to help someone evade the law.”
Rahmani said unlike the droves of federal suits against other Trump policies, opposing the President’s attempt to do away with birthright citizenship or to halt congressionally approved funding, the suits to keep immigration officials from enforcing policies in places of worship are unlikely to win any emergency rulings by a judge.
The cases against birthright citizenship or Trump’s efforts to pause grants and loans: “are much stronger legal cases and that’s why [Temporary Restraining Orders] were granted,” Rahmani said. “Those are clear winners.”
But one of the lawyers who filed the suit Tuesday, Kelsi Corkran, told The Post Wednesday that the case doesn’t take issue with ICE raids conducted with a warrant signed by a judge, or extreme cases where the feds are in “hot pursuit of someone who is dangerous.”
“This suit is about the wide range of other immigration enforcement activities that ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] undertake without judicial authorization or exigent circumstances,” Corkran said.
The suit argues the new policy change forces religious institutions to choose between exposing “vulnerable congregants” to arrest or “undertaking security measures that are in direct tension with their religious duties of welcome and hospitality.”
These ICE actions violate their rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and First Amendment right to freedom of religious association, the suit claims.
Another former federal prosecutor, Michael Bachner, believes the cases by these religious groups could gain legal traction because the feds have to prove that they are enforcing illegal immigration by the “least restrictive means.”
“Can the government do what they are trying to do in other ways without having to enter a place of worship?” Bachner said. “The religious organizations have a strong argument that the statute Trump rescinded acted tired to ensure that ICE … interfered the least with people’s right to prayer.”
Bachner also warned that ICE raids in houses of worship could be a slippery slope by stripping protections from people trying to practice religion — regardless of their immigration status.
“Are we eviscerating the protections of people’s religious rights and people who want to get guidance from religious leaders? It limits who they can speak to and get advice from.”
Bachner was also skeptical that serious criminals — like rapists, drug dealers and murderers — would frequently attend religious services and argued that the feds don’t have the right to “to invade the privacy of a religious service to arrest somebody because they overstayed their visa.”
Tuesday’s suit detailed the arrest of Wilson Velásquez, who was nabbed while attending church in Georgia — despite the fact he was following all the rules laid out by the court that released him. He and his family came to the US seeking asylum from the gangs in their home country of Honduras, and turned themselves in when they crossed the border and have attended all of their ICE check-ins.
He was simply arrested because he’d been outfitted with a GPS-tracking ankle monitor and ICE was “looking for people with ankle bracelets,” the suit claimed.
Corkran said Rahmani’s arguments miss the point and highlighted that the feds are constitutionally required to “narrowly tailor their enforcement activity to avoid interfering with religious exercise whenever possible.”
“There is rarely if ever any reason that ICE or CBP would need to intrude on a place of worship during services or ministry work to conduct enforcement activity rather than undertake that activity elsewhere in a manner that doesn’t substantially burden religious exercise,” Corkran said.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs and White House reps didn’t immediately return The Post’s requests for comment.
