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Minnesota clergy sue Trump administration over ability to minister to detainees at Whipple

A group of Minnesota clergy accused the Trump administration in a federal lawsuit filed Monday of violating the religious freedom of faith leaders by denying them entry to the Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis to provide pastoral care to detainees.

“Since the very beginning of Operation Metro Surge, the federal government has categorically prohibited and barred these faith leaders from providing pastoral care for individuals being held at the Whipple building,” said Irina Vaynerman, CEO of Groundwork Legal, a public interest law firm representing the clergy.

Vaynerman said that on Ash Wednesday last week, clergy were again denied the ability to provide pastoral care in the Whipple Federal Building, which has served as the headquarters for Operation Metro Surge. Clergy sought to deliver the imposition of ashes to Christian detainees.

Clergy say the federal immigration officials cited security concerns. But Vaynerman says the federal government has not provided any reasonable safety protocols for the clergy to follow in order to be admitted to the building; many have ministered to prisoners and detainees in other facilities.

“In many other governmental processing and detention facilities, there are ways for faith leaders to provide this pastoral care,” Vaynerman said.

Ahead of Ash Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to allow Catholic clergy to minister to people at a detention facility outside Chicago in a lawsuit brought by a Catholic advocacy group.

The lawsuit in Minnesota was filed on behalf of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ and Father Christopher Collins, a Jesuit and parochial administrator of the St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in St. Paul. It names Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons as defendants, among other federal officials.

The lawsuit alleges the refusal to admit clergy violates the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and asks the court to order they be admitted to the Whipple building, which the lawsuit notes is named after Minnesota’s first Episcopal bishop, Henry Whipple.

Many Minnesota clergy, especially those with large immigrant congregations, have become important leaders in the resistance to the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts. They’ve set up massive food distribution centers for immigrants too afraid to leave home, been arrested protesting the operation, and traveled to Washington, D.C. to urge members of Congress to cut funding for ICE.

But access to the Whipple building is not about political activism, the lawsuit says.

“This ministry is not political advocacy. It is not symbolic presence. It is a core and non-negotiable religious obligation rooted in Scripture and centuries of practice,” the lawsuit says.

Churches have not been universally opposed to Operation Metro Surge, with conservative evangelical congregations continuing to be among the most loyal Trump supporters.

In fact, one of the named defendants in the lawsuit is David Easterwood, ICE’s acting field director in St. Paul and a pastor at Cities Church in St. Paul. Demonstrators who interrupted a service last month at the church — and the journalists who filmed them — now face federal felony charges. The lead pastor is now “prayerfully considering” its own legal action.

The Trump administration says it’s in the process of winding down Operation Metro Surge, which since the start of December has brought some 3,000 immigration agents to the state and resulted in some 4,000 arrests — as well as the killing of two Americans. Crowdsourced data show a drop in ICE activity. Members of Congress, after visiting the Whipple building on Friday, said all detainees had been moved out shortly before their arrival.

The plaintiffs accuse the federal government of repeatedly violating people’s religious freedom during Operation Metro Surge across the state, not just at Whipple: ICE vehicles circled the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary one Sunday morning, apparently waiting to arrest churchgoers; a Catholic church in Pelican Rapids canceled a service in January due to fear of ICE agents; and scores of clergy were arrested while protesting ICE.

Lawyers have filed more than 1,000 lawsuits challenging the detention of immigrants at Whipple and other facilities, with federal judges ruling in their favor in a majority of cases. That means the federal government denied many people access to communion and other religious rites while also illegally detaining them.

Vaynerman said even with the federal incursion ending, asserting the right of religious liberty in federal buildings remains important.

“Insofar as Whipple continues to be a functioning federal building, which it does, the First Amendment rights of faith leaders and clergy continues to extend to (it),” Vaynerman said. “Those constitutional rights are not lost at the doors of Whipple.”

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