Sanctuary

Mitchell Atencio 1-26-2021

A banner welcoming immigrants and refugees on the Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Church in Atlanta, Ga., on Jan. 22, 2019.  Cari Rubin Photography / Shutterstock.com

Members of Congress, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), wrote President Joe Biden a letter asking him to ensure those taking sanctuary in houses of worship would be protected from deportation. They also asked the Biden-Harris administration to lift the deportation orders against all people living in sanctuary.

Cara Tabachnick 12-11-2019

Rabat's Medina neighborhood / Photo by JP Keenan

The European Union has pressured Morocco to curb migration in recent years. Since 2014, they have committed to disbursing €232 million for migration-related support. But as funding has increased, so has the violence of law enforcement. Five of the migrants I spoke to referenced personally experiencing police brutality.

John Fife 6-05-2019

Scott Warren, a human rights volunteer facing criminal charges. Courtesy No More Deaths/Handout via REUTERS

Dr. Scott Warren is defending himself against three felony charges including conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants — charges that could add up to 20 years in prison.

the Web Editors 12-21-2018
  1. ‘This Is Not a Crisis. This Is a Long-Term Disaster’

This year saw many of the president’s immigration-related campaign threats come to fruition. That came to a head in the late spring and early summer of 2018 as the administration implemented a policy of separating children from their parents at the border as they arrived to claim asylum. But, as Sojourners notes here, this crisis point was just one of many ongoing eruptions at our Southern border.

  1. A Shared Theology of Sanctuary

Amid such horrors in immigration policy, churches throughout the country stepped up in a resurgence of the 1980s-era Sanctuary Movement. In addition to accompanying immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement appointments, training for interaction with ICE agents, and other active support measures, many churches — and synagogues and other houses of worship — are opening their sanctuaries to house people at risk of deportation.

Pilar Timpane 12-03-2018

A group of Samuel Oliver-Bruno's supporters. Photo by Pilar Timpane. 

The space of Samuel Oliver-Bruno’s “home” while in sanctuary is filled with signs he thought he’d return from a biometrics appointment at U.S. Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Morrisville, N.C., scheduled at the immigration control office’s request. His work on construction projects around the basement at the CityWell church in Durham, N.C., seems stalled in time. Painting supplies, clothes, other personal items stilled exactly as he left them, where he was working diligently just days before his life was altered irrevocably. A prayer room he helped to build is silent.

Elizabeth Evans 8-07-2018

Samuel Oliver-Bruno at CityWell UMC. Photo by Elizabeth Evans

Oliver-Bruno is one of six people publicly in sanctuary in the state (a seventh doesn’t want to be identified). During the 1980s, more than 100 churches sheltered Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants, and the movement has seen somewhat of a national revival in recent years. Though sanctuary churches often attract media attention, the men and women living behind church doors represent a network of families and communities living under the unpredictable threat of government-sponsored raids and arrests.

FILE PHOTO: Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers remarks before the National Sheriffs Association Winter Conference in Washington, Feb. 12, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo
 

The U.S. Justice Department will file a lawsuit against the state of California alleging it is interfering with the enforcement of federal immigration laws, escalating a long-simmering battle over "sanctuary" policies that try to protect undocumented immigrants against deportation, senior department officials said Tuesday.

Christ, we thank you for your welcome
that tears walls and borders down,
that gives hope to people fleeing,
that helps churches stand their ground.
For our neighbors, Lord, are asking,
and they’re wondering what we’ll do.
May our churches give them welcome,
and so find we welcome you.

1-29-2018

Harry Pangemanan, left, an Indonesian man, claimed sanctuary at the church after ICE agents went to his front door. (Photo by Bob Karp via USAToday)

A third undocumented Indonesian has sought sanctuary in his New Jersey church, saying he fears deportation to his native country because Christians suffer persecution there.

the Web Editors 1-17-2018

“We have been angered about the detention of our undocumented members and allies from the New Sanctuary Coalition,” said Onleilove Alston, the executive director of Faith in NY, a multi-faith and multi-race network of over 70 congregations working for justice in New York City. “We know that God doesn’t create anyone illegal but that everyone is created in the image of the divine. Now is the time for congregations to stand with stranger as the Bible commands, and now is the time for clergy to put their bodies on the line for those in the shadows.”

Image via Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

When the Magi told King Herod about the heaven-sent child they’d come to honor, Herod also issued an executive order — kill every Hebrew child under 2. Herod’s henchmen would have slaughtered the Christ child along with the others had his parents not acted quickly to cross a border and protect their baby. Mary and Joseph were dreamers before Jesus. To prepare for Christmas is to remember Mary and Joseph’s dream and the civil disobedience it inspired.

The playground at the site of a shooting at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, U.S. November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

“I have said sometimes there is a fierceness for survivors who say, ‘We have survived this and we have a faith that survives even in the face of something like this,'” Walsh said. “It is a reclaiming and it is a marking of a place as not just a place of death, not just a place of loss, but of life.”

the Web Editors 8-02-2017

President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on immigration reform accompanied by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) (L) and David Perdue (R-Ga.), at the White House. Aug. 2, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
 

President Donald Trump and Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue (R-Ga.) on Wednesday unveiled a plan at the White House to overhaul the rules for legal immigrants, a proposal that would slash numbers overall and focus on skilled immigrants, the White House said.

Marcia Mount Shoop 6-26-2017

Even more difficult than the question of whether or not we are collectively willing to break the law is the question of whether we are ready to embody what a “culture of sanctuary” holistically invites us to be.

Image via RNS/Philly.com/Ed Hille

Though they gave respectable answers, I was amazed no one directly quoted the Christian Gospels on the subject.

The Gospel of Mark provides one saying of Jesus directly applicable to this situation. But when we examine subsequent uses of that saying in the other Gospels, we can see why none of the 60 Minutes interviewees dared quote that particular verse.

Image via David Beltran/Sojourners

"People have asked, 'Why do you stand with these people?' Because black bodies have been assaulted since we first came to this state. And they are continuously assaulted. What we know is, if we are silent when brown bodies are assualted, when gay bodies are assaulted, when trans bodies are assualted, when female bodies are assualted, then all of us remain in prison and in bondage."

Michael Clark 2-20-2017

Will we be a sanctuary in the tradition of the early church? Will we heed God’s commandment: “the stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34)? Will Christ say to us, “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison [or an immigration detention center] and you came to visit me”? Let us remember his words, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

Dhanya Addanki 2-17-2017

Photo by Dhanya Addanki/Sojourners

“The practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement right now are not in line with who we say we are as a government and a country,” Kumpf said. “What they did was legally on the line of violating the Sensitive Locations Memo. That’s extraordinarily morally reprehensible.”

Drafted in 2011, the Sensitive Locations Memo places restrictions on ICE enforcement in sensitive locations such as schools, places of worship, and hospitals. Many at the gathering felt that the sensitive lines of sanctuary were crossed on the morning of the Feb 8.

the Web Editors 1-25-2017

One action blocks federal funding for sanctuary cities, something in which many churches and communities of faith participate. An estimated 400 congregations nationwide support sanctuary or are actively opening their doors to immigrants. 

Kimberly Winston 1-23-2017

The Clifton Mosque in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Creative Commons

A Cincinnati area mosque announced it would join the burgeoning church sanctuary movement in the U.S., possibly becoming the first Islamic house of worship to do so.

The announcement came on the eve of the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, who took a hard-line stance on immigration and proposed a national Muslim registry during his campaign.