A religious nonprofit and several Roman Catholic clergy filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday claiming that immigration authorities had unlawfully blocked its members from ministering to people at a detention center near Chicago.
The suit, led by the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, a Catholic advocacy group based in Illinois, is the latest to accuse the administration of creating unlawful, unsanitary and unsafe conditions at such centers.
Roman Catholic bishops in the United States criticized the administration’s deportation campaign in a statement passed this month at their annual conference in Baltimore. The statement presented a united front with Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, who grew up in suburban Chicago and has been speaking in support of immigrants.
The new lawsuit focuses on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Ill., that has become a symbol of the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. It was filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, did not respond to a request for comment.
Since early September, federal agents have flooded the Chicago area and made thousands of arrests, prompting protesters and faith leaders to clash with law enforcement officers.
Immigration rights lawyers and activists filed an emergency class action lawsuit in late October that claimed detainees at the ICE facility in Broadview were being denied their right to access counsel, and subjected to inhumane and unlawful conditions. A federal judge later called the conditions “unnecessarily cruel” and ordered the government to provide bottled water, clean bedding, hygiene products and access to lawyers.
In Wednesday’s lawsuit, some Catholic members in the Chicago area argue that the administration has also violated detainees’ religious freedom.
For more than a decade, Catholic nuns and clergy members visited the Broadview facility every Friday during early morning visitor hours to offer prayer services and Holy Communion to detainees, according to the lawsuit. The coalition included Sister JoAnn Persch, who regularly visited the facility until her death last week at 91. They would also pray outside the facility’s front steps.
But federal agents began rolling back that access in September. The immigration authorities cited “safety and security concerns and the transitory nature” of the facility, according to the lawsuit.
ICE temporarily installed a fence that cut off the coalition’s access to the front steps, according to Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, the group’s executive director and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Federal agents then barred clergy and nuns from the facility, the lawsuit said.
“For Catholics, pastoral care isn’t optional,” Mr. Okinczyc-Cruz said in a phone interview. “We believe that it’s a lifeline.”
In the suit, they argue that the restrictions violate a handful of statutes, including the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which prohibits the government from imposing a burden on the religious exercise of a person confined in an institution.
Seamus Hughes contributed reporting.
Ashley Ahn covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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