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Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Oregon, California, Florida churches detail suit against Trump admin's ‘chilling' immigration practice
PORTLAND, Ore. () – A farmworkers' union and a group of churches spanning Oregon, California and Florida held a press conference on Tuesday laying out their lawsuit against the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in sensitive locations. Filed Monday in Eugene, Oregon, the lawsuit challenges the administration's efforts to end protections in which immigration agents avoided detaining people in '' such as churches, schools, courthouses and hospitals. That practice has been in place for decades, the lawsuit says, noting on day one of President Trump's second term, the Department of Homeland Security revoked a memo issued by former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in 2020 under the Biden administration, that recognized protection of sensitive locations. Trump executive order 'another attempt to bully Portland' 'For over three decades, this country's rules on immigration enforcement have protected sacred spaces, where individuals access critical human services. These protections mirror the foundational American beliefs and laws that guarantee the free exercise of religion, defend the right to assembly and safeguard the unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,' said Tess Hellgren, the plaintiffs' attorney and director of legal advocacy at Innovation Law Lab in Portland. 'But on January 20, 2025, the Trump administration abruptly and arbitrarily reversed course by opening sensitive locations to immigration enforcement at the discretion of immigration agents,' Hellgren said during Tuesday's press conference. 'Faced with this unlawful reversal, the organizations in this case have sued to protect their ability to sustain their missions and the fundamental freedom of their members.' Innovation Law Lab and the Justice Action Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of several organizations including Oregon farmworkers' union Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), and several churches, including Portland's Augustana Lutheran Church, San Francisco's Our Lady Guadalupe Parish, the San Francisco Interfaith Council and Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, Florida. As REAL ID deadline looms, here's what happens if you don't have one Those organizations filed the lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons and Pete Flores, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protections — alleging the administration has violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. 'As a result of the administration's new policy, sacred spaces have become sources of extreme anxiety rather than places of healing, expression, reflection, celebration, and refuge. Community members are deprived of social services and places where they gather to celebrate, educate, and advocate; parishioners are afraid to attend religious ceremonies; and essential services to the most vulnerable—from healthcare to education to disaster relief—have been disrupted. Defendants' actions are not only unlawful, but they strike the heart of what allows a civil society to flourish—its sacred spaces,' the lawsuit claims. According to Innovation Law Lab, removing the protections has 'wreaked havoc' on the plaintiffs and immigrant communities who witness the 'often traumatizing and chilling ICE activity.' Oregon Senate passes 'game-changer' bill to streamline housing development 'These organizations are striving for a more perfect nation where no person should be forced to retreat from civic life out of fear of deportation or indefinite detention,' Hellgren said. The plaintiffs argue they cannot carry out parts of their missions to support immigrant communities without the sensitive location protection. 'Many of PCUN's members, they've been placed in an untenable situation where they have to choose whether to get necessary medical care or risk immigration detention. This harms their ability to be able to provide for their families and to continue to work,' said PCUN President Reyna Lopez. 'Our mission has been harmed because we are no longer able to guarantee that people can be safe coming to our offices and that people can be safe coming to our events. None of us should have to live in fear of the Trump administration.' Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Reverend Rebecca Putman, a pastor at Westminster Presbyterian, added, 'Our congregation is small, only about 700 members. But each week, 700 people use our church for various community events. Among those, we partner with local nonprofit organizations to host different programs and workshops and also provide legal and support services for Gainesville's immigrant community members,' noting the church does not fall anywhere on the political spectrum. 'Allowing immigration enforcement in sensitive locations impedes our ability to fulfill our mission,' Putman said. 'Immigration action at houses of worship defiles a place where people should be and feel safe.' On her decision to join the lawsuit, Putman said, 'Defending our right to carry out our mission is vital.' Alaska Airlines will 'invest more' in stops at Portland International Airport The lawsuit comes as some Oregon officials and religious leaders have spoken out in support of immigrant communities amid the administration's crackdown on immigration. This includes church leaders such as Rev. Mark Knutson of Augustana Lutheran, who trains congregations on sanctuary church initiatives. In February, the reverend said he was denied entry to an ICE facility in Portland during a routine check-in. Alaska Airlines will 'invest more' in stops at Portland International Airport Knutson said he attempted to accompany a man into the immigration detention facility on South Macadam Avenue when a worker at the ICE facility told Knutson he couldn't accompany him. 'That's what we do as clergy, we go and be with people and get let into these places. This is a first, that they've ever done this,' Knutson previously said. 'The practice is at ICE, you can accompany as a clergy, a person that's going in to check in, because you never know what's going to happen once you're inside.' In a statement to KOIN 6 News on Tuesday, a DHS spokesperson said, 'We are protecting our schools, places of worship, and Americans who attend by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and taking safe haven there because these criminals knew law enforcement couldn't go inside under the previous Administration. DHS's directive gives our law enforcement the ability to do their jobs. For context: Our agents use discretion. Officers would need secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a church or a school. We expect these to be extremely rare.' KOIN 6 News also reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
