In Times of Trial

For many, the sanctuary movement has been a road of sorts: for refugees, the road to safe haven; for congregations, a conduit to renewed life in the faith community; for the eight sanctuary workers convicted in May 1986, a continuing pathway marked by compassion and hardened by increasing government opposition.

For A. Bates Butler III, one of the attorneys in the sanctuary trial, it has been the passageway to a new appreciation for the power of grassroots Christian community. Though Butler's experience with sanctuary began in March 1984, when he defended Philip Willis-Conger on charges from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for transporting refugees, one can only appreciate Butler's involvement by taking a look at the Tucson attorney's history as a Christian and as an upholder of the law. Then the true length of the path he has traveled becomes apparent.

In spite of his recent court battles with the INS and the U.S. Justice Department, Butler's personal history threads its way squarely through the middle of the camps of his new-found opponents. While attending law school in Washington, D.C., Butler served on the Capitol Police Force. After graduation, he traveled throughout Latin America and lived for a year in Bolivia - an experience that later helped him to better understand the situation of refugees coming from El Salvador and Guatemala.

"I think that it gave me a greater appreciation for what is going on in Latin America in general," says Butler. "Though no one ever really understands until they've lived through an exodus, to some extent I understand the incredible situations which force these people to flee."

After returning from Latin America, Butler, beginning with his appointment as a county deputy attorney, became increasingly embroiled in government. After serving for more than seven years as a county deputy attorney, Butler accepted a position as the first assistant U.S. attorney for the district of Arizona. He held that post until 1980, when he became the U.S. attorney for Arizona. Ironically, had he continued in that capacity. Butler would have found himself supervising the activities of the sanctuary trial prosecutor, Donald M. Reno Jr., with whom he battled in the courtroom for a year and a half.

In 1981, by gubernatorial appointment, Butler began a four-year term on the Arizona Criminal Intelligence System Agency Board. And then in 1984, Gov. Bruce Babbitt appointed Butler to a six-year term on the Arizona Law Enforcement Merit System Council.

BUT THE SEEDS of change were sown as early as 1981, when the soon-to-be sanctuary attorney opted for private practice instead of a continued trek along the government career path. In 1982, after Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson declared itself a sanctuary church, the issue reached Trinity Presbyterian Church, where both Butler and his father were members of the session, the congregational council.

Like the younger Butler, Bates' father also had a long history in law enforcement work. A former attorney and judge with 21 years of experience as a special agent for the FBI, A. Bates Butler Jr. originally joined his son in speaking out against sanctuary, which they considered to be "breaking the law" at the time.

However, taking seriously both their faith and the law, the father-son pair accepted the challenge to their beliefs and delved deeper into the debate over providing sanctuary - and not without results. "After that session meeting when we indicated we were not going to participate in civil disobedience," the younger Butler recalls, "we both studied and discussed the issue, and changed our minds. Now both of us support sanctuary, but more importantly, the things it stands for."

That decision came after the two applied their combined legal experience - which included the prosecution of immigration cases - to a serious analysis of U.S. and international law, history, Central American politics, and U.S. foreign policy. However, the real issues, Butler points out, were more simple. "It's really only a question of acting on some very basic Christian principles. It doesn't take a lawyer to make those decisions."

Some people, like Phil Willis-Conger, see the seeds of Butler's commitment as always having been present, but only lying in wait for the proper circumstances to call it into bloom. "Even initially, when Bates was opposed to what we were doing, he always respected us for it," says Willis-Conger. "After he learned more about what was happening, he began to feel that it was legal. Now, after all this, I think he's been radicalized in a very quiet, solid, even sort of way. That's Bates, through and through."

Butler's pastor, Rev. John Davies of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tucson, also describes him as a remarkable melding of both steadiness and change. "Sanctuary can be a potentially divisive issue for a congregation to take on. When Trinity was faced with a decision, Bates lent quite a bit of stability to the process," says Davies. "At the same time, he took the prospects of change and of taking risks for the sake of others very seriously. He grappled with it, made his decision, and now he lives it."

WHILE JUGGLING the challenges of his fledgling practice and the staggering burden of working almost full time on the sanctuary trial, a case that paid little or no money at times, Butler also found himself facing the realization that acting on conscience often places one at odds with a world motivated by more utilitarian concerns. One of the first tests came shortly after the sanctuary indictments were handed down in January 1985. Butler tells how he and Robert Hirsh, the attorney who represented Rev. John Fife in the sanctuary trial, first came to grips with the modus operandi of the prosecution.

