For the first time since the enactment of the Refugee Act in 1980, people who come to the U.S. saying they fear persecution in their home countries are being turned away by Border Patrol agents with no chance to make a legal case for asylum.

The shift, confirmed in internal Border Patrol guidance obtained by ProPublica, is the upshot of the Trump administration’s hasty emergency action to largely shut down the U.S.-Mexico border over coronavirus fears. It’s the biggest step the administration has taken to limit humanitarian protection for people entering the U.S. without papers.

The Trump administration has created numerous obstacles over recent years for migrants to claim asylum and stay in the United States. But it had not — until now — allowed Border Patrol agents to simply expel migrants with no process whatsoever for hearing their claims.

The administration gave the Border Patrol unchallengeable authority over migrants seeking asylum by invoking a little-known power given to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. public health agency, to ban the entry of people or things that might spread “infectious disease” in the U.S. The CDC on March 20 barred entry of people without proper documentation, on the logic that they could be unexamined carriers of the disease and out of concern about the effects if the novel coronavirus swept through Customs and Border Protection holding facilities.

U.S. immigration law requires the government to allow people expressing a “well-founded” fear of persecution or torture to be allowed to pursue legal status in the United States. The law also requires the government to grant status to anyone who shows they likely face persecution if returned to their homeland.

“The Trump administration’s new rule and CDC order do not trump U.S. laws passed by Congress and U.S. legal obligations under refugee and human rights treaties,” Eleanor Acer, of the legal advocacy group Human Rights First, told ProPublica. “But the Trump administration is wielding them as the ultimate tool to shut the border to people seeking refuge.”

Two weeks ago, the Trump administration hastily put in place a policy, which the internal guidance calls Operation Capio, to push the overwhelming majority of unauthorized migrants into Mexico within hours of their apprehension in the U.S.

The Trump administration has been publicly vague on what happens under the new policy to migrants expressing a fear of persecution or torture, the grounds for asylum. But the guidance provided to Border Patrol agents makes clear that asylum-seekers are being turned away unless they can persuade both a Border Patrol agent — as well as a higher-ranking Border Patrol official — that they will be tortured if sent home. There is no exception for those who seek protection on the basis of their identities, such as race or religion.

Over 7,000 people have been expelled to Mexico under the order, according to sources briefed by Customs and Border Protection officials.

The guidance, shared with ProPublica by a source within the Border Patrol, instructs agents that any migrant caught entering without documentation must be processed for “expulsion,” citing the CDC order. When possible, migrants are to be driven to the nearest official border crossing and “expelled” into Mexico or Canada. (The Mexican government has agreed to allow the U.S. to push back not only Mexican migrants, but also those from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador; the four countries account for about 85% of all unauthorized border crossings.)

Under the Refugee Convention, which the U.S. signed onto in 1968, countries are barred from sending someone back to a country in which they could be persecuted based on their identity (specifically, their race, nationality, religion, political opinion or membership in a “particular social group”).

The Trump administration has taken several steps to restrict the ability of migrants to seek asylum, a form of legal status that allows someone to eventually become a permanent U.S. resident. Until now, however, it has acknowledged that U.S. and international law prevents the U.S. from sending people back to a place where they will be harmed. And it has still allowed people who claim a fear of persecution to seek a less permanent form of legal status in the U.S. (In the last two weeks of February, 2,915 people were screened for humanitarian protection, according to the most recent statistics provided by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.)

The Border Patrol guidance provided to ProPublica shows that the U.S. is acting as if that obligation no longer applies.

Customs and Border Protection, the agency that oversees the Border Patrol, said it would not comment on the document provided to ProPublica. Asked whether any guidance had been provided regarding people who expressed a fear of persecution of torture, an agency spokesperson said in a statement, “The order does not apply where a CBP officer determines, based on consideration of significant law enforcement, officer and public safety, humanitarian, or public health interests, that the order should not be applied to a particular person.”

