In Anti-Catholic Operation, Trump-Vance ICE Targets Minnesota Parish

A Minnesota church is reeling after immigration agents staked out Sunday Mass and deported a beloved staff member.

Thank you for reading! Letters from Leo is a reader-supported publication. If you find value in my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a one-time donation.

One recent Sunday at St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, ushers counted barely half the usual congregation. Whole families were absent.

The reason wasn’t bad weather or illness — it was fear.

Only weeks earlier, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had descended on the parish parking lot and arrested St. Gabriel’s longtime maintenance worker, 46-year-old Francisco Paredes, as he arrived for work.

Paredes, a parishioner who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years, was deported to Mexico five days before Christmas, leaving the community stunned.

That trauma deepened on Epiphany Sunday, when parishioners spotted men in ski masks sitting in an unmarked car outside the church during Mass.

“They came to our church, and even though they didn’t enter, they were apparently surveilling us,” Fr. Paul Haverstock said, calling the agents’ presence a shocking breach.

It “felt like we were not living in the United States, but in some violent place — a war zone,” Haverstock told Catholic News Agency. After the priest’s intervention, ICE ultimately did not interrupt the service, but just seeing armed officers idling outside left worshipers shaken.

“Who wouldn’t feel intimidated by that?” the priest asked.

Attendance at St. Gabriel’s Spanish Mass has since plummeted by roughly 50%.

The diocese is considering offering his flock a dispensation from the Sunday Mass obligation, fearing that “hardly any of them will be here anyway because of the fear” if ICE continues lurking outside.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman, however, rejects the notion that ICE targets churches. “ICE does not raid churches,” the agency told CNA, dismissing such claims as “smears.”.

Officials insist that criminals can no longer “hide in places of worship” under President Trump’s directives, and that if a “dangerous felon” or “child sex offender” were present at a church, agents might have to make an arrest “to protect public safety.”

In Paredes’s case, though, the “felon” label hardly fits.

The deported church employee’s only brush with the law was a years-old misdemeanor DUI.

“All the people I met in [ICE] prison are hardworking people,” Paredes later said, refuting the idea that mass deportation is snaring only violent criminals.

He described his month in detention as degrading and inhumane: “They treat you like an animal. We sleep on the floor. No blanket,” Paredes recounted after spending Christmas in ICE custody without access to any religious services.

Haverstock says ICE’s tactics have “terrorized” his community. Parishioners — even those with legal status — now fear that going to Mass could lead to detention or family separation.

“It’s frightening. I was especially frightened for my [immigrant parishioners],” the pastor said.

He has been “blessed” to see his mostly bilingual parish unite in support of their “immigrant brothers and sisters,” but the atmosphere is undeniably tense. “Families should not be separated except for extremely grave reasons,” Haverstock insists, and simply lacking legal papers isn’t one of those reasons.

A Bishop’s Unprecedented Dispensation

What happened in Minnesota is not an isolated incident. Across the country, Catholic clergy are sounding alarms as ICE expands enforcement into sacred spaces.

Late last month, a traditionally conservative Midwestern bishop took a remarkable step in response to similar fears. Bishop Earl K. Fernandes of Columbus, Ohio — himself the son of immigrants — announced on December 23 that he was dispensing any Catholic who “reasonably fears being detained” from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass.

The presence of federal agents around churches was “creating an atmosphere of fear rather than security and peace,” Fernandes wrote in a pastoral letter.

Until the Christmas season ended in early January, immigrants in his diocese who felt unsafe in the pews were excused from Mass, encouraged instead to watch via livestream and pray at home.

“God will not abandon you, nor will we,” the bishop assured them. In an extraordinary appeal to ICE personnel, Fernandes pleaded: “Temper justice with mercy and compassion. Do not unnecessarily separate families at Christmastime.”

2025 marked the first time ever an American bishop cancelled Mass obligations not due to a natural disaster, pandemic, or war — but due to the actions of the president of the United States.

The Catholic pushback against the Trump-Vance raids under Pope Leo XIV started shortly after his election

In deep-red Tennessee, all three of the state’s Catholic bishops condemned a major ICE sweep last June.