"It was Bob's and my recollection that [prosecutor] Don Reno implied or stated that there weren't going to be any conspiracy prosecutions of sanctuary persons, at least in the state of Arizona. When the indictment came down, I was out of town. I came back to the office the next day and went down to see Bob immediately. I said, 'Bob, I feel like we got lied to.'

"Bob said, 'Yeah, I think we did.'

"It was the realization that I would get lied to by an assistant U.S. attorney that made me angry, and it hurt. It disillusioned me and it made me open my eyes."

As the legal battle - and Butler's involvement - intensified with the opening of preliminary hearings, he recalls beginning to appreciate faith action rather than litigation as a means of pursuing justice. "During pre-trial hearings I remember Bob Hirsh and I talking about the difference in the way people live lives. The lawyers were all arguing with Reno and arguing with the judge, and here were all the defendants, good people - very quiet, very unassuming - doing good works, having direct, immediate impact. It made you wonder who is doing more for society.

"But there really wasn't any question. Those quiet people had been brought into this different environment where search for the truth is not necessarily what is going on. That made you stop and think about where your priorities were. It was very humbling in that respect."

Annie, Butler's wife, testifies to the impact that incident and others like it have had on his perception of the many ways of working for justice. "The biggest change I've seen in Bates is that he has gone from a law and order, 'the government is always right,' 'stand up for the Constitution and the laws' person to [ believing that ] 'yes, the government is important and we need to have laws, but they're not always right and the government does not always keep its own laws.' He didn't all of a sudden become a flamer or anything, but he does have a greater appreciation for other ways of getting things done. Bates knows, from experience, that when people do things other ways, they often do so for a reason."

NEEDLESS TO SAY, for Butler things went deeper than merely recognizing the existence of alternative ways of caring: He found himself right in the middle of the alternative. Traditional separations between religious and secular life began to erode. Faith found a way into his fourth-floor law offices and resolutely took up residence among the stacks of legal briefs. At the same time, church seemed more and more to take on the characteristics of a fact of life rather than a once-a-week spectacle. The net result was a renewed personal identity in the faith community.

"If anything, sanctuary [work] interfered with my church attendance because of meeting on Sundays, because of just being burned out sometimes on the weekends," he says. "I guess I went to church less that year than I did the year before. But I think that as far as being more involved in Christian community, I am clearly more involved in it now than I was before sanctuary."

Nevertheless, Butler found new meaning in church. "During the trial, it was important to go as often as I could, because it's like getting a charge," he adds. "The congregation has been real supportive. It's nice to go and have people say, 'Hey, you're doing a good job. Keep up the good work. We're all praying for you. We're all pulling for you.' It was real helpful to have that kind of support at the church. I can't imagine doing something like sanctuary and then going to a church where people didn't encourage what you were doing."

Butler also sees his involvement as part of a larger faith transition that his congregation went through, largely as a result of their involvement in sanctuary work. "It's one thing to stick money in the offering - which is obviously nice and very supportive - but it is something else to see people take the time to not only give money, but to give energy and personal support to what you are doing," says Butler.

"You always wish," he adds, "that there'd be more people and that more of the church would get involved. I suppose that Trinity has lost some members, but the overall level of giving has increased since sanctuary. I think it's been good not only for our church, but for a lot of churches to be challenged to look at the issues. Most of the time we just go along in life thinking, 'We do good things. We're good people,' but we don't really get pushed to act out our beliefs."

Wherever that process of acting on the change in his faith began - on an early trip to Bolivia or at a session meeting in a Tucson church - it does seem clear that the recently ended sanctuary trial fueled the 42-year-old attorney's re-evaluation in a way that nothing else could. "It has been the dominant event or factor in our lives for the past two years and two months. Everything else has sort of.revolved around it," says Butler.

In times of trial, literal or otherwise, it is heartening to come upon those who respond - whether by opening doors to welcome strangers in need or by defending the welcomers. They all hail from the same community, and, for the most part, walk the same roads.

The work of providing sanctuary is a path where Samaritans sometimes find themselves waylaid too, only to be rescued in turn by others - perhaps by campesinos, like those who helped sanctuary defendant Sr. Darlene Nicgorski flee Guatemala for her life in 1980. Or perhaps by an ex-district attorney from Arizona like A. Bates Butler. In any case, it is a path that is increasingly well-traveled.

David Stucky was a free-lance writer who had worked with Central American refugees on the U.S.-Mexico border and did research on refugees in Central America when this article appeared.