That language does not appear in the guidance ProPublica received. Instead, it specifies that any exception must be approved by the chief patrol agent of a given Border Patrol sector. One former senior CBP official, who reviewed the guidance at ProPublica’s request, said that because there are so many levels of hierarchy between a chief patrol agent and a line agent, agents would be unlikely to ask for an exemption to be made.

The guidance offers some details of exceptions that Border Patrol should make on public-safety grounds — people with felony convictions, for example, are to be held in detention rather than being sent back — but none on health grounds.

In fact, the guidance provides no instructions on medical screening or care for migrants, making it impossible to know how such an exception would be made. (One source briefed by CBP on the policy said the agency said migrants would not be expelled if they showed symptoms of illness or claimed a medical issue, but there is no mention of this in the guidance ProPublica received.)

The guidance makes a single humanitarian exception: If a migrant, before expulsion, tells the Border Patrol agent that they fear torture in their home country, they can be kept in the U.S. and referred to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which evaluates claims for humanitarian protection, to see if they qualify for protection under the Convention Against Torture. But agents are not instructed to ask; the migrant has to volunteer the information “spontaneously.” Then, the Border Patrol agent is instructed to analyze whether the claim is “reasonably believable” — something they haven’t been trained to do.

As recently as last fall, the Trump administration acknowledged in court filings that it’s bound both to protect victims of torture under the Convention Against Torture and to protect victims of persecution under the Refugee Convention.

Even as it has erected bars to asylum — most notably, preventing anyone who crosses through Mexico from receiving asylum in the U.S. — it has continued to allow anyone entering the U.S. to seek a lesser form of legal status called “withholding of removal,” which allows an immigrant to stay in the U.S. but does not allow them to become a permanent resident. (Since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act, federal law requires the executive branch to grant this status to anyone who can show it’s more likely than not they’ll be persecuted.)

The Operation Capio guidance does not mention the possibility that someone could be eligible for lesser protections instead of expulsion. Two sources briefed on the new policy confirmed that neither asylum nor withholding of removal is available to anyone subject to the CDC order.

In that briefing, CBP officials claimed that a migrant expressing any sort of fear is referred for screening to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but that migrants will only pass that screening if they claim torture. However, the guidance doesn’t instruct Border Patrol agents to refer other types of claims to USCIS (and instructs them only to refer torture claims when they are “reasonably believable”).

In lawsuits challenging the administration’s asylum policies, Department of Justice lawyers have described withholding of removal as a “mandatory” form of protection — something it’s required to provide — while asylum is “discretionary.” In a brief filed last fall with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the government wrote that “The United States has implemented its non-refoulement obligations” — the obligation not to send people back to danger — “by providing withholding of removal and CAT (Convention Against Torture) protection.”

Now, the U.S. is only providing one of the two — and only at the discretion of Border Patrol.

“If you read between the lines,” one congressional staff member briefed on the operation told ProPublica, “they’re saying that Title 42 (the chapter of the U.S. Code that includes the CDC’s quarantine power) supersedes Title 8 (which covers immigration law).” Title 42 doesn’t clearly state that the administration may suspend its obligations under immigration law, and the Trump administration hasn’t published any legal opinions or memos that make its case.

No legal challenges have yet been filed against the new policy. Lawyers told ProPublica that the secrecy of the policy has made it harder to compile a case against it.

The administration has argued that the risk of coronavirus spreading through Customs and Border Protection holding facilities — which aren’t equipped to deal with medical needs — justifies the mass-expulsion policy. Since putting the policy in place, the number of people crossing into the U.S. has dropped drastically, according to official CBP statistics circulated internally and provided to ProPublica, and there are only 330 people in CBP custody at last count, down from over 1,300 as of March 25.

The new guidance instructs agents to wear personal protective equipment at all times and not to use any Border Patrol vehicle to transport migrants that isn’t specifically designated for Operation Capio.

