Dear Friends,
As many of you may already have learned from media reports, yesterday the U.S. District Court of Maryland granted the request filed by New England Yearly Meeting, our neighboring yearly meetings, and other people of faith challenging the new administration’s policy allowing indiscriminate immigration enforcement in houses of worship. This means, in part, that the Department of Homeland Security is now barred from conducting immigration enforcement activities in Friends Meetings, except under very limited circumstances, and only then with explicit authorization.
While the current injunction is for the time being limited only to Friends meetings, Baptist churches, and Sikh gurdwaras which were plaintiffs in the suit, this is a small but meaningful step forward—and this witness continues.
New England Friends, alongside our neighbors in Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore Yearly Meetings, as well as our Baptist and Sikh friends and co-plaintiffs, now have the opportunity to affirm, as we have since the beginnings of this lawsuit, that all people—not only Quakers, Sikhs, and Baptists—have the right to participate in worshiping communities without fear of indiscriminate immigration enforcement or intimidation by armed government agents.
A press release on behalf of our shared efforts from Democracy Forward, the nonpartisan legal advocacy organization which is providing legal representation for our Yearly Meeting and our co-plaintiffs, which includes more details and quotations from several of the plaintiffs, is available here. Resources supporting your local meeting and further information about the lawsuit are being maintained on the Yearly Meeting’s website here.
If Friends in New England have further questions about this most recent positive development in the lawsuit, or about the implications for your meeting, please contact Noah Merrill, Yearly Meeting Secretary, at [email protected].
We are deeply grateful for the Court’s acknowledgement, in part, of this fundamental right. We look forward to the opportunity to continue to pursue this witness in whatever ways we and our partners may be led and able in the coming days and months, both as this case moves forward, and through other means. And we give thanks for the prayers, letters and minutes of support, financial contributions, and partnership of so many Friends and meetings in recent weeks. And we give thanks that we are in this together as a community of faith.
In the Light that shows the way,
Rebecca Leuchak, Presiding Clerk
Noah Merrill, Yearly Meeting Secretary
[To directly support the legal expenses involved in this lawsuit, contributions can be made directly to Democracy Forward. Friends and meetings wishing to support the Yearly Meeting with the staff time and other costs of carrying forward this witness, and our ongoing ministries in these turbulent times, can give online here, or learn more about other ways of giving here.]