A federal appeals court ruled that DHS must keep following Biden-era restrictions on immigration enforcement at more than 1,400 houses of worship across 33 states, a decision critics call politically motivated and constitutionally baseless.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday unanimously upheld a preliminary injunction that blocks Department of Homeland Security agents from conducting warrantless immigration arrests at or near churches, temples, and meetinghouses affiliated with a coalition of Quaker, Sikh, and Baptist congregations. The 40-page ruling, first reported by Maryland Matters, agreed with a lower court that the religious groups were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim, and that the administration had failed to justify its own policy under federal religious-freedom law.

The injunction does not apply nationwide. It covers only the specific congregations that sued: the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a network of hundreds of churches in 33 states; six yearly meetings of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, based in Philadelphia, New York, New England, Richmond, Baltimore, and Adelphi, Maryland; and the Sikh Temple Sacramento. Combined, those groups account for more than 1,400 individual houses of worship spread across 33 states and the District of Columbia.

But the practical effect is broad. Federal agents operating anywhere in two-thirds of the country must now check whether a nearby church or temple belongs to the plaintiff coalition before making an enforcement move, or risk a contempt finding. That is a significant operational burden imposed by a single lawsuit, and it flows from a legal theory that treats the mere possibility of an immigration arrest near a sanctuary as a "substantial burden" on religious exercise.

DHS dropped the ball on its own legal defense, the court found

The case began on January 20, 2025, the first day of the second Trump administration, when DHS issued a policy lifting restrictions on immigration enforcement at so-called "sensitive locations", schools, hospitals, churches. Under the 2021 Biden policy, agents were told to avoid enforcement near those sites "to the fullest extent possible" and, except in emergencies, needed agency approval before acting. The new policy told agents to exercise "discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense" instead.

A DHS spokesperson put it bluntly at the time: "Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America's schools and churches to avoid arrest."

Democracy Forward, a Washington, D.C.-based legal organization, filed suit on behalf of the religious coalition. In February 2025, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a preliminary injunction blocking the new policy at the plaintiff congregations and requiring DHS to follow the older Biden-era rules. Chuang declined to extend the injunction nationwide.

DHS appealed. And then, according to the appeals court, the department made a critical error: it failed to mount a serious defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the federal statute that bars the government from substantially burdening religious exercise unless it can show a compelling interest and uses the least restrictive means available. Judge G. Steven Agee, who wrote a concurring opinion, described the lapse bluntly: "In short, DHS abdicated its burden of proof at a crucial juncture of the merits analysis."

That concession matters. The government did not argue that it had a compelling interest in conducting warrantless enforcement at these specific locations. It simply failed to engage with the legal standard. A conservative administration that has fought aggressively on immigration in nearly every other venue left its strongest statutory argument on the table in this one.

Attendance dropped 66% at one congregation's ESL classes after the policy change

Senior Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, writing for the panel alongside Judge Pamela Harris, laid out the evidence of harm. The court found that the 2025 policy had a "chilling effect" on the plaintiff congregations. Attendance at worship services and related activities declined. Immigrant members of Baptist and Sikh congregations stopped showing up. At one Cooperative Baptist Fellowship congregation, attendance at English-as-a-second-language classes fell by 66 percent after the policy change.

Keenan wrote that the record was "replete with evidence" of the decline:

"The plaintiffs have presented evidence showing that the 2025 Policy is having a chilling effect on their congregations and already has caused declines in attendance among members of CBF [Cooperative Baptist Fellowship] and the Sikh Plaintiffs."

She continued: "And our preceding analysis makes clear that this decline in attendance and the increased threat of immigration enforcement at all the plaintiffs' houses of worship already has imposed a substantial burden on the ability of all the plaintiffs to express their religion through communal worship."

The court also cited DHS's own January 2025 statement, the one about criminals no longer hiding in churches, as evidence that the threat of enforcement was "real and substantial." In other words, the administration's public messaging became a weapon against its own legal position.

Across the country, governments at every level have grappled with how to balance law enforcement access against the traditional sanctity of worship spaces. Four states recently tightened penalties for disruptions at houses of worship, reflecting broad public support for protecting congregations from outside interference, though the legal question here is different, involving federal agents rather than private actors.