However, because the Operation Capio process doesn’t include medical screening, it will be impossible to know whether any migrants who are being expelled just in case they have the novel coronavirus are actually infected.

As she sat Wednesday on the covered deck at the 4-Way Saloon in Sidell, overlooking the town grain elevator, Leslie Powell made her way down the list of tasks she had scribbled on her yellow notepad. Asking the utility company for a payment plan was first.

Powell’s husband, Mark, became owner of this busy little bar and grill in east-central Illinois just nine days before Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered residents across the state to shelter in place in an attempt to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Now, with the 4-Way closed to dine-in orders, and the couple’s savings spent on buying and fixing it up, the Powells face losing their business if they don’t receive state or federal aid. And that has reinforced a thought Powell has had before: Chicago should be separated from the rest of the state.

The idea of secession has long simmered in Illinois’ more rural and Republican counties, periodically flaring up around issues such as raising the minimum wage, the establishment of sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants and gun ownership. And though Illinois’ secession movement — or, movements — isn’t exactly united, many who believe in the principle share a general sense of feeling underrepresented in a state dominated by Chicago’s Democratic stronghold.

The coronavirus outbreak, which has yet to touch some areas of the state, has become the most recent flashpoint, inspiring both serious promises to reintroduce secession on the ballot and Facebook memes that call for building a wall around Chicago.

Political experts say there is virtually no chance that the state will ever split, especially since it will require an act of Congress and lead to the likely election of two Republican senators to represent that new state. Still, the secession conversation is a dramatic expression of the much more widespread — and potentially dangerous — frustration with a sweeping governmental response to the pandemic that many question in areas where some homes sit acres apart and people predominantly travel by car, not public transportation.

“There’s nobody around here that’s got it,” Powell said. “We’re a farming community. We know how to wash our hands. We’re with pigs and cows and chickens. In this community, it’s really hard to comprehend.”

As of Thursday, 41 of Illinois’ 102 counties had yet to see a single case of COVID-19, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Experts caution that likely will change soon. Vermilion County, where Powell lives, reported its first two cases this week, officials there said.

On Tuesday, Pritzker announced he was extending the stay-at-home order through April. Many people said they are following it, even if their businesses and livelihoods are suffering.

At the same time, the response to the pandemic has exacerbated the feelings of some residents that the rest of the state is being forced to deal with Chicago’s problem. State Rep. Blaine Wilhour, a Republican from Effingham, said that he would like to see some regional accommodations considered to the shutdown measures, including the possibility of opening up some restaurants at half-capacity and allowing mom-and-pop stores to set up appointments.

“There’s obviously a big difference in how these broad policies affect Chicago, which is a very densely populated area, and how they affect my district,” Wilhour said.

Wilhour, along with six other Republican lawmakers, sent a letter to Pritzker last week asking for measures to help small businesses during the pandemic, including freezing the minimum wage for 18 months and implementing a sales tax holiday for the duration of the stay-at-home order.

While Wilhour said he understands the severity of COVID-19, he said the stay-at-home order has taken an enormous economic toll on his district. Residents are taking the safeguards seriously for now, he said, but they also see that the disease is not nearly as prevalent in their area as it is in Chicago.

“They see the trajectory of Illinois as not good, especially not good for people in our part of the state,” he said. “There’s a lot of pent-up anxiety about adversarial policies that are pushed down to benefit Chicago and they disproportionately don’t benefit us.”

One risk of that frustration is that people may feel less inclined to follow what they see as Chicago’s rules. Steve McNeil, who manages Rent One furniture and appliance store in West Frankfort, about 300 miles south of Chicago, said he’s concerned that some people are neither following Pritzker’s stay-at-home order nor social distancing guidelines. Though his store, part of a regional chain, remains open, he said he makes sure his staff sanitizes the store “on the hour, every hour.”

He can’t say all of his customers are taking similar steps, though.

