Appeals Court Upholds Block on Church ICE Arrests

A federal appeals court on Tuesday kept in place a court order blocking the Trump administration from applying its 2025 immigration enforcement policy at the houses of worship that sued over it.

The ruling came from a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The panel left a district court's preliminary injunction standing while the case continues.

The scope is narrow. The order covers the plaintiffs only — six Quaker Meetings, the Sikh Gurdwara Sahib West Sacramento, and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship — and it applies to houses of worship, not to schools, hospitals or other sites. Judge G. Steven Agee wrote that arrests are still possible in exigent circumstances or when agents already hold an arrest warrant.

What the Court Held

Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote the decision. She found the houses of worship had shown that the Department of Homeland Security's policy substantially burdens the free exercise of their religion — the test that triggers the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the 1993 law that sets a high bar for the government whenever its actions collide with religious practice.

The guidance "is having a chilling effect on their congregations and already has caused declines in attendance among members of [Cooperative Baptist Fellowship] and the Sikh Plaintiffs," Keenan wrote. That drop in attendance and the heightened threat of enforcement "already has imposed a substantial burden on the ability of all the plaintiffs to express their religion through communal worship."

Keenan pointed to a DHS statement from January 2025, when a department spokesman said that under the new policy "criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest." For congregations that welcome immigrant worshipers and sit in or near immigrant communities, she wrote, that statement showed "the threat of immigration enforcement at their houses of worship is real and substantial."

She also wrote that "the present record is replete with evidence that the 2025 policy has caused a reduction in attendance at the plaintiffs' houses of worship," and that "such a burden, even if limited in time, constitutes irreparable injury."

The government has not lost the case outright — it could still try to prove the burden was justified. But the Justice Department did not make that argument in the lower court, so the appeals court held it waived. Agee called that an "inexplicable failure," writing that "DHS abdicated its burden of proof at a crucial juncture of the merits analysis."

Keenan and Judge Pamela Harris were appointed to the 4th Circuit by President Barack Obama. Agee was appointed by President George W. Bush.