ICE Agents Caught Spying in Church

On May 28, an undercover ICE agent walked into the gymnasium at University Baptist Church in Minneapolis and joined a martial arts class. For roughly two hours, she sparred with participants, talked with them, and secretly recorded what was happening with a concealed audio device. Then, she accidentally dropped the device onto the gym floor. The agent left, realized it was missing, and came back about three minutes later to retrieve it.

Apart from the setting, it almost reads like a (clumsy) spy novel. The scene would be strange enough on its own, but University Baptist Church was not simply another building on the agent's route. The church had already been specifically designated as a protected location under a federal court order restricting immigration-enforcement activity in and around certain houses of worship. Signs posted at the church's main entrances said exactly that.

Church leaders say they had no idea the government had been spying on their congregation until the surveillance records surfaced months later in a separate criminal case involving anti-ICE activists. On August 20, eleven religious plaintiffs asked the federal judge who issued the injunction to order the government to explain why it should not be held in contempt for sneaking an undercover ICE agent into the church.

The incident also prompted a strong reaction from our community when we opened the discussion on Facebook:

A Church Under Court Protection

University Baptist Church is affiliated with American Baptist Churches USA and the Alliance of Baptists, both plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the federal government's 2025 rollback of protections for so-called "sensitive locations."

In February, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on a claim under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He acknowledged the government's compelling interest in enforcing immigration law, but found the new policy gave lower-level agents too much discretion around religious spaces and was not the least restrictive way to pursue that interest.

The preliminary injunction that followed created specific rules for the religious organizations covered by the case. Without an emergency, DHS and ICE are legally prohibited from conducting immigration enforcement activities inside protected areas. Additionally, the order specifies that agents generally need either an emergency or prior approval to conduct these actions within 100 feet of an entrance to one of these facilities. The order defined covered activity to include searches, questioning, interviews and investigations undertaken, at least in part, to enforce immigration laws.

University Baptist Church was placed on the protected-location list in February. According to the religious plaintiffs' new filing, federal agents nevertheless surveilled the church on four occasions between April and June. The May 28 operation went furthest: an ICE agent walked right by posted notices identifying the church as protected by a federal injunction and secretly recorded a class in the downstairs gym.

The discovery landed like a grenade among the congregations themselves. On August 16, Rev. Cody J. Sanders, University Baptist's interim pastor, stood before worshipers and told them the church had been “targeted by undercover Department of Homeland Security infiltration.” He urged them not to accept that as ordinary: “We should not become accustomed to this.” Sanders said the congregation had not known an undercover agent entered its building until the surveillance records became public months later.

University Baptist was not alone. First Universalist Church of Minneapolis was also reportedly surveilled. Its leader, Rev. Jen Crow, responded by telling Religion News Service that her congregation had never concealed its immigrant advocacy. “There’s nothing that the government’s going to do that’s going to make us too scared to care for our neighbors,” she said.

Thus far, ICE has not conceded that this activity violated the injunction. According to the August 20 filing, government lawyers argue that this specific undercover operation was aimed at alleged federal crimes under Title 18 involving efforts to obstruct or intimidate federal officers, not at enforcing immigration law itself. Lawyers for the churches counter that the investigation grew directly out of alleged interference with immigration operations and therefore falls within the order's language.

That distinction is now before the court. As of August 21, Judge Saylor had not yet ruled that ICE or DHS violated the injunction.

How Churches Became "Protected Areas"

The idea that immigration agents should exercise special restraint around houses of worship did not begin with this lawsuit.

Federal immigration agencies have followed some version of a sensitive-location policy for decades. A 1993 Immigration and Naturalization Service policy instructed agents to avoid apprehensions and tightly control investigations at places including houses of worship, and in 2011 ICE required high-level approval for most planned enforcement actions at churches, synagogues, mosques and other worship sites.

DHS expanded those protections in 2021, saying immigration enforcement should not prevent people from accessing worship, medical care, schools, food or shelter. The Trump administration rescinded that policy in January 2025, instead telling agents to use discretion and “a healthy dose of common sense” as it launched its aggressive nationwide immigration enforcement effort.

The ULC has been following that shift, including reports last year that immigration enforcement was moving closer to church property. The latest litigation is substantially broader than one Baptist congregation: more than 50 denominations, regional religious bodies, faith organizations and houses of worship have joined four lawsuits challenging the change in federal policy.

Court records indicate DHS agents monitored events at at least five churches in Minnesota and Michigan while investigating anti-ICE activists, although some of the gatherings were organized by outside activist groups rather than the congregations themselves.

Sanctuary Has Never Meant Legal Immunity

The word “sanctuary” once meant considerably more in law than it does today.

In medieval England, sanctuary was an actual legal procedure. Someone accused of a serious crime could “take church” and receive temporary protection from arrest, generally for up to 40 days, after which he could surrender to royal justice or “abjure the realm,” confessing and agreeing to leave England. Some specially chartered churches and monasteries later offered sanctuary for much longer periods.

Unlike today's largely symbolic use of the term, medieval sanctuary could temporarily interrupt the ordinary machinery of secular justice.

The English system did not survive into American law. In a 1983 opinion, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel noted that England abolished the traditional criminal-law right of church sanctuary in 1623 and concluded that it did not become part of American common law.

Common law notwithstanding, the 1980s in particular saw churches again testing what sanctuary could mean in the United States. The modern Sanctuary Movement had begun in the Southwest as clergy and laypeople helped people fleeing violence in El Salvador and Guatemala. On March 24, 1982, Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson publicly declared itself a sanctuary for Central American refugees. The movement spread to hundreds of congregations, religious orders and faith organizations.

The federal government did not recognize those declarations as immunity from immigration law. Instead, investigators infiltrated the movement. University of Arizona archives preserve records from what would come to be known as Operation Sojourner, including documents from government informants and recorded conversations used in the prosecution of these sanctuary providers. Eleven activists went to trial in Tucson; eight were convicted of federal offenses.

That history makes the Minneapolis episode feel less novel than the dropped recorder might suggest. Houses of worship have long claimed a moral or sacred duty to shelter vulnerable people, often grounding that duty in biblical commands to welcome the stranger and care for the foreigner. Conversely, the federal government has long maintained that religious buildings cannot become absolute law-enforcement-free zones, especially when it comes to immigration enforcement.

Declaring that a church is a sanctuary does not, by itself, create immunity from federal law. But University Baptist Church had something more specific: a federal injunction blocking certain ICE activity at its property. Whether this investigation came within that injunction is the question the court has now been asked to answer.

How Far Should Immigration Enforcement Reach?

The Minneapolis dispute is about more than whether a martial arts class counts as religious activity. It comes as immigration enforcement moves closer to religious life itself.

Just last month, ICE arrested Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja on her way to Mass in Texas. The Catholic nun was in the country legally, but agents still stopped her near her church, confiscated her rosary and detained her for hours.

Now, an undercover ICE agent has entered a church already protected by a federal injunction and secretly recorded people inside. DHS says the operation was a criminal investigation rather than specifically immigration enforcement; the churches say that distinction does not put the covert operation outside the court order.

American churches have never had blanket immunity from federal law, but federal immigration policy long treated houses of worship as places deserving unusual restraint. That presumption has changed.

So how far should immigration enforcement reach into religious life? Should churches retain a special buffer from surveillance and arrests, or should federal agents have the same latitude there that they have almost anywhere else?