“It’s very lackadaisical,” McNeil said. “A lot of people I don’t see taking the precautions seriously.”

McNeil said his store has seen unprecedented sales of washers, dryers, deep freezers and refrigerators — which he considers “essential items” and the reason he believes he’s allowed to stay open — and has felt heartened by the new role he sees his business providing during the crisis.

On Wednesday, McNeil’s Rent One store posted a photo on its Facebook page advertising its stock of lawn mowers: “Yard season has started and Rent One is here to help you get started. This bad boy is parked out front of the store so feel free to take a look at it TODAY!”

Rick Henson, who owns a barber shop in West Frankfort, closed Tuesday after business slowed because of the coronavirus. He now hopes to reopen next week, after he began getting calls from customers, many of whom are older people, city officials and local police officers, saying he’s a “needed commodity.”

Jared Gravatt, co-owner of Crown Brew Coffee Company in Marion, said he understands the need for the stay-at-home order but thinks the differences between Chicago and the rest of the state are “night and day.”

Gravatt said the county’s businesses are reeling from the shutdown. He and his business partner are organizing a virtual fundraising event on Friday to raise money and awareness for struggling businesses while encouraging people to abide by the stay-at-home order.

Even Gravatt, who said he recognizes the importance of protecting against the coronavirus outbreak, acknowledges the appeal of secession.

COVID-19 has “killed more businesses than it has people in this region,” he said.

Last year, State Rep. Brad Halbrook, a Republican from Shelbyville, filed legislation that urged Congress to declare Chicago the nation’s 51st state. The legislation stalled in the rules committee, where it found little support, but organizing around the issue continues. Once Pritzker’s stay-at-home order is lifted and people are able to gather again, “the interest will be as high as it’s ever been,” Halbrook said. “There’s no question about it.”

“They want to manage the entire state to suit Chicago,” Halbrook said. “They’re different lifestyles and different cultures. To do this one-size-fits-all management doesn’t work.”

John S. Jackson, a visiting professor at the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, points to similar secession movements in New York and California, where rural areas have animosity toward those states’ urban centers.

He called the perception of unequal resource distribution between Chicago and the rest of the state “a myth” that has existed for decades, and he said the stakes of that ideological divide are high during the coronavirus crisis.

“It’s a corrosive part of our culture,” Jackson said. “It has no chance at all of becoming law.”

Unlike other supporters, Collin Cliburn, a contractor and carpenter who lives outside Springfield, has led much of the state’s grassroots secession efforts. Cliburn describes his political views as “borderline old-school libertarian” and differentiates his effort from the “New Illinois” secession movement led by Halbrook as more populist and rogue than that of elected political leaders.

Cliburn hopes to collect enough local signatures to force the secession question onto statewide ballots as a referendum, county by county. So far, the strategy has paid off in Jefferson, Fayette and Effingham counties, which during the state’s March primaries voted more than 70% in a nonbinding referendum in favor of secession. While he believes, based on one-on-one conversations as well as the popularity of events he’s organized, that many in southern Illinois favor secession in practice, Cliburn said most are hesitant to vote for it.

To try to build support, Cliburn has turned to social media. He makes memes, shares local news stories and writes posts across a network of Facebook groups and pages he runs to amplify differences he sees between Chicago and the rest of the state.

“What I’m doing is creating a spider web,” Cliburn said.

That spider web, which he’s crafted to function as a sort of social media ecosystem of secession sentiment, includes “Illinois Separation,” a page Cliburn runs that has garnered nearly 27,000 Facebook likes; “Illinoyed,” a page for more general venting about the state, which has about 11,700 likes; and also dozens of county-level pages for local organizers. Lately, Cliburn said, he’s been using coronavirus news to bring attention to the effort to kick Chicago out of the state.

