US faith groups say House Republicans' probe into immigration work violates their religious freedom
Date: June 27, 2025
In: Sight Magazine
By: Jack Jenkins
A House investigation launched by two Republican congressmen into dozens of religious organisations and denominations, from the US Catholic bishops to the Unitarian Universalist Association, is being called a violation the groups' religious liberty.
On 11th June, US Representative Mark E Green of Tennessee, who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Representative Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, who is also part of the committee, announced plans for a probe of more than 200 non-governmental organisations they accused of being "involved in providing services or support to inadmissible aliens during the Biden-Harris administration's historic border crisis".
The lawmakers unveiled a letter they planned to send to all of the organisations. Among other allegations, the letter argues the Biden administration's reliance on non-profit groups signalled "those who arrived illegally or without proper documentation that they could expect such assistance, all expensed to American taxpayers, once they arrived in the United States".
The letter included a link to a lengthy questionnaire asking the groups if they had received any "grant, contract, or other form of disbursement from the federal government" or provided "legal services, translation services, transportation, housing, sheltering, or any other form of assistance" to undocumented immigrants or unaccompanied immigrant children.
They were also asked whether they had sued the Federal Government or filed any amicus briefs in legal proceedings since the beginning of the Biden administration "to the present."
Green and Breechen, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Accountability, did not respond to RNS' questions regarding the probe, nor did they offer a complete list of organisations under investigation or those that received the letter.
A press release released by the Homeland Security Committee named four organisations that were under scrutiny: the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Catholic Charities USA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Global Refuge. But according to a list provided to RNS by Rev Paul Brandeis Raushenbush - the head of Interfaith Alliance, which is working with faith groups and other organisations targeted by the probe on a potential response - more than 30 religious groups have received letters from the lawmakers.
"The targeting of these religious NGOs that are fulfilling central mandates of their faith by serving immigrant and refugee communities can only be understood as an attack on faith itself," Raushenbush said in a statement. "This administration continues to attempt to silence and restrict any religious groups or faith traditions not in lockstep with its radical and unpopular agenda."
RNS was unable to independently corroborate whether all of the groups on Raushenbush's list received a letter, but Bishop Dwayne Royster, a United Church of Christ pastor in Washington who heads Faith in Action, a faith-based organising group, said in an interview that his group was among those being investigated. He condemned the probe as "political propaganda" and evidence of "dramatic overreach" by the lawmakers.
"It's an invasion of religious liberty," Royster said, arguing that members of his group have the right to practice a form of faith "which says that there's no strangers amongst us, that we're all siblings."
Royster said the probe was "designed to have a chilling effect" on organisations like Faith in Action, but he declared, "I will be damned if they're going to stop us from doing what we do that we feel mandated and called to do, by God, to care for other human beings to the best of our ability."
Royster said the questionnaire wasn't relevant to Faith in Action's work. Asked if he intended to submit answers, he replied, "Not right now."
The Unitarian Universalist Association released a letter on Wednesday from Adrienne K. Walker, the denomination's general counsel, saying the UUA "did not receive any grant, contract, or other form of disbursements from the federal government" during the Biden administration. Walker went on to criticise the probe and questionnaire, which she said "appear to target the UUA and its members' fundamental rights to exercise their religious practices protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act."
She added that the denomination "objects to any use of the Letter, including the linked survey, to intimidate or interfere with Constitutionally protected rights of free speech and free exercise of religious practices."
The Catholic bishops' spokesperson Chieko Noguchi confirmed that the USCCB had received the letter and plans to respond. But she noted that while the USCCB has a long history of working with immigrants and refugees through various programs, those efforts were typically federally funded partnerships with the government.
"For over forty-five years the USCCB has entered into agreements with the Federal Government to serve groups of people specifically authorized by the Federal Government to receive assistance," Noguchi said in a statement. "This included refugees, people granted asylum, unaccompanied children, victims of human trafficking, and Afghans who assisted the US military abroad."
Several other organisations - CAIR; Network, a Catholic social justice lobby; and Global Refuge, a Lutheran group that works with refugees - declined to comment without denying they received the letter. Catholic Charities USA also declined to comment.
In 2023, Republican Representative Lance Gooden of Texas and three other congressmen sent letters to Catholic Charities, Jewish Family Service and Global Refuge - then called Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service - demanding they preserve documents "related to any expenditures submitted for reimbursement from the federal government related to migrants encountered at the southern border."
Gooden also sent a letter to then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas complaining that the Biden administration was "allowing non-governmental organizations...the freedom to aid and abet illegal aliens".
The allegations resulted in threats made against Catholic Charities staffers across the US and implanted the notion among far-right online influencers that aiding immigrants who had been processed by border officials, a core service of Catholic Charities, was "facilitating illegal immigration."
Brecheen has been active in right-wing religious circles, such as attending a 2024 worship gathering in the US Capitol rotunda led by Sean Feucht, an activist and promoter of Christian nationalism.
At a post-Inauguration Day prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral in January, Brecheen walked out when the cathedral's bishop, the Rt Rev Mariann Budde, asked President Donald Trump in her sermon to "have mercy" on immigrants and refugees. Brecheen later introduced a resolution in Congress condemning it as a "display of political activism" with a "distorted message". The resolution never left the committee.
This is extremely concerning. Report any bias against Christians, but only if they're the state-approved brand that peddles fear and hatred. This is why there was a Separation Clause.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
The church began worshipping Mammon and power some time ago. We should have called it out. Oral Roberts, Jim Bakker, Kenneth Copeland.
I'm largely skeptical of anything in the canonical Bible after the gospels, since the Council of Nicea disappeared several books, but left in references to them, after also leaving in the parts about woe to adding or subtracting from the word, but since it's there: Instead of teaching women and children submit in a vacuum, we should have tied it to the rest of that passage, that husbands love their wives as Christ loved the church, and not provoking children to wrath.
We should be holding men to accountability for adultery, like we do women.
And after leaving my faith for it's ridiculousness, then returning after discovering the other books and turning to studies of Judaism and hermetic kabbalah and gaining a while new understanding, returning to it, we've been taught to read and understand wrong. Taking a new look at 1 Cor. 13 with descaled eyes (Paul talking about spiritual cataracts when scales feel from his eyes?), that's what verse 11 references when thinking, understanding and as a child, spiritual childhood?
Anyway, the apostles were humans with their own biases, and it's not impossible they didn't mistake prideful belief in their own righteousness sinfulness of their neighbor, which Jesus addresses in Matthew 7, as much as our faith leaders have also seemingly lost themselves in the plot. We are exhorted to seek first the Kingdom, which Jesus said is within, not in space, and all else will be added, he didn't say go about chasing money, power and status.