Immigration Enforcement, Religious Freedom, and the Next Possible Thing

by Allison K. Ralph

This week, many of us paused to remember the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At the same time, we watched Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continue brutal tactics against citizens and noncitizens across the country. That juxtaposition is hard to ignore. It surfaces a familiar tension: between democratic ideals formed and reformed by civic engagement—including protest—and contemporary state enforcement practices that challenge those ideals in practice.

That tension is not unique to the United States. Across democratic and authoritarian systems alike, governments are responding to migration pressures, geopolitical instability, and cultural anxiety with policies that stretch—sometimes deliberately—the boundaries of civil liberties. But here in the states, because of ICE policies and religious communities’ responses, religious freedom has become deeply entangled with border enforcement, national identity, and questions of democratic legitimacy. What once appeared as a discrete constitutional concern now sits squarely at the crossroads of migration policy and state power.

Now, I count myself as what William Ury calls a “possibilist.” I tend to believe that there are ways to improve our situation, no matter how bleak it seems. So despite the heaviness of the news of this week, I think this moment makes some big shifts possible.

Scholars who study democracy, rights, and authoritarianism converge on one core insight: effective pushback against government overreach must span as wide an ideological spectrum as possible. Whether one is reading John Inazu, Erica Chenoweth, Rachel Kleinfeld, Robert Talisse, john a. powell, William Galston, Danielle Allen, or David French, the lesson is consistent. Cross-ideological resistance is not just normatively attractive; it is strategically necessary. Broad-based coalitions strengthen legitimacy and resilience, especially in moments when institutions are under stress.

That insight helps frame a strategic question I raised last year and continue to return to: could a prodemocracy coalition be built around shared rights at the intersection of immigration, religious freedom, and democracy? I still believe the answer is yes. Protecting shared rights offers a concrete foundation for coalition across deep difference—one that does not require consensus on theology, politics, policy outcomes, or even necessarily values.

History offers some guidance here. King’s movement was both theologically and demographically rooted in the Black church. Yet the civil rights movement did not primarily rely on Free Exercise claims to protect King or the thousands who joined him. Religious institutions mattered not because of litigation alone, but because they functioned as organizing centers, moral authorities, and sites of collective action. Churches were where people gathered, strategized, sustained one another, and imagined a different public life.

Today, houses of worship are once again on the front lines—this time through ongoing legal battles over whether ICE agents may enter public areas of private buildings, such as sanctuaries and fellowship halls, to check papers and make arrests. These disputes have been unfolding for more than a year. Civil liberties groups have issued guidance on immigration enforcement in places of worship, and ICE maintains its own “protected areas” policy. Yet de jure assurances and de facto realities are constantly in motion. Regardless of formal policy, ICE is now entering houses of worship in practice.

That reality has prompted an expanding wave of legal pushback from religious communities. Last year, I argued that protecting shared rights, including religious freedom, represented a major opportunity to bolster democratic norms. By late February, lawsuits had already emerged from a strikingly wide ideological and theological spectrum, including plaintiffs such as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Society of Friends (Quakers), and many others. Since then, the list of lawsuits has grown significantly, documented by Democracy Forward and others. The breadth of these challenges matters as much as their legal claims.

John Inazu’s framework of confident pluralism helps explain why. Confident pluralism, he argues, requires a “mutual nonaggression pact,” and that collective action must be grounded in civic aspirations of tolerance, humility, and patience. A coalition of politically and theologically diverse religious communities can deliver on both sides of that bargain: remaining mutually nonaggressive despite deep disagreement, while acting together to protect shared rights. This is pluralism not as abstraction, but as practiced restraint and cooperation.

One reason this coalition has taken shape is that immigration policy has clearly emerged as a religious freedom issue. Migrants and refugees do not leave their faith behind at the border. Yet asylum systems, detention regimes, and visa processes often restrict people’s ability to worship, gather, or live openly according to their beliefs. For many, access to faith communities is not incidental. It is essential to survival, identity, and resilience.

Religious communities also express their faith through acts of service, including to immigrant communities, leading to issues around Free Expression if those acts are limited by government interference.

Faith leaders and religious nonprofits have increasingly warned that aggressive enforcement policies undermine not only humanitarian norms, but democratic commitments to freedom of belief and association. When people are afraid to attend religious services, when congregations fear offering help, when faith must be practiced under the threat of enforcement, religious freedom is constrained in practice—even if it remains protected in theory.

This is why congregations, community centers, and faith-inspired nonprofits matter so much right now—often more than court decisions alone. De facto realities shape lived freedom just as powerfully as formal doctrine. When those realities shift, rights can be hollowed out long before they are overturned on paper.

Religious freedom, then, is not only a moral concern. It is a strategic anchor for prodemocracy coalitions navigating deep disagreement in an era of heightened state power. As faith leaders continue to insist, aggressive enforcement that chills belief, association, and care weakens democratic commitments themselves.

Religious freedom across religious and ideological difference is still good strategy.

At Cohesion Strategy, we support organizations pursuing pluralistic solutions, like religious freedom coalition building, with strategy, research, facilitation, and evaluation. Get in touch with us to #ExpandWhatsPossible.