“Everything is about Chicago,” reads a March 24 post on the “Illinois Separation” page, above a news story about Chicago preparing for a “surge in bodies” because of COVID-19 deaths. “When the Governor speaks only Chicago people stand beside him, including their Mayor Lightfoot …” he wrote. “I’m sick and tired of everything being about Chicago.”

Another post, shared on the “Illinois Separation” page on March 25, shows an image of the state of Illinois with the Chicago-area blocked off with a line. “Make Illinois Great Again … build a wall !!” the graphic reads. Comments included individuals blaming Chicago for positive COVID-19 cases in their own counties and criticizing the shelter-in-place order in areas with few if any positive cases.

The post has nearly 800 likes and 400 shares.

Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh called it “appalling” that people would focus on division instead of unity during a national crisis. The governor’s duty is to every single resident in Illinois, she said.

“When COVID-19 was first reported in Illinois, it was in one county and quickly spread to more than 50 in the days since,” Abudayyeh said. “Almost every day there is a new county reporting positive cases.”

The frustration that some rural residents feel about the shutdown, or at least their expectation that COVID-19 won’t reach them, may be short-lived.

Experts warn that the low numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases may simply reflect a lack of testing. In some counties, less than two dozen people have been tested. Because coronavirus spreads first in large urban areas then expands, it’s probably only a matter of time before the rest of the state sees cases, said Dr. Jerry Kruse, Dean and Provost of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield

“It’s almost like throwing a pebble into a pool and watching the waves radiate out,” said Kruse, who added that it’s a “virtual inevitability” the coronavirus will reach rural Illinois.

Metro East St. Louis and Sangamon County have already started to see the number of cases rise.

“You should assume that the coronavirus has come to your county,” said Monica Dunn, assistant administrator at Edgar County Public Health Department.

Christian County, about 30 minutes southeast of Springfield, is an example of how quickly the situation can turn.

The county of 32,000 did not see its first case of COVID-19 for more than six weeks after the outbreak hit Chicago. On March 19, the county learned of its first case. For the next week, nothing changed. On March 25, there was one more.

Then overnight, 11 new confirmed cases.

“When we didn’t have any cases, there was a real complacency going on,” said Denise Larson, Christian County public health administrator. Larson said she fears the low number of confirmed cases so far in nearby counties gives a false sense of security.

The outbreak happened at a subsidized apartment complex for seniors in Taylorville after a resident attended church with someone who had contracted the disease. All 22 residents of Rolling Meadows Senior Living Apartments were tested, officials said. Two additional cases have been confirmed, bringing the total number of confirmed cases at the complex to 13 as of Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the county announced two COVID-19 deaths, a man and woman, both in their 80s.

Eighty-five-year-old Peggy Wadkins, who has lived in Christian County for more than 60 years and at the apartment complex for 10, said she spends much of her time now on the phone with her family, including her more than 30 great-grandchildren.

While residents remain in quarantine, city and county officials are checking to see if they need groceries or medicine. This week, Wadkins put her walker in the doorway so a worker could place tissues, tylenol, lunch meat and bananas on the seat without coming into contact with her.

When Wadkins looks out her bedroom window, which overlooks the now vacant parking lot, she imagines a day when all of this has passed.

Until then, she said, “No one is really safe.”

HOUSTON — At least 25 parishioners filed into a beige-brick church here Wednesday evening and were handed rubber gloves at the door. A handwritten sign directed them to designated areas with seats that had been spaced 6 feet apart. Another sign laid out five things people should do to keep from spreading the new strain of coronavirus, including staying away if they felt sick.

The founding pastor of City on a Hill, Juan Bustamante, was in a particularly good mood. A day earlier, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott joined 30-plus other governors around the country in issuing a statewide stay-at-home order — though he declined to refer to it as such — that also designated religious services as essential. Under the order, Texans must stay home unless they work in certain business sectors or are grocery shopping, running must-do errands or exercising outdoors. Or going to church.

