ICE Agents Now Under Fire by Vatican for Denying Communion to Detained Migrants

CHICAGO — On a crisp All Saints’ Day morning, more than 2,000 Catholics gathered outside the Broadview ICE Processing Center, their voices rising in prayer and song under a gray Illinois sky.

They had come for a Mass led by Chicago Auxiliary Bishop José María Garcia-Maldonado, hoping to bridge the razor-wire fence with a simple act of faith: delivering Holy Communion to the migrants held inside.

But for the second time in less than a month, federal agents turned them away, citing security protocols and insufficient notice.

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The rejection didn’t just sting the assembled faithful—it rippled all the way to the Vatican, where Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born pontiff, issued a pointed plea for compassion amid America’s escalating deportation drive.

The incident at Broadview, a bustling field office where detainees are processed and shuttled out around the clock, underscores the raw fault lines between the Trump administration’s hardline immigration stance and the Catholic Church’s longstanding advocacy for migrants’ dignity.

“We attempted for a second time to bring communion to migrants detained there. ICE turned us away,” said Father David Inczauskis, a priest with the Coalition for Spiritual & Public Leadership (CSPL), the nonprofit that organized the event.

In a statement released shortly after, he added, “They told us they needed one week’s notice. We let them know 10 days in advance.”

Scrutiny Grows Amongst Faith-Based Groups

CSPL, a group of clergy and activists, has been at the forefront of these efforts, framing the denial not as bureaucracy gone awry but as a deeper moral failing. Pope Leo XIV, elected just months ago in May as the first American pope, didn’t mince words when reporters caught up with him on Tuesday at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome.

Speaking off the cuff after a day of meetings, the pontiff tied the Broadview standoff to broader biblical imperatives. “Many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what’s going on right now,” he said, his voice carrying the faint lilt of his Windy City roots.

“The spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered, and I would certainly invite the authorities to allow pastoral workers to attend to the needs of those people.”

He went further, invoking the Gospel of Matthew: “Just a couple days ago, we heard Matthew’s gospel, Chapter 25. Jesus says very clearly, ‘At the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not?’ And I think that there’s a deep reflection that needs to be made in terms of what’s happening.”

Masses Turn to Dreadful Experiences for Local Communities

This wasn’t Leo’s first foray into the immigration fray. Since taking the throne of St. Peter, he’s clashed repeatedly with the administration over its mass deportation push, dubbed Operation Midway Blitz in the Chicago area.

In October, he told U.S. bishops gathered in Rome that “the church cannot be silent” in the face of such policies.

His words have emboldened a wave of grassroots resistance from pulpits to protest lines, but they’ve also drawn fire from conservative corners who see the pope’s interventions as meddling in sovereign affairs.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, pushed back swiftly. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told reporters that the denials align with longstanding procedures at field offices like Broadview, where “detainees are continuously brought in, processed, and transferred out.”

She pointed to past protests—described by officials as “attacks” on the facility—as heightening security risks to staff, civilians, and detainees alike. “ICE staff have repeatedly informed religious organizations that… they are not able to accommodate these requests at this time,” McLaughlin said.

A White House spokesperson, when pressed on the pope’s remarks, deferred to DHS without further comment.

Yet the Broadview blockade is just one flashpoint in a national drama unfolding in churches and detention halls. In Chicago, the tension has seeped into everyday worship.

Just weeks ago, ICE agents were spotted lingering outside St. Jerome Parish on the city’s North Side as a Spanish-language Mass let out, sending worshippers scrambling in fear.

“There’s a sense that these ICE agents know where some of these undocumented Catholics are uniting in prayer and are kind of using that as a way of targeting [them],” Father Inczauskis told reporters afterward.

Ushers at the church had to urge parishioners to hold back until the agents departed, turning a routine Sunday into a scene of quiet dread. The pattern repeats elsewhere.

In California, Bishop Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino issued a pastoral letter in June decrying ICE raids that had agents storming church properties, leaving congregants “hunted” and too terrified to attend Mass.

Where Religion and Politics Gets Messy

“It is not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” Rojas wrote, echoing Pope Francis’s earlier warnings of a “major crisis” in mass deportations.

His diocese even relaxed Sunday obligations for those fearing encounters with federal agents, encouraging virtual sacraments instead. Attendance has dipped noticeably, with one pastor noting families skipping services altogether to avoid neighborhood sweeps.

Even mainline Protestants have joined the fray. In October, a United Church of Christ pastor protesting ICE operations in California took a pepper round to the face from a DHS agent at close range, bloodied but unbowed.

And in the Inland Empire, church leaders decried the detention of men seeking shelter on parish grounds, calling it a violation of sacred space.

Back in Illinois, the faithful aren’t backing down. Mercy Sister JoAnn Persch, 91, a veteran advocate who’s prayed outside Broadview for decades, led the All Saints’ delegation alongside Bishop Garcia-Maldonado.

Once allowed inside to offer Communion, she now stands barred, her voice cracking with resolve.

“What is most disconcerting is the fact that those men and women inside there deserve pastoral care, deserve to be nourished by Communion,” she said after the Mass.

Sister Christin Tomy, 37, who helped distribute wafers to the outdoor crowd, described a palpable grief settling over the group. “This time, I felt a lot of grief,” she told OSV News.

“Of course we were praying and hoping that we might be allowed to enter the facility and distribute Communion and when we weren’t, I really was just heartbroken—and I think we all were, for the way that the body of Christ was being ripped apart.”

The standoff has legal teeth, too. Last week, attorneys filed a class-action lawsuit against ICE on behalf of Broadview detainees, alleging systemic mistreatment including the denial of religious rights. The suit draws on testimony from faith leaders who’ve ministered there for years but now face locked gates.

At least three attempts to offer Communion have been rebuffed since the crackdown intensified. U.S. bishops, some advising Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, have waded in with unusual candor.

Bishop Louis Tylka of Peoria called the tactics “unnecessarily aggressive” and aimed at “terroriz[ing] and caus[ing] chaos.”

His comments, echoed by others vying for leadership in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, come as the body prepares to vote on its next president later this month.

Even Cardinal Blase Cupich, Chicago’s archbishop, weighed in: “Keeping the nation safe and respecting human dignity are not mutually exclusive.”

Voices From the Community

For Maria Reynaga, a Glendale Heights resident who teared up during the outdoor Mass, the personal toll hits hard. An immigrant herself, she sees echoes of her own journey in the detainees’ plight. “I felt for the people who were denied holy Communion,” she said, wiping her eyes.

Dan Greenstone, a non-Catholic attendee drawn by conscience, called the ceremony “a beautiful ceremony” amid the cruelty.

“My conscience has been shocked by what I’ve heard from neighbors and friends in the Chicago area,” he added. “Immigration policies are being enforced extremely cruelly, recklessly and violently.”

As detention numbers swell—reaching record highs under executive orders suspending asylum claims—advocates like CSPL vow to persist.

Father Inczauskis put it bluntly: “Perhaps they don’t want to allow us in because they know the conditions inside are inhumane and they know we would denounce that.

Our request is so simple: to do something the Catholic Church does every day. We are united in Christ. We will not stop denouncing the evil of detention and deportation.”

In a city where ICE vans prowl like shadows, that unity feels both defiant and fragile. Pope Leo’s appeal, landing just days after the feast, has amplified calls for a reckoning.

Whether it softens federal resolve remains to be seen, but one thing’s clear: in America’s immigration wars, the sacraments have become battle lines.

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