In a rare joint statement, the bishops of Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville blasted the operation as a moral crisis, noting that “perhaps as many as 100” of the nearly 200 immigrants arrested had no criminal record at all.

In response, Tennessee church leaders reminded the faithful that anyone afraid for their safety is not bound to attend Mass under Church law — effectively echoing the kind of dispensation later issued in Ohio.

And in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood this past fall, a routine Sunday liturgy turned into a scene of quiet panic when a priest abruptly halted Mass to warn parishioners that ICE agents were waiting outside.

Worshippers fled through side exits rather than risk walking out the front door into a potential raid. This incident at St. Jerome’s Church in October was part of anti-Catholic crusade — a deliberate campaign by Trump’s administration to target Latino-heavy parishes where undocumented faithful might be found.

Since President Trump rescinded the Obama-era policy barring immigration enforcement at “sensitive locations” like churches and schools, no place is off-limits.

The result has been half-empty pews and heightened anxiety in immigrant communities from the Midwest to the Bible Belt.

Pope Leo Denounces ‘Cruel’ Tactics

All of this has provoked an historic moral confrontation between the U.S. Church and the White House.

Pope Leo XIV has consistently slammed the hardline ICE raids for betraying Christian values of mercy.

On multiple occasions, the American pontiff has spoken out forcefully against using fear as an immigration tool. Just weeks ago, Leo blasted the latest deportation blitz as “extremely disrespectful” to families who have built their lives in the United States.

Nations have a right to secure their borders, the pope acknowledged, but not at the expense of basic human dignity.

“Treat people with the dignity that is theirs,” he urged, instead of ripping immigrant families apart. Leo even warned that when a nation starts treating migrants “as if they were garbage” in the name of security, it commits a “serious crime” against the moral law.

In Leo’s view, separating parents from children or hauling people out of churches isn’t just a political issue — it’s a fundamental pro-life issue of respecting human souls.

So far, President Trump and his allies have offered no rebuttal to Rome’s critiques.

The Trump White House pointedly declined to comment after Pope Leo’s most recent broadside against “violent” enforcement tactics. But on the ground in the U.S., Leo’s words seem to be emboldening Catholic leaders.

“The Church stands with migrants,” declared one bishops’ video message that went viral last month, directly challenging the administration’s policies.

Parish priests, too, are taking action.

“The Church cannot remain silent before injustice,” Pope Leo has reminded American bishops, calling on clergy to protect their flocks both spiritually and materially.

In Minnesota, Father Haverstock is heeding that call. He says he’ll keep speaking out and seeking ways to shield vulnerable parishioners. “We’ve united to help our immigrant brothers and sisters,” the priest said of his community’s response.

That unity — between the pope, the bishops, and the people in the pews — sends a clear signal: Catholics will not abandon their faithful, no matter their immigration status, especially when Trump-Vance’s ICE is watching.

To my surprise, the Advent Reflection Series became one of the most widely read and shared parts of Letters from Leo in 2025.

Many of you wrote to tell me that these reflections helped steady your hearts during a difficult year for our nation — one marked by political division, anxiety, and real moral uncertainty.

Because of that response, I’ve decided to make these reflections a permanent part of this work in 2026.

I’ll be publishing a weekly Sunday reflection, rooted in the Mass readings of the day, and written to help us think more clearly about what it means to follow Jesus in the middle of today’s political realities — not by retreating from public life, and not by baptizing any party or ideology, but by letting the Gospel form our conscience, our courage, and our compassion.

These reflections will be available to all paid subscribers, as a small but sincere way of saying thank you for making Letters from Leo possible. This week’s edition is below.

Letters from Leo is open to anyone who wants to be informed and inspired by our pope — and to turn that inspiration into action that leaves America and the world more just, less cold, and more alive with hope.

If you’d like to invest in our mission during this new year, here are three ways you can help:

• Subscribe as a paid member to receive exclusive posts about the life and formation of Pope Leo and help sustain this newsletter.

• Donate with a one-time gift to fuel this project’s mission.

• Share this post (and Letters from Leo) with a friend who might enjoy it.

Whether you give $0, $1, or $1,000, your presence here matters — no matter your faith or your politics.

Thank you for reading. I’ll see you on the road.