Judge bars ICE raids at some churches, calls policy ‘profoundly troubling’

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 By Michael Gryboski - Posted at The Christian Post:

Published February 18, 2026

A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from conducting immigration enforcement raids on a group of churches, calling the policy “profoundly troubling.”

U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor IV of the District of Massachusetts, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a preliminary injunction Friday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“The prospect that a street-level law-enforcement agent — acting without a judicial warrant and with little or no supervisory control — could conduct a raid during a church service, or lie in wait to interrogate or seize congregants as they seek to enter a church, is profoundly troubling,” wrote Saylor.
“If government interference with those freedoms is ever justifiable, it is only in relatively extreme circumstances, such as an immediate threat to public safety. The routine enforcement of the immigration laws does not involve such a threat, and cannot justify the harm to religious freedom posed by the new policy.”

Last year, a coalition of Christian groups, led by the New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, sued to stop a new DHS policy allowing federal agents to conduct immigration enforcement operations on church properties and in other "sensitive" areas, including churches and schools.



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