Sanctuary Not Deportation

Reposted:

A Faithful Witness to Building Welcoming Communities

For pdf, visit What is Sanctuary? – Unitarian Universalist Association

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”

– Psalm 91:1-2

As the faith community, we are called to accompany our community members, congregants and neighbors facing deportation.

Sanctuary Movement and the Immigrants’ Rights Movement

People of faith from all traditions called on Congress to pass immigration reform, yet Congress failed to move forward on meaningful legislation. Meanwhile, the deportation machinery grew stronger becoming more advanced under the Obama Administration, with an alarming rate of more than 1,100 people being deported every day, totaling nearly 2.5 million deportations over under this administration. The organizing efforts of undocumented youth in 2012 pushed the administration to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has allowed close to a million undocumented students to travel and work legally.

In 2014 a resurgence of the Sanctuary Movement began out of need in the community to stop deportations at a case-by-case level. In May of 2014 Daniel Neyoy Ruiz took Sanctuary in Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson Arizona, the same church that helped nearly fifteen thousand political refugees escape the tragic civil wars in Central America during the 1980s. Daniel won a stay of removal after 27 days of living in Sanctuary. As this spread through the media at a time when President Obama was delaying Executive Actions on immigration, many more immigrants facing a deportation order looked to congregations in their region to take refuge and fight to keep their families together. Over the next years more than a dozen people came forward to take refuge in Sanctuary, the majority were able to win a stay of removal or an order of supervision within several months, but the Immigration Customs Enforcement delayed justice on many occasions such as with Rosa Robles-Loreto who only found victory after 461 days of Sanctuary. Some left the church with a written promise from ICE they would not be deported, but they continue to fight their case to gain some sort of relief from deportation.

This resurgence of the Sanctuary Movement has created a platform to raise up the prophetic and moral witness while at the same time lifting up the stories of those leaders who are brave enough to speak out against the injustice of deportation. This surly brought significantly increased public pressure on the Obama Administration to announce the President’s Executive Action on Immigration on November 20^th, 2014.

Now the Sanctuary Movement again is playing a critical role in responding in the post-election reality wherein fear, discrimination and xenophobia has taken a new precedent in our countries politics. With the promise of the Trump Administration to deport millions, people of faith we have a moral responsibility to act. Sanctuary is a tool that helps escalate these efforts by offering our neighbors who face a deportation order safe refuge and sanctuary in our congregations.