On November 1, outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility near Chicago, Catholic Auxiliary Bishop José María García-Maldonado and eight other faith leaders attempted to celebrate Mass and offer the Eucharist to immigrants being held inside. They were denied entry. According to the Catholic News Agency (CNA), “Mass organizers said they followed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s guidelines to obtain access and submitted the request weeks in advance.”
For years, Catholic ministers had been permitted to enter that facility and bring Holy Communion to detained immigrants who desired it. That longstanding accommodation has now been withdrawn. The denial raises pressing questions about religious freedom in a tense immigration context: How should ICE weigh its real security responsibilities against the religious obligations of institutions like the Catholic Church? And how can our law and policy better account for sacramental practices that are unfamiliar to many officials but central to the identity and mission of the religious institutions who carry them?
At stake is not only the faith of individual believers, but the freedom of religious institutions to live out their deepest commitments—to minister in places of vulnerability and to serve people whose status and visibility already render them precarious.
Denied access to the people inside, Bishop García-Maldonado and the other ministers did what they could. They celebrated Mass at a makeshift altar outside the facility. A crowd gathered—about two thousand people, standing shoulder to shoulder in the cold—drawn to pray for and with those who could not step outside.
Among them was an nonagenarian Sister of Mercy, JoAnn Persch, a quiet matriarch of immigrant advocacy in Chicagoland, who passed away unexpectedly two weeks later. Persch had spent years visiting detained immigrants, bringing the Eucharist and pastoral presence to those held inside. She and her colleagues submitted a written request to the detention facility beforehand:
“All Saints Day on November 1 is a sacred feast day in the Catholic tradition and we wish to include them [immigrants detained by ICE] in a religious service by offering them holy communion on this day. We will be gathering that day for an outdoor Catholic Mass and our request is for a small delegation of eight religious ministers to provide Holy Communion during the Mass while our gathering remains outside of the ICE facility in peaceful prayer.”
Persch explained to CNA that when she first began this ministry, gaining initial access was long and difficult—but ultimately possible. Over time, a workable pattern emerged. The facility permitted her to enter and offer the Eucharist to those who requested it. That hard-won possibility has now been withdrawn, with ICE citing safety concerns.
When the moment came for the distribution of the Eucharist during the outdoor Mass, Persch, Bishop García-Maldonado, and six other ministers walked approximately one hundred yards from the altar to the police checkpoint. They asked again to enter. The answer remained no.
Persch pushed back, not with anger but with clarity. She noted that she had offered the Eucharist in detention centers for many years without incident. No harm, no fights, no documented safety threats.
“Now, I want to know whose safety?” she asked. “Are we going to attack the immigrants? Are they going to attack me? I don’t think so.” Then she named the deeper incongruity: “Do they think coming with the Blessed Sacrament of the Catholic Church that we were going to attack them?”
Her incredulity does not simply express frustration. It exposes a gap in understanding: a gap around what the Eucharist is in Catholic life and how institutional religious freedom ought to operate when a sacramental obligation meets the locked doors of a federal facility.
What’s Really at Stake for Institutional Religious Freedom
It is important to begin by acknowledging the real responsibilities carried by the officials inside a facility like Broadview. ICE operates in an environment marked by public scrutiny, political pressure, and genuine security concerns. Maintaining order in a detention setting is not theoretical; it is daily, demanding work, and in today’s polarized climate, any misstep can have serious consequences. Those responsibilities deserve respect.
But those responsibilities do not cancel out the government’s duties under federal religious freedom law. ICE is a federal agency, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act sets a clear standard: if the government burdens religious exercise, it must demonstrate a truly compelling interest and must use the least restrictive means available. RFRA’s test is intentionally rigorous because it is meant for moments exactly like this—when legitimate security concerns must be weighed against the equally serious obligations of religious institutions.
