Thread: Churches consider immigrant sanctuary

Churches consider immigrant sanctuary
By Tom Kisken, tkisken@VenturaCountyStar.com
March 25, 2007

Ventura County faith leaders are being asked to join a national movement that critics say defies federal law by inviting families to live inside religious sanctuaries as protection from deportation.

The movement could be launched in Los Angeles and New York as soon as next month. Interfaith congregations would volunteer to support families in jeopardy of being deported, helping them find legal resources and publicizing their stories to help people understand how deportation separates children from their parents. The families could live in the sanctuaries, on other church property or in congregants' homes.

Movement leaders say they would not stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering a church or home, but they think police would be leery of making arrests inside a religious sanctuary.

And if the arrests were made, the world would know.

"Their names will be public. Their stories will be public," said organizer Alexia Salvatierra of the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice in Los Angeles. "We just believe that there are moments where there are conflicts between divine law and human law, and then you have to obey divine law."

Leaders of the movement in Ventura County say their goal isn't civil disobedience but rather to provide a safe place where people can go to find whatever help they need.

‘God calls us to do this'

Clergy and members of Ventura County congregations including Methodists, Lutherans and Catholics attended a private orientation meeting Thursday. They learned churches can volunteer to host immigrant families or can join as allies, meaning they might provide food and other support, or they can sign a pledge of solidarity.

Local organizers said they didn't exactly know how the movement would operate locally or when it would be launched. They said planning would move in a step-by-step process, and congregations would decide whether to try to protect families by offering them physical sanctuary when such situations arose.

"The purpose of this isn't to stir up a bunch of controversy," said the Rev. Erik Goehner, a Lutheran pastor in Camarillo and board chairman of Ventura County Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. "The purpose is to walk in solidarity, because we believe our God calls us to do this."

Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, said any congregation harboring illegal immigrants should lose its tax-exempt status. Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials would not speculate on whether churches could face criminal prosecution or whether agents would deport people from houses of worship but reiterated the agency's primary responsibility.

"ICE has the authority to arrest anyone who is in violation of immigration laws anywhere in the United States," said spokeswoman Virginia Kice.

Churches expected to be split

Salvatierra said leaders of the movement expect to be accused of violating federal statutes but contend they're on safe legal ground because they won't be hiding the immigrants' identities or actively stopping police from making arrests.

A Methodist church in Chicago is offering sanctuary to a woman who refused to leave the country when she received a deportation order. Some Southern California congregations like Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Los Angeles have already decided to shelter families. Several Ventura County pastors say their faith pushes them to take a stand.

"We're talking about people (immigrants) who are trying to feed their families and who give something to this system," said the Rev. Sandy Liddell of North Oxnard United Methodist Church. "I can understand how it can be done in the name of the law. I can understand how it can be done out of fear, but I can't understand how we can turn anyone away in the name of Jesus."

However, Liddell and several other pastors said, church members would have to make any final decisions on whether to join the movement and what role to take. They expect their churches will be split, with some arguing that churches have to get involved in issues they see as human rights matters while others think the church should stay out of anything connected to politics.

‘It's going to get very ugly'

If a handful of churches across the nation shelters illegal immigrants, federal agents may decide making arrests and deportations won't be worth the negative attention it brings, said immigration lawyer Carl Shusterman of Los Angeles. But if the church movement mushrooms like other immigration protests have over the past year, ICE officials may feel as if they have to respond.

"If hundreds of churches start doing this around the country, then I don't think it can be ignored, then it's going to be like a gigantic chess game," Shusterman said. "It's going to get very ugly, and it's going to get a lot of media attention."

The New Sanctuary Movement is being planned by a coalition of groups including Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice. The movement is similar to a sanctuary project in the 1980s in which hundreds of churches offered protection to refugees fleeing from death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala. Salvatierra said the churches' efforts in sheltering people and publicizing their plight helped change the government's policy for asylum, making it easier for refugees to come to the United States.

