Sanctuary movement
Encyclopedia
At its peak, Sanctuary involved over 500 congregations across the country that, by declaring themselves official “sanctuaries,” committed to providing shelter, material goods and often legal advice to Central American refugees. Various denominations were involved, including the Lutherans, United Church of Christ
United Church of Christ
The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination primarily in the Reformed tradition but also historically influenced by Lutheranism. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC...
, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, and Mennonites.
Movement members acted in open defiance of federal law, and many prominent Sanctuary figures were arrested and put on trial in the mid and late 1980s. The roots of the movement derive from the right of sanctuary in medieval law and Judeo-Christian social teachings.
Central American Conflict
Between 1980 and 1991, nearly 1 million Central Americans crossed the U.S. border seeking asylum. Most were fleeing political repression and violence caused by civil wars in GuatemalaGuatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
and El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...
, though some had fled Nicaragua in the wake of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution
Nicaraguan Revolution
The Nicaraguan Revolution encompasses the rising opposition to the Somoza dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the campaign led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front which led to the violent ousting of that dictatorship in 1979, and the...
. In El Salvador, the military killed over 10,000 people by 1980, including the famous Archbishop Oscar Romero
Óscar Romero
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a bishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He became the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, succeeding Luis Chávez. He was assassinated on 24 March 1980....
and four U.S. churchwomen. In Guatemala, government-backed paramilitary groups killed 50,000, disappeared 100,000 and perpetrated 626 village massacres. Official policy under the Reagan administration greatly hindered Central Americans from obtaining asylum status, however. Congress forbid foreign aid to countries committing human rights abuses, and it is well documented that the U.S. provided funds, training and arms to the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Because admitting these governments' abuses would bar the U.S. from providing further aid, the Reagan administration instead argued that Central Americans were “economic migrants” fleeing poverty, not governmental repression. Consequently, Central Americans stood little chance within the U.S. immigration system, where asylum is granted based on proof of “well-founded fear” of persecution. Just prior to the beginning of the Reagan Administration, Congress had passed the Refugee Act which incorporated this international definition of political asylum into US law - which formerly granted refugee status only to those "fleeing Communism." However, the Reagan Administration retained enormous discretion under the law and used all its power to prevent the legal recognition of Central American claims. And the numbers reflect this. Approval rates for Guatemalans and Salvadorans hovered somewhere under three percent in 1984, as compared to a sixty percent approval rate for Iranians, forty percent for Afghans fleeing Soviet invasion, thirty-two percent for Poles, twelve percent for Nicaraguans escaping the Sandinistas and one-hundred percent for Cubans. In 1983, one Guatemalan was granted asylum in the United States.
Many Central Americans who found their way to the United States were placed in detention centers and sent home. Many protested this move, claiming that they would face severe dangers upon their return. An American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
study in 1985 reported that 130 deported Salvadorans were found disappeared, tortured, or killed.
Sanctuary
Sanctuary formed as a reaction to these policies. As a movement, it originated along the border with Mexico and Arizona, but was also strong in Chicago, Philadelphia, California and Texas. In 1980, Jim Corbett, Jim Dudley, John Fife and a handful of other residents of Tucson, ArizonaTucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
began providing legal, financial and material aid to Central American refugees. Their decision to do so—and therefore openly oppose federal law—was inspired by a mixture of shocking refugee stories, personal encounter, political sympathies and religious conviction. As Corbett recounts, the tradition of his Quaker faith and its involvement in the Underground Railroad compelled him to take action. Gary Cook, associate pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Massillon, Ohio, cited the simple experience of personal interaction: "We're a very conservative group of folks politically. But once we encountered the refugees face to face, we couldn't justify not taking them in."
