Sangamon Digest

The Archdiocese of St. Louis filed a federal lawsuit Monday in the Eastern District of Missouri against immigration officials, saying the Ste. Genevieve County jail has violated detainees’ First Amendment rights by keeping priests from celebrating Mass, giving Communion and hearing confessions, the Post-Dispatch reports.

The suit says priests have been turned away, made to wait close to an hour and given tight time limits, and that a “no contact” policy limits visits to a plexiglass window. The jail, about an hour south of St. Louis, has housed an estimated 3,000 ICE detainees since last year, many of them Catholic, according to the suit, which also asks that Catholic detainees be moved until religious accommodations are in place.