Everyday Justice magazine

June 2026

Articles from Mercy:

• • Critical Considerations What does habeas corpus have to do with immigration? (Karen Donahue, RSM)
• • Nutrition assistance and the Farm Bill (Marianne Comfort; Institute Justice Team)
• • Guns, Pride, Juneteenth, and the Emanuel 9 (Br Ryan W Roberts, OLF; Institute Justice Team)

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Critical Considerations

What does habeas corpus have to do with immigration?

Karen Donahue, RSM

Earlier this month, Congress passed a bill allocating almost $70 billion ($70,000,000,000) to fund immigration enforcement through the end of the Trump presidency in 2029. This action in itself was unusual, as such funding is usually approved on an annual basis. More than half of this sum ($38 billion) goes to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to pay for its massive detention and deportation operations.

ICE is holding tens of thousands of persons in public jails as well as in for-profit prisons, often without formal charges. This situation is raising questions about habeas corpus, which the Brennan Center describes as “a legal procedure that allows people who have been detained by the government to challenge their detention in court.” The onus is on the government to justify the detention rather than for the accused to prove why they should not be held.

Literally, habeas corpus means “you shall have the body.” Authorities must bring the detained individual before a judge in person and make the case as to why they should be held. It dates back to the Magna Carta in 1215 when English barons rose up against the arbitrary power of the king who often imprisoned people without due process.

Habeas corpus was also critically important to the founders who included it in the Constitution. Article I, Section 9 reads: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” It is noteworthy that the framers acknowledge that habeas corpus already exists. They are simply borrowing one the cornerstones of English common law, judicial protection against unlawful imprisonment. It is available to both citizens and noncitizens.

As immigrants experience increased repression under the second Trump administration, this over 800-year-old provision is taking on greater significance. When immigrants are denied bond hearings, held after they have been granted voluntary departure status or simply held indefinitely with no movement on their cases, they have a right to challenge their incarceration.

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Nutrition assistance and the Farm Bill

Marianne Comfort; Institute Justice Team

Congress is struggling to renew a mammoth piece of legislation known as the Farm Bill, which, among other things, supports agriculture programs and funds nutrition assistance.

The House of Representatives on April 30th passed its version, officially known as the Farm, Food and National Security Act of 2026. Unfortunately, legislators failed to include a restoration of nutrition benefits severely cut last year. Advocates are now calling on the U.S. Senate to draft a bill that includes reversing cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest anti-hunger program.

A year ago, Catholic sisters and partners around the country united in opposition to proposed cuts to federal food and healthcare programs. Despite large-scale advocacy with legislators and public witness outside the U.S. Capitol and numerous other locales, Congress passed H.R. 1. This bill, officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, included a historic $187 billion in cuts to SNAP.

SNAP is a federal program that distributes grocery money to persons who meet certain criteria, including job earnings and immigration status. Benefits vary by household size and income.

After the passage of H.R. 1, between July 2025 and January 2026, participation in SNAP fell by more than 3 million people, the largest reduction in 30 years, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. States are anticipating billions of dollars in lost federal funds, and some are already making it harder for people to enroll or renew their benefits.

The Farm Bill, which is renewed every few years, traditionally has supported agriculture programs and funded nutrition assistance, often for working Americans unable to pay expenses with one or more jobs.

The most recently enacted Farm Bill, the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, initially expired in 2023 and has been extended multiple times following stalled negotiations in Congress. The current extension runs through September 30, 2026.

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Guns, Pride, Juneteenth, and the Emanuel 9

Br Ryan W Roberts, OLF; Institute Justice Team

June has long been a month rife with notable events in the justice consciousness, both celebrating achievements and calling us to the work still required. Great harm has been done in Junes past, but the human spirit has also displayed our communal magnificence in responding to injustices both chronic and acute.

The date of this month’s Everyday Justice publication, June 18, always feels like a liminal space now, sandwiched as it is between the commemoration of the June 17, 2015 massacre of the Emanuel 9 in Charleston, South Carolina and the celebration of Juneteenth, the anniversary of the 1865 end of non-punitive slavery throughout the United States. In 1968 in Washington, D.C., Juneteenth was celebrated as a day of both celebration and heightened tension in Resurrection City, the temporary city (zip code 20013) that settled the National Mall as part of the Poor People’s Campaign that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was working on when he was assassinated. And in 2020, despite the imminent threat of COVID-19 spreading through large crowds, June saw the global eruption of Black Lives Matter protests and a surge in abolitionist sentiment in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

June is also celebrated as Pride Month to affirm and celebrate the dignity of LGBTQIA+ (or QUILTBAG) community members, a commemoration timed to align with the anniversary of the June 28, 1969 watershed Stonewall uprising with prominent women leaders of color like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera against a police raid enforcing gender- and sexuality-based oppression. But we also mark the anniversary of the June 12, 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre, a hate crime against QUILTBAG people and the deadliest mass shooting at that time in U.S. history. One outstanding message of Pride is that joy is resistance to oppression, and holding it in tension with our laments builds strong communities and saves lives.

It’s also notable that June is Gun Violence Awareness Month, and gun violence is a tool used by our nation’s powerful and privileged to maintain oppression. The first Wear Orange day took place mere days before the Mother Emanuel attack in 2015 and just a year before the Pulse nightclub attack. The Gun Violence Archive reports at least 23 mass shootings in the U.S. in the first half of June 2026 alone. U.S. laws addressing gun violence are a patchwork that shifts often and requires vigilance to simply monitor, let alone improve.

The Sisters of Mercy have been working since Catherine McAuley herself to address the injustices of the day, and the Institute today continues faithfully to do so. Racism is one of the five Critical Concerns of the Sisters of Mercy, and the search is currently open to find co-directors for the Anti-Racism Office dedicated to eliminating both personal and institutional racism. The 2023 Commitment Statement led to the creation of the Love and Abundant Justice working group, lifting up the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people. The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas are a founding member of the Nuns Against Gun Violence coalition.

In this complicated month of June, both celebratory and fraught, may you learn, pray, and grow in your pursuit of the manifold forms of justice.

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