For Dudley, one of Corbett's friends, it was his experience coming across a man on the side of the road on the outskirts of Tucson one afternoon. As he described in an interview, after picking up the hitchhiker, Dudley learned through broken Spanish that the man was a Salvadoran attempting to make it to San Francisco. As they drove into town, Border Patrol agents stopped the car and identified the man as an illegal alien and promptly took him away. Dudley recalls the pleading look on the Salvadoran's face and the fear in his voice as he asked Dudley to lie to the patrol agents and tell them he was a friend and that they were going to Tucson together. Dudley left that day troubled and confused. Why was the man so afraid? Were the border agents going to send him back? What would happen to him if they did?
On March 24, 1982, the second anniversary of Archbishop Oscar Romero
Óscar Romero
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was a bishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador. He became the fourth Archbishop of San Salvador, succeeding Luis Chávez. He was assassinated on 24 March 1980....
's assassination, Fife, the Reverend of the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, declared his congregation a public sanctuary. Outside his church he posted two banners that read: “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of Central America,” and “Immigration: do not profane the Sanctuary of God.” A rush of churches, synagogues and student groups across the country followed suit, and by 1985 Sanctuary became a national movement with roughly five hundred member-sites across the United States.
Movement members likened Sanctuary to the "Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
" of the 19th century: Central Americans would flee their countries, often under extremely dangerous circumstances, travel up through Mexico and eventually find a safe haven in a sanctuary community in the United States or Canada. To give a picture of how this phenomenon worked in practice, refugees coming through Tucson would make it to Nogales (the nearest border town in Mexico), often on foot, and find refuge at El Sanctuario de Nuestra Señora Guadalupe (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe) Catholic Church. With help from Padre Ramón Dagoberto Quiñones, the head priest at Our Lady, they would travel a short distance across the border to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, whose steeple was visible from across the border in Mexico. There they could find shelter, food, legal advice and perhaps a little money. The two churches kept in constant contact, and priests and lay people traveled frequently between parishes.
Once the refugees found safe-haven in a Sanctuary community, U.S. congregations, student groups and activists often invited Central Americans to share their beliefs and experiences with the community. Refugees were invited to the pulpit to give their testimonies during church services, congregations held special Central American peace nights where stories were shared and information given, and Central Americans and North Americans talked frequently and openly, whether through Bible studies, meetings or rallies. As one congregant of Tucson's Southside Presbyterian Church remembers:
On any given night there might be from two to twenty-five [refugees] sleeping in the church. The congregation set up a one-room apartment for them behind the chapel. When that was full, they slept on foam pads in the Sunday school wing.
Although many associate Sanctuary with Catholics and Quakers, the denominational make-up of the movement was quite diverse. 36% of Sanctuary congregations were Catholic, 22% were Presbyterian, 36% were Quakers, 28% were Unitarian, 2% Jewish, 10% came from university campuses and 1% from seminaries. The following are a sampling of official statements issued by major denominations within the U.S.
The Presbyterian Church:
The Presbyterian Church recommends that “That the General Assembly support congregations and individuals who provide sanctuary to asylum seekers as a way of showing Christian compassion for them and stressing the need for change in our government's plicies and actions; and that other congregations be challenged seriously to take this stance.” 1983.
The American Lutheran Church:
“Resolved, that The American Lutheran Church at its 1984 General Convention…offer support and encouragement to congregations that have chosen to become refugee sanctuaries.” 1984.
The American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A.:
“Therefore, we commend to American Baptist churches the following:…that we respect those churches that, responding to the leading of God's Spirit, are providing sanctuary for refugees fleeing certain suffering and death in central America.” 1984.
The Rabbinical Assembly:
“The Rabbinical Assembly endorses the concept of Sanctuary as provided by synagogues, churches and other communities of faith in the United States.” 1984.
Secular groups also embraced the Sanctuary Movement, such as Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
, Americas Watch (which would later become Human Rights Watch), legal aid groups, liberal members of Congress and student organizations (the University of California was particularly active). Op-eds appeared frequently in major national periodicals such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time Magazine. The entire city of Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
declared itself a sanctuary. Writer Barbara Kingsolver popularized the movement in her 1998 novel The Beans Trees, in which she provides a fictional account of a Sanctuary member housing refugees in her Tucson home.
