The recent deportation of Elvira Arellano has reopened the discussion about immigration. To many immigrants, she symbolizes the problem of families being torn apart by an immigration policy that distinguished religious leaders and councils --- from Catholics, Methodists, Episcopalians, evangelicals and Muslims to the Board of Rabbis --- have stated needs to be fixed.
Though the timing of Elvira's leaving the sanctuary was ill-advised, the New Sanctuary Movement will continue to focus on keeping families and our nation together. The New Sanctuary Movement is a coalition of interfaith religious leaders and participating congregations, called by our faith to respond actively and publicly to the suffering of our immigrant brothers and sisters residing in the United States.
We acknowledge that the large-scale immigration of workers and their families to the United States is a complex historical, global and economic phenomenon that has many causes and does not lend itself to simplistic or purely reactive public policy solutions. We do not preach lawlessness nor are we harboring fugitives. Our law states that harboring unnamed, undocumented people is a violation of Federal Law; and we are not breaking the law because we are revealing the names and identities of those in sanctuary.
Immigrants like Liliana, a devoted mother, wife and daughter whose husband is a U.S. citizen and who has three U.S. citizen children, had a full-time job, a driver's license, and paid her taxes. But for the last three months, Liliana decided to take on a new role as an activist by taking sanctuary at St. Luke Episcopal Church in Long Beach. She went into Sanctuary after ICE officers, who identified themselves as police, entered her home in May and attempted to take her away.
While nursing her baby, Pablito, Liliana thought of her family and her brothers and mother who also reside nearby. If she was deported, she has nothing to turn back to in her hometown. ICE was demanding to tear her family apart and take away everything she had worked so hard for. One ICE officer, a woman, gave her three days. With help from a religious leader, she found sanctuary in a local home, then ultimately at St. Luke's.
Lucia, a member of St. Anne Church in Santa Monica, married Ricardo, a man who has lived all his life in Santa Monica. In January, she received an order to go back to Mexico and reenter legally. Ricardo, who works for the City of Beverly Hills, is still waiting for his wife.
As Mexican women, Liliana and Lucia are not eligible for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program. This program excludes Latin American countries, among others. Their spouses and children have to bear the hardship of not having their loved ones.
The New Sanctuary Movement stands together in our faith that everyone, regardless of national origin, has basic common rights, including but not limited to 1) livelihood, 2) family unity, and 3) physical and emotional safety. We witness the violation of these rights under current immigration policy, particularly in the separation of children from their parents due to unjust deportations, and in the exploitation of immigrant workers. We are deeply grieved by the violence done to families through immigration raids. We cannot in good conscience ignore such suffering and injustice.
Today, many people of all nationalities are afraid of each other because their lives are disappearing before them. Citizens and non-citizens who live in this nation have an opportunity to speak up to create a solution. Enforcement alone is not the answer.
The New Sanctuary Movement is trying to bridge people to create a big sanctuary so that all people can come together as a nation where no one is afraid of each other because of status or race. It is the restoration of family values --- mom, dad and kids, living in peace and bettering themselves, their families, their neighborhood, and the United States. Father Michael D. Gutierrez is pastor, St. Anne Church and Shrine in Santa Monica, and a leader in the New Sanctuary Movement. He can be reached at stanshrn@verizon.net.
For information on the Sanctuary Movement, go to www.newsanctuarymovement.org; on Visa Waivers, go to www.justiceforimmigrants.org.
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