Here, Catholic ministers had been permitted to offer pastoral care and Communion at the facility for years. Their request for access on All Saints’ Day followed the procedures ICE itself had established. The denial that followed rested on broad statements about safety, but did not point to documented changes, specific threats, or any evidence that longstanding, peaceful ministry had suddenly become unworkable. Even for readers who give substantial weight to law-enforcement discretion, that abrupt reversal raises fair and important RFRA questions.
Supreme Court decisions such as Hosanna-Tabor and Our Lady of Guadalupe School affirm that religious institutions are more than collections of individuals. They are bodies with their own sacred responsibilities and internal coherence. Their sacramental acts and ministerial duties are protected because they are essential to the identity of the institution—not optional outreach or charitable activity. While those cases arose in different contexts, they articulate a principle worth applying here: the state must tread carefully when its actions impede an institution’s ability to fulfill core religious duties.
This does not mean that a detention center must mirror the standards of a parish church. Government facilities, especially secure ones, have greater authority to regulate access. And no tradition can demand unfettered entry into any government building. But RFRA does not stop at the gate of a detention center. Religious exercise remains religious exercise, and the government must justify its restrictions with clarity and evidence—especially when the ministry in question has been peacefully accommodated for many years.
So the central question becomes: in a setting where Catholic clergy had long been welcomed, where Eucharistic ministry had never caused disruption, and where ICE now cites only general “safety” concerns, has the agency met RFRA’s demanding standard? Or has understandable vigilance around immigration enforcement unintentionally overshadowed the government’s obligation to safeguard religious freedom in one of the most vulnerable spaces it oversees?
The Lawsuit and the RFRA Claim
It is against this backdrop that Catholic ministers and advocates filed suit on November 19, seeking to restore a ministry that they had carried out peacefully for more than a decade. Until this fall, Broadview was a place where priests and sisters were regularly permitted—sometimes even encouraged—by officials to pray with detainees, bless them before deportation, and offer Communion to those who requested it. The sudden shutdown came without a concrete explanation of what, if anything, had changed.
The lawsuit argues that such an abrupt and unexplained restriction cannot withstand RFRA’s rigor. The plaintiffs put the matter plainly:
“There has been no compelling explanation given for why the Detainees are not permitted to pray with other members of their faith community or receive Communion, especially at a time when they are exposed to deportation and existential threats in the places to which they are being deported. To restrict religious practice by persons detained in government facilities requires a compelling government interest and an explanation exceptionally more demanding than ICE’s mere recitation of generic safety and security concerns.”
This is the heart of their RFRA claim: that longstanding religious access was removed without evidence of new risk, without meaningful justification, and without any effort to pursue narrower accommodations. In their view, the government has not met RFRA’s high bar—and the ministry that once connected detainees to their own faith community should be restored.
Why Eucharistic Theology and Institutional Identity Matter Here
Some may look at this moment and wonder whether Catholic sacramental theology simply creates a stronger religious freedom claim than the practices of other Christian traditions. Others may ask whether bringing the Eucharist into a detention facility should be understood differently from the forms of pastoral care common in Protestant chaplaincy—prayer, preaching, Scripture, pastoral presence, or communion as those communities practice and understand it. These are fair questions, especially for readers less familiar with the internal obligations that arise from Catholic sacramental life.
A clear starting point is the place of the Eucharist in Catholic imagination. The Eucharist (Holy Communion) is not incidental or secondary in Catholic life. It is central to the Church’s identity and mission. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops describes the Eucharist as “the sacrament of his Body and Blood” instituted “to perpetuate the sacrifice of the Cross throughout the ages and to entrust to the Church a memorial of his death and resurrection.” Lumen Gentium affirms that, strengthened in Holy Communion, the faithful “manifest in a concrete way that unity of the People of God which is suitably signified and wondrously brought about by this most august sacrament.”
