From OSV News:
A federal district judge granted a preliminary injunction Feb. 12 that will allow clergy, religious and Catholic social justice advocates to enter a Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility west of Chicago on Ash Wednesday to provide ashes and holy Communion.
The order came after the group filed a lawsuit in November against the Trump administration following several attempts to give pastoral care to migrant detainees there.
In his order, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division found “the government has substantially burdened the plaintiffs’ exercise of religion.”
Chicago-based Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, as well as several priests and a religious sister described in their lawsuit ICE’s “complete denial” of the group’s right “to practice their religion at a detention center in Broadview” 12.5 miles west of downtown Chicago, after seeking federal agents’ permission numerous times to enter the facility where fellow Catholics are detained.
The group claimed their rights under the First Amendment, Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, and the Religious Lands Use and Institutionalized Persons Act were violated by ICE when they were not allowed to give holy Communion to detainees on Oct. 11 and Nov. 1, and to give pastoral care to them.
In the order, Gettleman noted the plaintiffs said “prayer and ministry to the migrants and detainees at Broadview is an important religious practice.” He also noted the federal defendants concede that “ministering to vulnerable Catholic immigrants is part of (plaintiffs’) religious exercise,” but that they argued “doing so at Broadview ‘is itself not essential to the practice.’”