Abbott’s order came the same day the country’s top health experts estimated the deadly virus could kill between 100,000 to 240,000 Americans, and that’s assuming people across the country adhere to social distancing guidelines. Otherwise, the numbers could climb much higher, to more than 2 million dead.

Amid the rapid spread of COVID-19 in Texas — with nearly 4,700 confirmed cases and 70 deaths as of Thursday — many congregations across the state, large and small and of a variety of faiths, closed their doors of their own accord weeks ago and moved all services online.

But there are some religious groups in Texas — it’s unclear just how many — who say it’s their right to remain open because they believe they provide an essential service to their communities at a time of great need. And on Wednesday night, several houses of worship across the state welcomed parishioners.

Top scientists and public health experts have warned that religious services appear to be particularly conducive to COVID-19 transmission, with multiple documented cases of spread in houses of worship across the globe.

Harvard University epidemiologist Bill Hanage ticked off examples of virus transmission in houses of worship in London, South Korea, Singapore and the state of Georgia and said exempting religious services from shelter-in-place orders is “an incredibly bad idea.” Nearly four dozen people also were hospitalized in Washington state last week after they met for a two-and-a-half-hour choir practice in a church. Two members have died.

Vice President Mike Pence chimed in on Wednesday, saying in-person religious services — which have been deemed essential by more than a dozen states — should be limited to 10 people and held online if at all possible.

For Bustamante, closing the doors of the church he opened almost a decade ago was never an option.

That’s partly because half of his 100-plus parishioners don’t have internet access at home, he said, but more so because there’s no true replacement for in-person worship, particularly during a time of crisis.

“I truly believe the churches are first responders,” he said Wednesday before the evening service. “I have a deep conviction to keep going and keep standing for what we believe in.”

To him, people are more likely to catch and spread the virus at grocery or liquor stores, which are also exempt.

Bustamante was among three Houston-area pastors named in a petition filed on Monday with the Texas Supreme Court, along with conservative activist Steven Hotze, that asked the justices to strike down an order enacted by Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo. The order, similar to others enacted by large Texas counties and cities, doesn’t consider religious services — or firearm sales — as essential, which the petition alleges is a constitutional violation.

Jared Woodfill, the attorney for Hotze and the pastors, said on Wednesday that he’s now getting calls “left and right” from churches that want to join the lawsuit — most are evangelical Christian, though a few are Catholic — and plan to continue, or resume, in-person services. At least five more had come on board in addition to the three that signed the petition, he said.

“All of the folks I work with are moving forward with services,” he said, noting the Easter holiday is coming up.

Hidalgo’s order is now seemingly moot, superseded by Abbott’s, though local officials have scrambled to figure out how exactly to interpret the governor’s directive. Some have said they take issue with the religious exemption and are still ordering religious leaders to cease in-person services while they assess the order.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg called the governor’s exemption for religious services “concerning.” The order’s wording is confusing, he said, and seemed to conflict with advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as his city’s orders.

“If we want to keep people alive, we’ve got to do services remotely,” particularly now, Nirenberg told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. “We’re entering a very dangerous phase of community spread.”

The cities of Dallas and Fort Worth said they are also assessing the legality of Abbott’s order, with Fort Worth telling houses of worship they can’t hold in-person services.

But some conservative communities in the greater Dallas and Fort Worth region, like McKinney and Frisco, have already changed their regulations after a local religious liberties law firm encouraged them to.

McKinney Mayor George Fuller said he didn’t know of any churches that planned to hold in-person services and that the city is telling them to avoid it, but also that he supported “religious liberty and freedom.”

Later Wednesday, Abbott’s office released joint guidance with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that said houses of worship must be given special consideration for constitutional reasons and are indeed “essential services.” However, they must conduct activities online or at home “whenever possible” and some should avoid large gatherings, namely those located in areas with rapid community spread.

As for the 10-person gathering limit Abbott had previously imposed, it appears only to apply to churches located in areas with rapid community spread though Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for clarity.