This movement has been succeeded in the 2000s by the movement of churches and other houses of worship to shelter immigrants in danger of deportation. The New Sanctuary Movement is a network of houses of worship that facilitates this effort. The New Sanctuary Movement allowes U.S. Officials in Catholic churches without permission of Catholic officials.
From the late 1980s continuing into the 2000s, there also have been instances of churches providing "sanctuary" for short periods to migrants facing deportation from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Norway]], Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, among other nations. From 1983 to 2003, Canada experienced 36 sanctuary incidents. The "New Sanctuary Movement" organization estimates that at least 600,000
people in the United States have at least one family member in danger of deportation.
The movement itself was declared a 1984 winner of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award
Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award
The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award is awarded annually by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies. It is awarded to those advancing the cause of human rights in the Americas. The Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award commemorates Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, who in 1976...
.
Historical Parallels
The Sanctuary Movement traced its roots to the ancient Judaic tradition of Sanctuary. As movement member Marianne Lundy phrased it, “The idea comes from the original Judeo-Christian concept of Sanctuary, where persons fleeing the law could go to places of worship and be protected.” In the Old Testament, God commanded Moses to set aside cities and places of refuge in CanaanCanaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
where the persecuted could seek asylum. This concept can also be found in ancient Roman law
Roman law
Roman law is the legal system of ancient Rome, and the legal developments which occurred before the 7th century AD — when the Roman–Byzantine state adopted Greek as the language of government. The development of Roman law comprises more than a thousand years of jurisprudence — from the Twelve...
, medieval canon law
Canon law
Canon law is the body of laws & regulations made or adopted by ecclesiastical authority, for the government of the Christian organization and its members. It is the internal ecclesiastical law governing the Catholic Church , the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the Anglican Communion of...
and British common law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
. Movement members also appealed to U.S. history, including the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad of the nineteenth century, the housing of Jews during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the idea of the U.S. as a safe haven for immigrants and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. For Sanctuary congregations, this provided justification for acting against federal laws, and many members saw themselves as part of a larger transnational community. As Corbett wrote in 1983:
Because the refugees are here, a new exodus has already begun. Those enforced exiles are being joined by North American religious people who are voluntarily exiling themselves from a civil law without justice. Undocumented refugees and outlawed Christians and Jews are together forming a new exodus community that takes seriously a God who acts in history. Public sanctuary is an act that refuses to leave foreign policy to ambassadors and generals and compassion to the limits of law. The new exodus community is beginning to live a love that demands justice and acts with the power and authority that love carries. It is an authority rooted deep in Judeo-Christian tradition and US history itself.
Sanctuary Trials
The Immigration and Naturalization ServiceImmigration and Naturalization Service
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service , now referred to as Legacy INS, ceased to exist under that name on March 1, 2003, when most of its functions were transferred from the Department of Justice to three new components within the newly created Department of Homeland Security, as...
Agency (INS) decided to crack down on movement members by the mid-1980s, which culminated in a series of high profile trials in Texas and Arizona.
In 1985, the INS launched a 10-month investigation dubbed Operation Sojourner, sending paid informants into sanctuary communities to gain the trust of members, find information and report back to federal officials. In 1985, the government initiated criminal prosecutions against two activists in the Rio Grande Valley—Catholic layman Jack Elder and Methodist Stacey Merkt, both of whom provided sanctuary to Central Americans at Casa Oscar Romero in Brownsville, Texas.
In 1986, in the more publicized of the two cases, the Justice Department indicted sixteen U.S. and Mexican religious on 71 counts of conspiracy and encouraging and aiding “illegal aliens to enter the United States by shielding, harboring and transporting them.” This group of indictees included Father Quiñones from Our Lady Church in Nogales, Catholic Reverend Anthony Clark, Jim Corbett, John Fife, Sister Darlene Nicgorski, and a handful of other Sanctuary members and lay religious from participating churches.
