(RNS) — Archbishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski, along with the Archdiocese of St. Louis that he leads, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government, arguing President Donald Trump’s administration and a local sheriff are violating the religious rights of Catholic leaders and immigrant detainees by placing restrictions on clergy who visit a local detention center.
The Saint Genevieve County Detention Center in Saint Genevieve, Mo. (Image courtesy of Google Maps)
The suit adds to a growing list of cases brought by faith groups challenging various federal policies related to immigration since the beginning of Trump’s second term, and marks the first time a Catholic bishop has individually joined one of the lawsuits.
The complaint, filed Monday (Oct. 5) in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, focuses on a series of policies instituted at the Sainte Genevieve County Detention Center, where immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are being held.
According to the Catholic plaintiffs, which also include a local priest who works with immigrants, the government has instituted a “no contact” policy that forces clergy to speak to detainees through a glass partition that “prevents priests from administering the sacraments of confession and Communion.” The complaint also accuses authorities of barring priests from saying Mass — a policy plaintiffs say “offends core constitutional values” — and limiting clergy to one four-hour visit a week, which they argue “severely restricts priests’ ability to provide pastoral care.”
“Devoted to the command of Matthew 25:36, and committed to bringing the peace of Christ to the imprisoned, Catholic priests seek to offer — and Catholic detainees want to receive — the sacraments of Communion and confession, as well as other pastoral care,” reads the complaint, which goes on to insist the jail’s visitation policy “prohibits this basic religious exercise.”
The Catholic leaders also allege lawyers visiting clients at the facility are not bound by the same rules or are “readily” granted exemptions. The result, the plaintiffs argue, “constitutes more favorable treatment for secular activity than religious exercise, disparate treatment the Constitution does not permit.”
“That this policy targets some of our nation’s most vulnerable — civil ICE detainees awaiting deportation to foreign countries — exacerbates a constitutional concern and a canonical one, because it withholds from the weakest among us the thing most precious to all of us,” the complaint reads.
DHS denied the prelates’ claims in a statement to Religion News Service.
“These allegations are FALSE,” read the statement, which added that the facility is “a non-contact county jail, not an ICE facility.”
The spokesperson did not address some of the specific allegations in the complaint, but insisted detainees “are given the opportunity to practice their religions,” including access to priests and sacraments.
The existence of the lawsuit was first reported by Reuters.
The diocese’s lawsuit adds to two similar cases filed over the past year in Illinois and Minnesota, where faith leaders have also reported difficulty accessing immigrant detainees held in DHS facilities. In one instance, an RNS reporter observed three pastors being barred from entering the Bishop Henry Whipple Building, where many immigrants detained in Minnesota have been held.
All three court cases involve Catholic leaders, and the issue has attracted the attention of Pope Leo XIV. When asked by a reporter about debate over the issue in Illinois in November 2025, the pontiff responded by saying: “I would certainly invite the authorities to allow pastoral workers to attend to the needs of those people.”
Both of the previous lawsuits have already won temporary court rulings affording clergy various levels of access to detainees. When two Catholic priests and a nun visited the Broadview ICE facility outside Chicago in April, one of the priests, the Rev. Paul Joseph Keller, told RNS that detainees’ eyes welled with tears as the group led a 15-minute Holy Thursday service and washed the feet of the immigrants.
The new lawsuit in Missouri claims visitation policies implemented by the government at Sainte Genevieve County Detention Center — which the prelates say they have urged authorities to change — violate four separate statutes related to religious freedom: the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the Missouri Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.
Dozens of clergy, houses of worship, faith-based organizations and entire religious denominations have joined lawsuits challenging the president’s immigration policies since January 2025, according to a new litigation tracker developed by RNS with the Law, Rights, and Religion Project, a project of Union Theological Seminary that focuses on religious freedom and religious pluralism.
At least 15 of the now 23 cases claim the federal government has violated the religious rights of the litigants, either by infringing on the First Amendment’s right to free exercise of religion or RFRA.