Agee's concurrence tried to narrow the ruling's reach

Judge Agee joined the majority but wrote separately to emphasize what the injunction does not do. His concurrence stressed that DHS retains broad authority to conduct enforcement at or near the plaintiff churches when acting under an administrative or judicial warrant.

Agee wrote:

"A host of DHS immigration enforcement actions are expressly permitted by the preliminary injunction. It states, for example, that... [it] 'does not enjoin or restrict [DHS] from conducting arrests in or near places of worship when authorized by an administrative or judicial warrant.'"

He added that the injunction incorporates the 2021 Biden policy, which itself did not ban all enforcement near houses of worship. Under that policy, agents could act without prior approval when pursuing a suspect, when facing a threat of violence, and in other emergencies. "Plainly, nothing in this Court's decision or the preliminary injunction could be construed as limiting DHS's ability to act in accord with these directives," Agee wrote.

That framing is meant to reassure. But it also highlights a tension: the injunction's practical effect is to reimpose a Biden-era framework that the current administration specifically rejected as too restrictive. Agents in the field must now navigate two sets of rules, one for the 1,400-plus plaintiff churches and one for everywhere else. The distinction between a warrantless arrest and a warranted one may be clear on paper, but in practice it creates hesitation. And hesitation is the point.

The broader debate over government conduct toward religious institutions continues to play out in courts and legislatures. In Minnesota, a city attorney declined to press charges against protesters who stormed a church service, raising separate but related questions about whether the law adequately protects congregations.

FAIR calls the ruling 'absurd'; DHS says agents will use 'common sense'

Matt O'Brien, deputy executive director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, did not hold back. FAIR had filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting DHS, and O'Brien called the outcome indefensible:

"There is zero reason, constitutional or otherwise, why immigration enforcement should be prohibited near houses of worship. This is a politically-motivated decision by an activist judge."

DHS responded to the ruling with a statement that largely restated its original position. A spokesperson said: "Criminals are no longer able to hide in places of worship to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement and instead trusts them to use common sense."

The spokesperson also pushed back on the premise of the lawsuit, saying the administration "does not target places of worship" and calling the legal challenge "just another false narrative to try and demonize our brave ICE law enforcement" who face increased assaults and death threats.

Democracy Forward, which filed the suit, framed the ruling as a win for religious liberty, a phrase more commonly associated with conservative legal causes:

"The Trump-Vance administration's policy threatened that longstanding tradition by forcing congregations to choose between fulfilling their religious mission and protecting members of their communities. We are grateful that the court has preserved these protections while this case moves forward."

Religious liberty arguments have also surfaced in international contexts. The United Kingdom recently barred a Finnish lawmaker over a hate speech conviction tied to a Bible pamphlet, a case that underscored how governments worldwide are drawing contested lines around religious expression.

What the ruling leaves unanswered

This is still a preliminary injunction, a temporary hold while the underlying case proceeds. The 4th Circuit found only that the plaintiffs are likely to win, not that they have won. The full trial has not happened. And the ruling's geographic scope, while broad, is limited to the specific congregations that brought the suit. Any church, mosque, or synagogue outside the plaintiff coalition remains subject to the administration's current enforcement policy.

Several questions remain open. The next procedural step in the litigation is unclear from the record. Whether DHS will seek further appellate review, potentially at the Supreme Court, is unknown. And the ruling does not address enforcement at schools or hospitals, the other "sensitive locations" covered by the rescinded Biden-era policy.

Meanwhile, disputes over judicial authority and church autonomy continue to multiply. A Virginia appeals court recently revived a lawsuit involving a church's internal governance, another sign that courts are increasingly willing to intervene in matters that congregations once resolved on their own.

The core problem here is not complicated. Federal law gives the government broad authority to enforce immigration statutes. Federal law also protects religious exercise from unnecessary government interference. When DHS had the chance to explain why its enforcement interest outweighed the burden on these congregations, it didn't bother to try. The court noticed. Whatever one thinks of the policy, a government that won't defend its own decisions in court shouldn't be surprised when judges do the deciding for it.