In what became known as “The Sanctuary Trials,” the defendants called upon their rights protected under both the U.S. constitution and international law. They employed First Amendment free exercise claims, arguing they were simply living out their faith by providing refuge to their fellow brethren in need; this was the call of the Gospel and an exercise of their religion. As Sister Nicgorski stated on the day of her arraignment, “If I am guilty of anything, I am guilty of the gospel.” Defendants referenced passages in the Old and New Testaments, such as Leviticus 19:34 ("The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself) and the story of Exodus (“What answer is there for the envoys of the nation? This: that the Lord has fixed Zion in her place, and the afflicted among God's people shall take refuge there” [Isaiah 14:32]).
The defense also called upon international law to defend their actions. They argued that the U.S. administration's policy towards Central Americans violated the 1980 Refugee Act
Refugee Act
The United States Refugee Act of 1980 was an amendment to the earlier Immigration and Nationality Act and the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, and was created to provide a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission to the U.S...
, a U.S. law enacted under Carter that reflected international norms set down in the 1951 U.N. Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.
The Sanctuary Trials spurred public outcry from many sympathetic to the movement. Demonstrations at INS facilities were held in San Francisco, Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, and Tucson, among other places.
Though the court did find 8 movement members guilty on alien smuggling charges, most received suspended sentences or underwent short house arrests. Supported by the Center for Constitutional Rights
Center for Constitutional Rights
Al Odah v. United States:Al Odah is the latest in a series of habeas corpus petitions on behalf of people imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The case challenges the Military Commissions system’s suitability as a habeas corpus substitute and the legality, in general, of detention at...
, a broad coalition of eight religious organizations also eventually brought suit against the U.S. Attorney General and head of the INS. Plaintiffs alleged, among other claims, that defendants violated domestic and international laws and movement members' First Amendment rights of free exercise. While the courts ruled in this case, American Baptist Churches vs. Thurnburgh, that international law did not apply and the government did not violate Sanctuary members' First Amendment rights, the movement won the public's sympathies and the government eventually granted asylum status to many of the refugees involved in the trial.
Furthermore, many Congressional Democrats took up the cause of the Central American refugees—due in large part to the lobbying and publicity efforts of Sanctuary members. In 1990, the House and Senate approved a bill granting temporary protected status (TPS) to Central Americans in need of safe haven, but not until the 1997 Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act
Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act
The Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act, or NACARA, is a U.S. law passed in 1997 that provides various forms of immigration benefits and relief from deportation to certain Nicaraguans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, nationals of former Soviet bloc countries and their dependents...
did Congress allow fleeing Central Americans to apply for permanent residence.
Broader Issues
Sanctuary represents an interesting concept oft discussed in sociology, political science and history: the tension between transnational and nation-state bounded conceptions of rights and citizenship. Sanctuary members viewed themselves as part of a transnational community with universal rights and responsibilities existing outside national boundaries. The United States government, however, viewed Sanctuary members as citizens of the nation who were acting politically and in defiance of federal laws. They rejected movement members' claims to international law's applicability inside U.S. courtrooms, as well as arguments that they were acting out of solely religious motivation.Sanctuary also points to the effects of foreign policy on asylum policy within the United States. The Reagan administration's stance on Central American refugees reflected the government's broader goals within the region, which in itself reflected a Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
strategy of containment and counterinsurgency. Therefore, asylum applications during the Cold War were not necessarily cases viewed within a vacuum and on an individual basis but opportunities to deny controversial activities of right-wing governments that the U.S. was supporting and grant status to citizens fleeing communist or Soviet-backed regimes.
See also
- Elvira ArellanoElvira ArellanoElvira Arellano Elvira Arellano is a Mexican mother and immigrant, who has become a symbol of the struggle for the rights of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., mostly indigenous, native, Latinos....
- Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church
- Right of asylumRight of asylumRight of asylum is an ancient juridical notion, under which a person persecuted for political opinions or religious beliefs in his or her own country may be protected by another sovereign authority, a foreign country, or church sanctuaries...
- Sanctuary citySanctuary citySanctuary city is a term given to a city in the United States that follows certain practices that protect illegal immigrants. These practices can be by law or they can be by habit...