IN THE PAST three years, the Trump administration has upended decades of legal precedent that created a humane legal process for asylum seekers to enter the U.S. and build a life for themselves while they wait to plead their case in front of an immigration judge.
Asylum is a protection available to foreign nationals already in the United States or at the U.S. border who meet the international law definition of a “refugee.” A refugee is a person who can’t go home because of “past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future” due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, according to the United Nations.
On the U.S. Southern border, these are people fleeing organized violence and government repression. Under Trump administration “third-country” agreements, the U.S. will now be deporting many asylum seekers back to the same countries that they are fleeing.
While this scenario is exactly what Trump’s lead immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, has always dreamed of, it is not one we have to accept.
People have offered one another sanctuary in various forms throughout history. Christianity has a long tradition of such radical welcome—including biblical texts making clear the mandate to “welcome the stranger” and hundreds of churches that opened their doors as sanctuaries to runaway slaves in the 1860s, civil rights and anti-war activists in the 1960s, and migrants from Central America in the 1980s.
Formal and informal accompaniment networks have arisen across the United States to uphold the right to asylum even when the federal government rejects it. One such effort is the Asylum-Seekers Sponsorship Project, which recruits, prepares, and supports U.S. citizens to become official sponsors for asylum seekers. The project has taken up this call: “When Trump closes doors, we open them.”
Under the Trump administration, asylum seekers who are not turned back at the border are interviewed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and put in an immigration detention center. Few are granted bond or other release without a “sponsor” on record.
Sponsors are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents willing to submit paperwork to ICE to secure an asylum seeker’s release and then receive an asylum seeker into their home upon that release. Sponsors must have a fixed address to demonstrate stable residency and receive mail regarding the asylum seeker’s court date and other legal proceedings; be able to provide a safe, comfortable place for asylum seekers to sleep; and provide the individual or families with necessities such as food, transportation, and clothing.
The Asylum-Seekers Sponsorship Project is creating a pipeline for matching asylum seekers with sponsors to increase chances for release until an immigration court date.
While all asylum seekers must have an individual named sponsor in order to secure release, an increasing number of congregations are interested in providing a community of support to wrap around an asylum seeker.
Since 2018, the project has connected dozens of asylum seekers with volunteer sponsors. For example, the congregational engagement strategy already has placed a family of six with a Jewish community in Philadelphia and transgender women with Unitarian communities in Minneapolis and Chapel Hill, N.C.
It is slow work to bring a congregation through the process of sponsorship, but it is rewarding. The project offers education to prepare members for an open-armed welcome, free from the trappings of white supremacy and patriarchy, and connects the community to other sponsorship congregations across the country. A few denominations—including the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, Religious Society of Friends, Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Presbyterian Church USA—are considering launching their own asylum-seeker sponsorship programs. Faith communities are well positioned to organize people and resources. Their built-in community of support makes a world of difference for an asylum-seeking individual or family.
Agreeing to offer housing and support for an asylum seeker means participating in a leap of faith that runs two ways: Both your household and the asylum seeker agree to share lives with strangers, at least for a while. Hopefully, the experience will build a community of care and solidarity that empowers the whole family to join in collective resistance to unjust policies.
The Trump administration’s violent and inhumane work to keep asylum seekers out of the U.S. is shameful, but people of faith have a proud tradition of disrupting these assaults on our neighbors and extending radical hospitality.
Heather Cronk, a cofounder of the Asylum Seekers Sponsorship Project (asylumcongregations@gmail.com), serves as political organizing director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
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