ATLANTA — A federal judge is weighing whether ICE should be able to conduct operations at places of worship.
The Dekalb County-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) joined a lawsuit earlier this month to restore protections to places of worship after the Trump administration changed policy last month.
“A place of worship should be a place of peace, welcome, and safety,” CBF Executive Coordinator Paul Baxley told Channel 2′s Michael Doudna.
For more than a decade, churches, schools, and other locations such as courtrooms did have special protections.
In 2011, ICE started a policy that limited operations at so-called “sensitive locations.”
“Since 2011, every president has said that we need to have principles of what we need to do. We don’t really want them interrupting houses of worship or courthouses or sensitive places,” attorney Paul Kish said.
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That policy stayed in place throughout President Trump’s first term and the Biden administration.
However, last month, the Trump administration moved away from the policy.
Since then, ICE has conducted operations nationwide at schools and places of worship.
Last month, a man was arrested in Tucker when he stepped outside of the church during a service.
Paul Baxley said the policy has had a chilling effect.
“Our congregations started reaching out to us for help, and they started reporting to us in ways they were already being impacted,” Baxley said.
CBF’s executive coordinator believes that the move by the Trump administration violates the First Amendment.
“We believe the protected status for houses of worship is embedded in the US Constitution,” Baxley said. “What’s at stake here is not a matter of hypothetical posturing. What’s at stake here is the lives, safety, and well-being of people made in the image of God.
However, lawyers like Kish say faith-based groups likely face an uphill climb in proving their case.
“It’s a very tough position to argue that churches are sacred grounds at which an arrest warrant cannot be executed. As a matter of fact, there are some Supreme Court cases that say the opposite of that,” Kish said. “The general rule is that an arrest could be done anywhere, but it’s good common sense and good common judgment to not do it in a church.”
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