28-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Lawsuit Challenges Policy Allowing Immigration Action in Churches and Schools
A lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's policy of allowing immigration enforcement agents to act in spaces like schools and houses of worship was filed in Oregon on Monday, seeking to settle a legal debate over whether those areas should be off-limits. The suit, brought by Justice Action Center and Innovation Law Lab, follows efforts by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to step up deportations, which have so far fallen short of President Trump's goals. Immigration agents, aided by state and local law enforcement, carried out mass arrests over the weekend that ensnared nearly 800 people in Florida. A growing number of children, including some who were citizens as young as 2, have been removed. It was unclear where the hundreds in Florida were arrested over the four-day operation, though such efforts in communities require substantial planning. The lawsuit asks a federal judge to restore a policy set during the Biden administration that generally prohibits immigration agents from carrying out operations that disrupt civic spaces, particularly ones where adults and children congregate together. The suit also asks the court to nullify a memo from Mr. Trump's first week in office overturning that policy, arguing that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of assembly. The case brings together a diverse coalition of labor organizations, interfaith groups and parishes, with member organizations and constituents in all 50 states. Esther Sung, the legal director of Justice Action Center, said it was bipartisan consensus for decades to avoid conducting deportation and detention operations in places like food banks, vaccination clinics or testing sites, funerals, day cares or disaster relief shelters. 'There had been a constant policy in place for over 30 years by Republican and Democratic administrations alike protecting sensitive locations,' she said, 'and never once was that policy ever walked back.' The Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights group focused on litigation, won a separate case this month when a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from shutting down a work program for migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti. The Innovation Law Lab, a nonprofit based in Portland, Ore., was involved in pushing back against Mr. Trump on his approach to asylum and policies devised to curtail other forms of legal immigration during his first term. Since Mr. Trump returned to office, at least three other lawsuits have been filed with the goal of blocking immigration agents from having free rein to conduct enforcement operations in schools, churches and community centers. Two were brought by coalitions of religious organizations, which argued, among other things, that they had lost congregants because anyone at risk of deportation stopped participating in public life. Only one has resulted in a meaningful restriction on immigration enforcement in places of worship, and it fell far short of the goals outlined in the lawsuit on Monday. Related challenges have had mixed success with the legal arguments they presented, and judges have been skeptical of a number of the claims on which they were predicated. Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia declined to immediately intervene to stop the new policy this month, writing that there was not yet evidence that enforcement tactics singling out sensitive spaces were 'sufficiently likely or imminent' or that they had a chilling effect on public life. Judge Friedrich reasoned that it was unclear that ICE agents or others had staked out sensitive locations or targeted them in a way that caused disproportionate harm. She added that apparent declines in participation at houses of worship were difficult to attribute to Mr. Trump's immigration policy. Ms. Sung said that the effect of Mr. Trump's aggressive immigration agenda on civic life had somewhat crystallized, and that the groups and people her organization had spoken to were well equipped to document examples. Beyond the narrower question of the legal status of sensitive locations, she said, the factors a judge might consider had increased significantly since earlier challenges, making the matter more urgent. Among other examples, Ms. Sung noted the administration's new emphasis on trying to punish cities and institutions that resisted Mr. Trump's immigration agenda, such as a proposed policy to defund local governments that do not allocate resources to immigration enforcement. Ms. Sung said high-profile deportation cases — including the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia and the administration's refusal to retrieve him from a prison in El Salvador, despite an order from the Supreme Court — have also contributed to a climate of anxiety. The complaint filed on Monday argues that a spate of hastily executed removals of people to extrajudicial confinement in places like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, known as CECOT, had significantly raised the stakes for associations involved in the suit. In an effort to avoid 'deportation to an indefinite detention in a maximum-security prison outside U.S. borders,' the complaint said, many people who used to associate with or receive services from the groups were staying away. 'The immigration enforcement landscape was really different in February than it is now,' Ms. Sung said. 'In February, we did not have Kilmar Abrego, we did not have Gitmo and Venezuelans being taken in shackles to either Gitmo or CECOT in El Salvador, and we didn't have college students getting picked up off the street or from a citizenship interview and being detained.'
