The Archdiocese of St. Louis sued the Department of Homeland Security on Oct. 5, arguing that restrictions at a sheriff’s lockup being used to hold immigrants apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement represented an infringement of religious liberty.

In a statement announcing the suit, which named both local and federal officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, archdiocesan officials challenged the detention site’s “no contact” policies.

“The Ste. Genevieve Detention Center currently prohibits Catholic priests from offering, and Catholic detainees from receiving, the sacraments of confession and communion. Priests are also not permitted to say Mass,” the archdiocese said. “Offering and receiving these sacraments is a central tenet of our faith. Catholics receive the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the deprivation of these sacraments imposes real and immediate harm on Catholic detainees and priests.”

Archdiocesan officials also complained that the jail “limits the hours that clergy may visit the imprisoned (4 hours a week), meaning that the spiritual care priests can provide is severely restricted and, for some detainees, nonexistent.”

According to the archdiocese, the majority of the 150 immigration detainees held at the Ste. Genevieve County facility are Hispanic Catholics. The archdiocese reports that the jail requires visiting priests to use phones (which the jail can monitor) to talk to detainees through a glass partition, preventing them from giving holy Communion or hearing confession. Priests are not permitted to celebrate Mass inside the detention center.

“As a bishop I am responsible for every soul in my archdiocese, and that includes those who are in the prisons,” Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski told Reuters. Archbishop Rozanski said the lack ​of privacy at the site and no-contact measures prevent priests from carrying out sacramental duties.

“They cannot hear confessions, they cannot celebrate Mass, they cannot give ‌the ⁠anointing of the sick to any of the detainees,” he said, effectively “robbing the detainees of their rights to have access to these sacraments.”

According to a joint Catholic-Evangelical report published last year, approximately 60 percent of the people targeted by ICE for mass detention and eventual deportation following the Trump administration’s policies are expected to be Catholic. The report also found that nearly one in five Catholics in the United States are either vulnerable to deportation or live with someone who is. 

America reached out to Department of Homeland Security officials for clarity on official policy regarding access to immigrant detainees for religious services and spiritual counseling. The department issued a terse response that did not address the issues raised by America:

“These allegations are FALSE. This is a non-contact county jail, not an ICE facility,” a D.H.S. spokesperson wrote.

“Detainees are given the opportunity to practice their religions. All religious items are permitted as soon as detainees make the request,” the spokesperson continued.

“DHS ensures detainees are accommodated with religious services, including access to Catholic priests, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Penance as requested.

“Let’s be clear: county restrictions on physical contact do not mean religious services are denied. DHS has done its due diligence,” the spokesperson wrote. “The media should do theirs before turning a facility security protocol into another misleading headline.”

Follow-up questions focusing on why the restrictions the spokesperson referred to did not amount to a denial of religious services went unanswered, as did the initial question about a national policy on religious access that would apply to all detention sites regardless of which private or public entities managed them. 

Officials at the Ste. Genevieve sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

With more than 65,000 people currently detained by ICE pending deportation proceedings, the D.H.S. has contracted with hundreds of local government and private-sector detention and jail providers across the country. The federal agency has begun an unprecedented expansion of detention capacity, buttressed by $45 billion in new spending for the construction, leasing and sub contracting of detention sites and services. D.H.S. hopes to be able to eventually hold as more than 100,000 apprehended immigrants each night.

Delaney Hall near Newark Liberty International Airport has been an ICE detention site often in the news, but a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Newark reports that access for sacraments and counseling there has been satisfactory.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami was ultimately successful in his effort to bring the sacraments to ICE detainees once held at the now-shuttered “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida. He describes the access to detainees in the Miami area as satisfactory at this time. But he can recall many struggles over the years to come to terms with jail officials about bringing the sacraments to prisoners, including efforts to keep sacramental wine out of jails as alcoholic contraband.

According to the archbishop, church officials have to be persistent in their efforts to achieve access and have pastoral ministers at the ready. He advises his brother bishop in St. Louis to “make sure he has a priest that’s going to be available. If he makes them blink, he better be ready to have somebody available to go there.”

For Archbishop Wenski, challenges in meeting the spiritual needs of Catholics detained by ICE relate less to access restrictions than to the remoteness of many of the centers already built or contemplated by federal officials. And it has proved difficult, he said, to ask overstretched clergy to accept new duties for pastoral outreach to detainees. 

The problems outlined in the St. Louis lawsuit sounded painfully familiar to Michael Okinczyc-Cruz, the executive director of the Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership in Chicago. The coalition had to similarly turn to a federal court to gain access for religious services and spiritual support for people held at an ICE processing center in Broadview, Ill., hammering out an agreement on visitation protocols in May.

Now he hears from people all across the country who likewise struggle to bring spiritual support and religious services to people detained at ICE-run or subcontracted facilities. Mr. Okinczyc-Cruz points out that ICE’s national detention manual indeed outlines policies meant to allow access for religious services from clergy and ministers outside the detention facilities themselves and for one-on-one spiritual counseling.

ICE’s religious practices policy “ensures detainees of various religious beliefs have reasonable and equitable opportunities to participate in the practices of their faith, limited only by documented threats to safety, security, and the orderly operation of the facility.”

But those religious liberty assurances on paper do not always translate into reality site to site, according to Mr. Okinczyc-Cruz.

A great deal can depend on how local authorities feel on a certain day about giving access to coalition ministers. “They can flout the policies that are in place because of this moment that we’re in, a moment in which dehumanizing immigrants is far more advantageous politically than treating immigrants humanely,” he said.

His coalition members have had to remain diligent, ready to push back against arbitrary limitations imposed in violation of the court-supervised agreement.

ICE officials had previously argued that its detainees at Broadview were transient and likely to be moved before religious and spiritual access arrangements could be made, but Mr. Okinczyc-Cruz points out many detainees have ended up held for extended periods at the processing facility. And for many of them the contact with the coalition’s clergy and lay ministers may be their only chance for sacraments or support before being transported out of the country or to a more isolated ICE facility.

Achieving daily access is important, he explained, since each time the coalition’s pastoral team enters Broadview, they are encountering people on just about the worst day of their lives, people in need of prayer and counseling and often the sacraments.

“We are ministering to people who have just been detained and picked up, so we are encountering them in a moment of profound anxiety, fear and confusion.”

The moment of spiritual encounter is vital and “profoundly painful,” he says, “because we’re encountering mothers who’ve been taken from their children, fathers who’ve been taken from their families…people who are desperate to get back to their loved ones and are just recognizing the very desperate, painful situation that they’re in.”

Despite the court order, Mr. Okinczyc-Cruz said access at Broadview remains uncertain. He believes a long-term, effective agreement on access nationally may have to be worked out in the courts.

“Part of the reason why we feel that this ministry of pastoral care is such a threat is because our ministers are taking every possible step that they can to accompany our immigrant siblings, and, by doing so, they’re recognizing their inherent dignity and their divine worth.”

“It’s a challenge to this [idea] that all these people are criminals,” Mr. Okinczyc-Cruz said, “when we are visiting them and praying with them and mourning with them…about the situation that they are in and encouraging them to stay strong and reminding them that God loves them.”

More from America

A deeper dive

The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past each week. Last time: “Global Catholic charity head says they’re doing ‘less with less’ after Trump’s foreign aid cuts.”

For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches. This week: “Church in Argentina remembers martyrs as Milei administration downplays ‘dirty war’ atrocities” and “After botched execution in Tennessee, Catholics pray for the end of the death penalty.”

Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).