Clergy describe barriers to spiritual care in ICE’s Whipple lockup

Twin Cities clergy say providing spiritual care to immigrants detained at ICE’s Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building has become increasingly difficult during Operation Metro Surge, with tight access rules, limited visiting windows and rapid detainee transfers making it hard even to pray with people who ask for help. In interviews, pastors and chaplains describe detainees asking for confession, communion or simple pastoral counseling and then disappearing to Texas before a visit can be cleared, and note that what used to be routine pastoral access now often requires multiple layers of ICE approval. The article situates those accounts within an ongoing federal lawsuit Minnesota clergy have filed against DHS and ICE, alleging that restrictions at Whipple violate the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and within recent court‑ordered inspections that already documented overcrowded, unsanitary holding rooms and poor access to attorneys. Faith leaders argue that if ICE can’t reliably allow clergy in, local congregations are effectively cut off from members and families in crisis, deepening the human toll of the surge on immigrant neighborhoods in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Their stories are circulating widely in religious and immigrant‑rights networks as fresh evidence that Whipple is being run as a closed, high‑throughput jail rather than a facility accountable to basic community and constitutional norms.