“Houses of worship should work with counties and municipalities to evaluate the rate of local community spread and determine the appropriate level of mitigation strategies to implement,” the guidance said.

But Harvard’s Hanage said gatherings of any size are problematic. And the way people interact in churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious facilities — shaking hands, hugging, singing — appears conducive to what epidemiologists call “super-spreading events,” he said.

“We know that church services are places where this gets spread,” he said. “People need to understand that it’s a risk.”

Hanage said that congregations could possibly protect themselves by gathering outdoors — say, in a field — and ensuring parishioners keep their distance, but that “it’s hard to do it correctly.”

In Sacramento County, public health experts said on Wednesday that about a third of the 300-plus cases there can be linked to religious gatherings. That led to a special advisory banning worship services even though they already were not allowed under state shelter-in-place orders.

Beyond Christians, different faith groups in the Houston and San Antonio area continue to abide by the stricter guidelines, despite Abbott’s directive.

Some members of the Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Catholic communities consulted with one another and all came to the same conclusion, said Shariq Abdul Ghani, director of the Minaret Foundation, a Houston-based organization that focuses on building relationships through interfaith and civic engagement.

“Everyone has a feeling that for us, the faithful, our responsibility to our congregants is to keep them safe first and foremost,” he said. Many had adapted and moved services online using Facebook Live, Zoom and Google Hangouts.

The mosques will continue to offer services for the elderly and underprivileged, considered essential, he said, but even that will be abiding by social distancing guidelines and only with the most essential volunteers.

Rabbi Mara Nathan, of San Antonio’s Temple Beth-El synagogue, said the congregation had been holding services in the sanctuary with just clergy and no members, until the mayor issued the city’s March 23 stay home order. Services have been held on Zoom since then, because it’s important “that we’re modeling the most careful kind of behavior we can,” Nathan said. In a way, that has provided members with a more intimate setting than watching services held in an empty sanctuary. “At the end of every service, we make sure to say, ‘We miss you,’ but we’re together,” she said.

Texas is far from the only state to deem religious services essential — more than a dozen others have done so, according to the National Governors Association. That includes states like New York, Massachusetts and Kansas that are led by Democratic governors. But those states still appear to be cracking down on churches that have services with zero social distancing guidelines, at least at the local level.

In states such as Florida and neighboring Louisiana, pastors have been arrested by local authorities after holding services with large groups of people.

Matt Woodfill, the younger brother of Jared, is one of the pastors that petitioned against Montgomery County Judge Mark Keough’s stay-at-home order, similar to Harris County’s.

Woodfill’s congregation, The Way Church, defied the county’s order last Sunday, when it held regular services, though he said they tried to spread people apart. Attendance was still down significantly, from a high of 200 to no more than 50 parishioners this past Sunday.

The church plans to hold drive-in services in their parking lot for Palm Sunday this weekend. He will stand on an outdoor stage, set up with a PA system and a band, while people can listen in their vehicles. This is a high season for churches, with Easter in another week, so Woodfill wants families to feel safe enough to attend services.

Oakwood Church in New Braunfels, a growing community along Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Austin, moved all services online for its 6,000 congregants two weeks ago, in response to orders from the city, according to Pastor Ray Still.

Coronavirus has already affected his congregation directly: parishioner T.J. Mendez died March 26 from COVID-19 at the age of 44. Mendez’s family was very active in the church; one of his daughters was an Oakwood staff member.

On Tuesday, Still drove to the Mendez home, where the rest of the family remains in quarantine. He stood outside his car and prayed with them.

The governor’s new order doesn’t change their plans to keep holding services online, he said.

“As Christian people, we’re taught to be respectful and respect authorities, and our authorities aren’t doing that because they want to hurt us, they’re doing that because they want to protect us,” Still said.

Alex Samuels of The Texas Tribune contributed reporting.