The Trump administration said 21 January it would rescind a long-standing policy preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at what are seen as sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals.
Prior to his second inauguration, Trump’s transition team indicated his administration would scrap the long-standing ICE policy—which prohibits immigration enforcement arrests at such locations, as well as other sensitive events like weddings and funerals without approval from supervisors.
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman directed on 20 January that those guidelines be rescinded, as well as another directive restricting parameters for humanitarian parole, a DHS spokesperson said.
The end of DHS’s “sensitive locations policy strikes fear into the heart of our community,” Bishop Mark J Seitz of El Paso, Texas, said 21 January.
Such drastic actions from the federal government, he added, “raise urgent moral and human concerns.”
Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute, told OSV News, “the reversal of the sensitive locations policy is gravely troubling and will have an immediate impact on families in our parishes as well as on our Catholic educational institutions and service organisations.”
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