United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not targeting illegal immigrants inside a medical facility or religious facility, despite concerns that the Trump administration would do so after the rollback of a Biden-era policy earlier this year.

While recent reports have suggested that ICE and other federal law enforcement have gone into hospitals and churches to find and arrest immigrants who are illegally residing in the U.S., the agency said that although employees are allowed to make arrests at those sites, they have not done so.

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“Allegations of so-called enforcement at a medical facility or church have been false,” an ICE official authorized to speak with the media wrote in an email.

ICE personnel did arrest a Honduran landscaper inside the Ontario Advanced Surgery Center in Southern California in early July; however, officials did not seek the landscaper out at the facility and only entered the hospital while in pursuit of the man, according to the official.

“A viral video from Los Angeles indicated ICE arrested a man at a medical center while he was getting treatment. This was totally false. He was encountered while driving and ran to evade officers, fleeing to a medical building down the road,” the ICE official said.

Federal police, while not arresting illegal immigrants inside a church, have arrested individuals on church grounds, including detaining illegal immigrants at two Catholic parishes in Southern California’s San Bernardino’s Diocese.

San Bernardino Catholic Diocese spokesman John Andrews told the National Catholic Register that several men were arrested in a church parking lot. In a different incident, a parishioner of Our Lady of Lourdes in Montclair was taken into custody on church property. 

“Authorities are now seizing brothers and sisters indiscriminately,” Bishop Alberto Rojas of San Bernardino, California, wrote in a letter to parishioners, “without respect for their right to due process and their dignity as children of God.”

While arrests on the street may appear to be random, ICE and federal immigration authorities spend days to weeks tracking specific individuals to determine the safest place to take them into custody, and typically attempt to detain someone while they are in a public space.

Just a day after taking office in January, President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security empowered federal law enforcement officers to go into schools and churches to arrest illegal immigrants, ending what had been a yearslong ban from entering those facilities.

The then-acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive to employees at ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection in late January allowing them to make arrests inside those facilities and outside on nearby property.

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“This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens, including murderers and rapists, who have illegally come into our country,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

The directive rescinded guidelines that the Biden administration had implemented in 2021, which barred federal police from “sensitive” areas. The ban had existed for years to safeguard places where people worship, learn, or receive medical care.