The Trump administration’s rollback of immigration enforcement protections at places of worship has drawn the ire of two Massachusetts-based clergy groups listed as plaintiffs in a lawsuit that claims the action violated fundamental religious rights.

The Massachusetts Council of Churches and the Unitarian Universalist Association, headquartered in Boston, are among the roughly two dozen plaintiffs suing the Department of Homeland Security over the “rescission of ICE’s sensitive locations policy.”

A day after retaking office last month, President Trump threw out a policy that prevented federal immigration agencies from arresting illegal immigrants at places of worship and schools, opening the doors to enforcement at the “sensitive locations.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Tuesday allege that the rescission of the policy, which had been in place for over a decade, violates the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The Massachusetts Council of Churches said in a release that in the weeks following the rollback, congregations across Massachusetts have seen a decline in worship attendance and social service use.

The state’s largest ecumenical Christian network pointed to how a Boston “majority immigrant church” had “350 people in attendance the Sunday before the inauguration, and 150 people on the Sunday after the rescission.”

“Every Christian agrees that Jesus said you must love your neighbor and welcome the stranger. We must be able to do this to practice our faith,” Executive Director Rev. Laura Everett said in a statement. “The current administration is preventing us from doing so. Our churches must be able to freely worship and serve.”

The plaintiffs argued that the ICE enforcement actions without a judicial warrant “substantially burden our religious exercise” and “interfere with our religious activities and our ability to fulfill our religious mandate to welcome and serve immigrants.”

“As Unitarian Universalists (UUs), fighting for justice and liberation for all people is at the heart of our faith tradition, which recognizes the spark of the divine inherent in every person,” UUA Executive Vice President Carey McDonald said in a statement. “Our sacred spaces must continue to offer sanctuary to those who face oppression, violence, or alienation, including immigrant communities.”

The new lawsuit echoes and expands on some of the arguments made in a similar lawsuit filed Jan. 27 by five Quaker congregations and later joined by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and a Sikh temple. It is currently pending in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The Department of Justice contended in a memo filed last Friday that the Quakers’ request to block the new enforcement policy is based on speculation of hypothetical future harm.

The memo said that immigration enforcement affecting houses of worship had been permitted for decades, and the new policy announced in January simply said that field agents could now conduct such operations without pre-approval from a supervisor.

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant security for public affairs, said the policy looks to erode the harm created under the Biden administration at sensitive locations.

“We are protecting our schools, places of worship, and Americans who attend,” she said in an email, “by preventing criminal aliens and gang members from exploiting these locations and (taking) safe haven there because these criminals knew that under the previous Administration that law enforcement couldn’t go inside.”