A lawsuit filed Monday by a group of Quaker congregations challenges a policy change that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to raid schools, hospitals, playgrounds, and houses of worship. Such "sensitive locations" had been off-limits without approval from supervisors since the 1990s, the suit against the Department of Homeland Security says, until being reversed last week, NBC News reports. "The troubling nature of the policy goes beyond just houses of worship with sanctuary programs—it is that ICE could enter religious and sacred spaces whenever it wants," Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, which is providing legal help to the Quaker groups.
The original policy was intended to allow people without legal status to participate in certain parts of public life because it could benefit the community. The suit, which was filed in federal district court in Maryland, gives the examples of allowing children to be in school and ill people to go to hospitals without fearing deportation. An official for one of the plaintiffs, the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, emailed NBC that Quaker worship meetings are intended to be a refuge for all, which the new policy damages by creating anxiety and confusion. The change, Noah Merrill wrote, "undermines our communities and, we believe, violates our religious freedom."
The policy change by the Trump administration has been criticized by leaders of various religious faiths, but the Quaker group's lawsuit appears to be the first. The Episcopal Church criticized the president's family separation policy, per Axios, and the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement opposing Trump's executive orders concerning immigrants and refugees, foreign aid, the death penalty, and the environment. Some provisions "are deeply troubling and will have negative consequences, many of which will harm the most vulnerable among us," said Archbishop Timothy Broglio. (More Immigration and Customs Enforcement stories.)
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