Newsweek Count: At Least 65 Clergy and Religious Leaders Detained by ICE Since January 2025

At least 65 religious figures have been detained by U.S. immigration authorities since January 2025, according to a Newsweek analysis of court filings, news reports and public records. The group includes pastors, priests, imams, chaplains, rabbis, monks and deacons.

Of those, at least 30 have been released, 18 were deported and 14 remain in custody. One, 46-year-old green card holder and Eritrean imam Fouad Saeed Abdulkadir, died in custody in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, in December 2025. Newsweek found the detainees were a mix of Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish leaders, with Christians making up the large majority.

What the administration says about the records

Newsweek asked the administration for immigration and criminal histories on all 65. The Trump administration provided information on 42 and identified 14 of them as having prior criminal arrests or convictions. That leaves 23 people for whom no history was supplied.

The immigration backgrounds vary widely. They include people with removal orders, alleged visa overstays, asylum seekers, lawful permanent residents, and people holding Temporary Protected Status, withholding of removal, Convention Against Torture protections or advance parole. Many were picked up at routine immigration appointments, traffic stops or other encounters with law enforcement.

A judge finds ICE broke its own rules

Pastor Steven Tendo, a Pentecostal pastor from Uganda seeking asylum, says ICE officers surrounded his car as he left work in Vermont on Feb. 4, 2026. "They pulled me out of the car, slammed me on the icy floor, and cuffed me," he told Newsweek.

He was held for 16 days. A federal judge then ordered his release, ruling that ICE "contravened its own regulations ... by failing to provide a meaningful, individualized basis for his re-detention." Tendo had also been detained by ICE in 2023.

That ruling is about process, not about whether Tendo can ultimately stay. But it is a court finding that the agency did not follow its own rulebook, and it is on the record.

Faith groups push back

Rabbi Sarah Bassin of HIAS, which supports Jewish refugees and immigrants, said faith leaders are no more worthy of attention than anyone else. She argued their detention "should be clarifying for those who may doubt the profound moral breach of the Trump administration's immigration policies."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is asking for a congressional investigation. National deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said the U.S. "should never target immigrants for deportation based on their race, faith or their advocacy for human rights." Nothing in the Newsweek count establishes that any of the 65 were targeted for their faith, and the administration's position is that it is enforcing immigration law.

Clergy take to the road

The detentions are drawing organized religious opposition. An eight-day, 96.5-mile pilgrimage from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County to the federal building in downtown Los Angeles began Sept. 29 and was scheduled to end Tuesday, Oct. 6. It was organized by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, the Jewish community Nefesh, and Sacred Resistance, the advocacy ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

About 1,800 people were held at Adelanto as of April. CLUE Executive Director the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez said detainees there are "eating rotten food" and lack clean water and air conditioning. Those are her claims. The pilgrimage organizers did not cite an agency finding.

On Oct. 5, the groups Interfaith Alliance and Protect Democracy released an ad featuring Washington Bishop Mariann Budde, who recently announced she will resign. The ad urges viewers to vote and is slated to run in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Pittsburgh; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Both groups are liberal-leaning, and the markets overlap with several competitive House races.

The enforcement push behind the numbers

CNN reported, citing two sources familiar with a verbal directive, that ICE leadership told agents nationwide to raise arrests by 1,000 a day and return to the White House's earlier goal of 3,000 daily arrests. ICE had been averaging around 2,000. The same sources said agents were also told to aim for 19,000 a week.

A Homeland Security spokesperson told CNN there are "NO quotas on arrests." The spokesperson said that under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE "has been supercharged to find, arrest, and deport illegal aliens."

Some Republicans are uneasy about arrests of immigrants with no criminal record. Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar broke with the president in a campaign ad, and agriculture groups have complained of disrupted operations.

One case, two accounts

In Pompano Beach, Florida, faith leaders held a vigil for Sirena Prosper, 47, a business owner and mother of seven. Vigil organizers say she has lived in the U.S. since she was six months old, became a lawful permanent resident, and has six U.S.-citizen children, three of them minors.

An ICE spokesman gave WLRN a different account. He called Prosper "a criminal illegal alien from Haiti," cited convictions for burglary of a residence, resisting an officer and larceny, and said an immigration judge ordered her removed on Jan. 9, 2002. He said she will be removed. ICE did not disclose details of the convictions, and it is unclear which country she would be sent to, because records list Haiti as her birthplace while family accounts point elsewhere.

Prosper is listed in the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a GEO Group-run facility. Fourteen of the 65 religious figures Newsweek counted also remain in custody, and CAIR's request for a congressional investigation is still pending.