Within this theological vision, receiving the Host is both the reception of Christ’s Body and Blood and a participation in Christ’s Body as the Church. The Eucharist is not merely a symbol of unity; it is a sacramental act that constitutes that unity. This is why, for ministers like Sister JoAnn Persch and her colleagues, bringing the Eucharist to detained immigrants is not an optional gesture they may or may not perform depending on circumstances. It is an institutional obligation that arises from the Church’s identity, its sacramental theology, and its sense of pastoral responsibility—especially on a high feast day like All Saints.
This does not mean that Protestant or other Christian claims are any less theologically serious. RFRA does not weigh one theology against another or elevate sacramental traditions above non-sacramental ones. It protects “religious exercise” as each community understands it, whether that expression is sacramental, liturgical, or rooted in preaching, prayer, or pastoral presence. In many Protestant traditions, pastoral care, Scripture, prayer, and communion (understood in their own theological language as ordinance or sacrament) are carried with profound seriousness and a deep sense of calling.
What differs is not the sincerity or the spiritual depth of the traditions, but the form of the obligation. A Protestant pastor may feel called—sometimes very strongly—to pray with, preach to, or accompany detainees. A Catholic minister may understand themselves to be obliged by sacramental theology, ecclesial identity, and established liturgical practice to offer the Eucharist to those who request it. For Catholics, the sacramental nature of the Eucharist means that withholding it, when reasonably possible to offer, touches the heart of their religious exercise in a distinct way.
These differences matter when courts and agencies ask whether government actions “substantially burden” religious exercise. What is voluntary or customary in one tradition may be central and non-negotiable in another. RFRA requires the government to take those internal theological structures seriously, not because one tradition is superior, but because pluralism demands attentiveness to how different communities understand their obligations before God.
The point is not that ICE or any federal agency must adopt Catholic Eucharistic theology. The point is that ICE must take that theology seriously when assessing burden and accommodation. In a pluralistic democracy, the government cannot substitute its own understanding of what “ought” to matter religiously for the understanding held by a particular community. When officials are unfamiliar with the depth of Catholic sacramental obligations, it becomes easier—sometimes unintentionally—to treat them as helpful but non-essential, “nice if possible” rather than integral to the identity, continuity, and mission of the Church.
A religiously diverse society requires something more careful. It requires the government to evaluate religious exercise by looking at the community’s own commitments, not by filtering those commitments through the categories most familiar to the state. Without that attentiveness, sacramental practices risk being misunderstood, and institutional obligations risk being diminished at precisely the moment when law should guard them most carefully.
Guarding the Space for Sacramental Ministry in a Contentious Age
Why does this moment matter for institutional religious freedom? Because it reveals how easily our assessments become entangled with our preexisting convictions—about immigration, about enforcement, about the practices of a tradition that may not be our own. It is simple to stand with Sister JoAnn Persch only if her ministry already aligns with our instincts about justice, or to affirm ICE only if we already trust a firmer approach to border policy. But institutional religious freedom cannot be governed by our comfort or discomfort. It asks us to look beyond our sympathies and attend to the sacred obligations communities carry—obligations that persist even in environments shaped by political strain.
This kind of freedom requires the government to move with care: to articulate its reasons plainly, to restrict religious exercise only when truly necessary, and to remember that institutions like the Sisters of Mercy and the Catholic Church do not improvise their responsibilities. They receive them. Their practices arise from formation and memory, from traditions shaped long before the present conflict, and those practices do not lose their integrity simply because they cross into government-controlled space.
What unfolded outside that detention facility presses a deeper question: Will we, as a society, make room for religious institutions to live out their sacred callings in the very places where need is most acute? If our defense of religious freedom is limited to the settings we find agreeable or the communities we already understand, we shrink the landscape of pluralism and diminish our own common life.
Allowing space for communities to minister at the thresholds of detention, poverty, and vulnerability is not chaos. It is one of the ways a democracy honors the dignity that cannot be reduced to status, circumstance, or political moment. The law serves its highest purpose when it protects room for these works of mercy to continue—quietly, steadfastly, and in fidelity to the sacred responsibilities that guide them.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife, and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.
