As Trump’s ICE Raids Empty Churches, a Conservative Bishop Pushes Back
In President Trump’s America, even devout Catholics are fleeing from their own churches. Now a traditionally-minded Ohio bishop is doing the once unthinkable — excusing immigrant families from Mass.
Dear friends —
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Last Sunday at a parish in Columbus, ushers counted barely a third of the usual congregation. Whole families were absent.
The reason wasn’t snow or illness — it was fear.
In recent weeks, U.S. immigration agents have been staked out near Catholic churches and schools across Ohio, part of a Trump administration operation ominously code-named “Operation Buckeye.”
Federal officials claim they’re targeting “the worst of the worst” criminals, but the reality is a dragnet causing panic among ordinary immigrant families.
Even those with legal status fear that attending Mass could end in detention or separation from their children. This is the new landscape after President Trump rescinded Obama-era protections that once kept ICE away from houses of worship.
Now no place is off-limits, not even the pews — and the result is empty pews. One Nashville parish saw Sunday attendance plunge by 50% overnight when agents began trolling Latino neighborhood. As one local observer noted, “People can’t even practice their faith in this country anymore.”
Into this breach stepped Bishop Earl K. Fernandes of Columbus. Citing a surge of ICE activity around Christmas, Fernandes announced he is dispensing all Catholics who “reasonably fear being detained” from the obligation to attend Mass.
In a pastoral letter issued December 23, he lamented that the heavy presence of federal agents near churches was “creating an atmosphere of fear rather than security and peace” for immigrant communities.
Until the Christmas season ends on January 11, anyone terrified of being snatched by ICE — “even those with proper legal documentation,” he added — is excused from Sunday Mass.
They are urged instead to join via livestream, pray at home, and keep their families safe. “God will not abandon you, nor will we,” the bishop vowed, promising that priests will bring Communion and sacraments to homes if needed.
In a direct appeal to immigration officers, Fernandes pleaded: “Temper justice with mercy and compassion. Do not unnecessarily separate families at Christmas time.”
This extraordinary dispensation is about more than canon law. It too is a moral stand.
To put it plainly, a Catholic bishop is telling some of his flock not to come to church because the government’s actions have made it too dangerous.
“For the first time ever, an American bishop has cancelled Mass obligations not due to a natural disaster, pandemic, or war — but due to the actions of the President of the United States,” Letters from Leo noted when a similar move happened earlier this year.
Let that sink in. It turns out the real threat to religious freedom in America right now isn’t a Starbucks cup or a Nativity scene in City Hall — it’s a climate of fear where families feel they must choose between their God and their government.
As Pope Leo XIV warned just weeks ago, when a nation treats migrants “as if they were garbage” in the name of security, a “serious crime” is being committed by the state. Now that crime is striking at the heart of the Church’s life, literally keeping believers from worship.
Bishop Fernandes’s response is essentially a refusal to let Caesar have the last word on who gets to worship in peace.
Trump’s Immigration Raids Empty Pews — and Galvanize Bishops
From Tennessee to California, Catholic leaders are witnessing the same human fallout of Trump’s hardline immigration agenda — and they are beginning to push back in unison.
