DHS and ICE barred clergy from providing pastoral care to detainees at Minneapolis's Whipple building during Metro Surge

Since Operation Metro Surge began in December 2025, Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis systematically barred clergy from providing pastoral care and prayer to immigration detainees held there, citing shifting "security" and "safety" justifications with no written policy or criteria governing access. In December 2025, on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Father Christopher Collins, a Jesuit and parochial administrator of St. Peter Claver Catholic Church in St. Paul, was blocked from praying with a detained woman. On Ash Wednesday, roughly February 18, 2026, a reverend seeking to administer ashes to Christian detainees was turned away, directed to the ICE waiting room, and told she would not be permitted to access anyone inside. Clergy said they had sought entry as often as several times a week since the surge began, with each request denied.

The pattern was disclosed publicly and documented in detail on February 23, 2026, when the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Minnesota Conference of the United Church of Christ, and Father Collins sued DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons, and ICE's acting St. Paul field director in federal court, represented by Groundwork Legal and Saul Ewing, alleging the denials violated the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The suit noted that clergy have long been able to minister at other government detention and processing facilities, and that DHS provided no safety protocol clergy could follow to be admitted at Whipple.

DHS responded that the Whipple building functions as a field office rather than a detention facility, that individuals are held there only briefly before transfer, and that providing religious services at a field office — as distinct from an ICE detention facility — is not standard operating procedure. Clergy countered that Operation Metro Surge had turned Whipple into a de facto detention site for weeks at a time, and that the government had articulated no written criteria for when, if ever, access would be granted.

Updates

2026-03-20 — Judge granted preliminary injunction ordering clergy access [4]

U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell granted a preliminary injunction ordering ICE to allow in-person clergy pastoral care at Whipple, rejecting the government's blanket security justification and comparing its use of unexplained discretionary authority to "the wizard" in "The Wizard of Oz." In a declaration filed in the case, ICE's deputy field office director in St. Paul stated that Whipple had reverted to pre-surge, case-by-case clergy-visit practice as of March 5, 2026, after Operation Metro Surge was announced concluding on February 12, 2026. Plaintiffs argued that the discretionary approach — with no written policy or criteria — still violated the First Amendment, and the underlying case continued.