Salvatierra thinks the new movement can help change the way society sees illegal immigrants. A select number of people will be chosen to be the face of the movement. They will be immigrants who have lived in the country for years, have children who were born in the United States, hold steady jobs and contribute to their communities, and the government will be actively moving to deport them.

"What we'd like to do is be a voice for those who have no voice," Salvatierra said.

‘Accessory to violating the law'

Gallegly, who sponsors legislation to crack down harder on illegal immigration, said churches should work within the system and not interfere with the federal justice system.

"I think it is not acceptable," he said. "They are an accessory to violating the law. You cannot do that without consequences."

An IRS spokesman said the agency could not comment on whether tax-exempt status might be denied. The federal statute applying to harboring illegal immigrants defines the crime as concealing or shielding a person from detection. Salvatierra said congregations that offer sanctuary to people won't conceal anything, and, in fact, will make every action they take as public as possible.

Still, the government made arrests and won convictions during the 1980s sanctuary movement even though participants issued regular news releases on their activities.

"The government probably won't go easy on us," said the Rev. Jim Oines of Thousand Oaks, who was involved in the first sanctuary movement and is also working with the new project, though he no longer leads a church. He compares the movement to the fights against slavery and the Nazis.

"In all great movements, people have to suffer," he said.

‘We are also a nation of laws'

Alicia Flores, director of an Oxnard immigrant advocacy group called Hermandad Mexicana, said the movement is justified because of the aggressive actions of immigration police in making raids and deporting people. She cited several cases in which parents are deported from their homes, leaving children who were born in the United States crying and unattended.

"Those are the reasons the churches nationwide are working together to do this movement," she said. "What ICE is doing right now is inhumane."

Kice of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency will not knowingly leave a child unattended but has increased its efforts to arrest people who have received deportation orders and ignored them.

"The fact that someone has a U.S. citizen child does not exempt them from our nation's laws," she said. "We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws."

A year ago, the House of Representatives was considering a bill that would have required churches to check citizenship status before offering humanitarian services. Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said that if the bill passed, he would have told his priests to ignore the requirement.

A spokesman for the archdiocese said Mahony is focused on immigration legislation and hasn't taken an active role in the sanctuary movement. Parishes in Ventura County have been told it's up to them to decide whether or not to participate.

Cynics think their decisions and the movement won't affect deportation or immigration policy.

"I think it's about the same as people picketing in front of the Supreme Court," said Bill Glenn, a former Border Patrol administrator from Santa Paula, referring to congregations offering sanctuary to undocumented immigrants. "It makes them feel good but it has no effect."

More information

Find out more about the New Sanctuary Movement at http://www.newsanctuarymovement.org, or call Daniel French at 213-48740, ext. 103.

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Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, said any congregation harboring illegal immigrants should lose its tax-exempt status

Yes, yes, yes.

faith leaders are being asked to join a national movement that critics say defies federal law by inviting families to live inside religious sanctuaries as protection from deportation.

In addition to stripping tax exempt status, charge the clergy heads of all participating churches with aiding and abetting!

"We just believe that there are moments where there are conflicts between divine law and human law, and then you have to obey divine law.

Do they mean like allowing masses of kids to be raped by Catholic priests and then having them shipped from church to church to avoid detection and prosecution? Then having the cardinals deny any wrongdoing and not allowing the authorities access to priests records and eventually declaring bankruptcy to escape having to pay restitution to the victims for the abuse and suffering they endured? That kind of obeying divine law?

BINGO anyone?

Boycott these rotten churches by refusing to attend services and refusing to pay tithing. They will do an about face in a hurry once the money stops flowing into their greedy little hands.

I go to church but I hardly give them any money; just a dollar now and then. Fortunately our priests do not talk, at least in pblic, about immigration. If they ever do, I will start giving them the "Bush' peso." I still keep it, just in case.

I think I am going to send some to McCain; he came short of his goal. Does anybody have his campaign committee's address?