Chicago Catholic coalition sues ICE over denial of holy Communion, pastoral care

CHICAGO (OSV News) -- A group of clergy and religious, and a Catholic social justice organization filed a lawsuit Nov. 19 against the Trump administration over being barred from bringing holy Communion and pastoral care to detainees at an immigration processing center just west of Chicago.

The Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership, which has organized Masses and a Eucharistic procession in support of migrants without legal authorization to be in the country, along with three priests and a religious sister, submitted the lawsuit to the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois.

The complaint describes Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "complete denial" of the group's "rights to practice their religion at a detention center in Broadview, Illinois, without such denial serving any compelling governmental interest and without allowing such practice under the least restrictive means for serving any governmental interest in safety and security at the detention facility." Broadview is a suburb 12.5 miles west of downtown Chicago.

The group claimed their rights under the First Amendment, Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Lands Use and Institutionalized Persons Act were violated by ICE when they were not allowed to give holy Communion to Catholic detainees on Oct. 11 and Nov. 1, and to give pastoral care to them.

The lawsuit described how in 2010 the Broadview facility welcomed the recently deceased Mercy Sister JoAnn Persch's visits to detainees and claimed that "ICE actually invited Sister JoAnn to carry out her ministry in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Dodge County, Wisconsin, and Kankakee, Illinois." The regular visits lasted through 2020, when COVID-19 struck, but weekly prayer outside Broadview's entrance continued until September.

The group said now with President Donald Trump's Chicago immigration crackdown called Operation Midway Blitz, which ramped up in mid-September, and after multiple written requests to give holy Communion on Oct. 11 and Nov. 1, Sister JoAnn and other ministers of care were barred "without specifying any safety or security concern, or giving any specific reason."

Sister JoAnn died "unexpectedly" Nov. 14, at the age of 91, according to Chicago Catholic, the Chicago archdiocesan newspaper. She was part of the delegation led by Chicago Auxiliary Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado Nov. 1 that was barred from entering the Broadview center.

Sister JoAnn then announced the denial at an All Saints Day Mass, one building away from the facility, that the delegation was taking part in.

"It breaks my heart," she said, in making the announcement.

Trinity Missions Father Dennis Berry, a plaintiff in the suit, served in one of the country's largest ICE detention centers in Lumpkin, Georgia for a dozen years.

He said the group started to seriously look at taking legal action after the bishop was denied entry to the facility on All Saints.

"Spiritually, as a Catholic, as a priest, and knowing the people of God -- I've been a priest for 51 years -- our faith is built around the ability to share in the Eucharist to share in the body and blood of Christ," Father Berry emphasized to OSV News. "It gives people strength and courage and confidence and life in their ... personal journey."

He said, "And it was just arbitrarily and simply denied. Period. And given that, really the only recourse we had was to go to the court and say this is a right by the Constitution that people have, and we have to exercise that right."

In the lawsuit, he is listed as having provided religious materials and the sacraments, including Mass, to detainees.

The other plaintiffs include Father Larry Dowling of the Chicago Archdiocese and Jesuit Father Dan Hartnett, who both have extensive prison and jail ministry experience and ministry to migrants, and Felician Sister Jeremy Midura who ministered at maximum security prisons and an ICE detention facility in New York.

The lawsuit also said the weekly prayer group Sister JoAnn was part of, that includes other religious, priests and laypeople, was ordered to physically keep its distance from Broadview after years of regular contact and coordination with ICE officials there in order to minister to those inside and pray at the building's front steps.

Eighty-percent of those targeted in the current administration's immigration crackdown across the country are Christian, with the largest proportion being Catholic (61%), according to a joint Catholic-Evangelical report published by World Relief and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The report found one in six Catholics (18%) are either vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is.

OSV News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on the lawsuit, but did not receive an immediate response.

Officials with ICE have pointed out the transient nature of Broadview as a holding facility, not like that of a longer term facility, where migrants could be detained for months. But Father Berry said at the Georgia location he often saw people, newly arrived, stepping off ICE buses.

"Now in handcuffs, in a bus, being taken to a place they don't know, and if anybody needed spiritual ministry, it was there, right then, at that time," he said.

The priest added, "It's a very profoundly religious right and religious reason, for good people who need consolation in a very desperate moment in their life."

The issue of the religious rights of Catholic detainees to receive the Eucharist, sacraments and pastoral care is also a concern for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chair of the USCCB's Committee on Religious Liberty, told reporters Nov. 11, during the U.S. bishops' fall assembly in Baltimore, the religious liberty issue with ICE detention centers was unanticipated and "is now at the top of our concerns."

"It's heartbreaking," he said. "When you think of the suffering and especially those who've been detained, separated from families ... they need spiritual support in this, and they need the sacraments."