Sanctuary's Daughter

An interview with filmmaker Leanna Creel By Deborah Arca Mooney

Three years ago, filmmaker Leanna Creel had never even heard of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Now, she and co-filmmaker Mason Funk are making the final cuts on a documentary about a mother and daughter who sought sanctuary in their church when the mother received her final deportation papers. Sanctuary's Daughter shares the story of one family's journey to stay together and puts a personal face on the immigration system that threatens to break up four million young Americans and their undocumented parents. I spoke with Creel on the phone recently about her film and the personal story behind it.

What inspired you to make this film?

Three years ago in July 2007, things got really, really heated with immigration here is Los Angeles. ICE started doing raids in a neighborhood not too far from where I live in downtown L.A. Families were nervous to send their kids to school because they were afraid their kids were going to come home and their parents wouldn't be there. People were not going to the doctor when they needed to; it was just a very fearful, scary time.

Right around then, a woman in my church, Yolanda, got her final deportation notice. She'd been in the country for more than 20 years and had been fighting to stay in the country for many of those years. I had known her and her daughter Anabella since she was 8 or 9. Anabella had been in our church youth group and in a photo class I taught. At the same time, completely independent from Yolanda's situation, our church, Immanuel Presbyterian (IPC), had decided to become supportive of this movement called the New Sanctuary Movement . Several churches in the L.A. area took in immigrants who had received their final deportation notice, and who were going to be separated from their American-born children. Immanuel was the only church affiliated with the NSM that offered sanctuary to one of its members.

Mason Funk, an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and fellow Elder with me at Immanuel, and I decided we should be following this story and started videotaping everything that was going on. We started with their move into the church, and filmed them as they turned a storage room behind the choir room into a mini-apartment. And that's where they've been living for three years. Anabella is free to come and go, but her mother cannot leave.

So this was a very personal project for you. These were people from your church. Women you called "friends."

Yes, this story really found me. Anabella was in my youth group, I watched her grow up, I've known her very well. Immigration is definitely an issue that affects our community here at IPC quite a bit. But it's affected my life, as well. My partner is an immigrant - and we've dealt with the fear of the process in our lives as well. It's an issue that's very near and dear to me, especially the idea of families getting torn apart.

What did you find so compelling about the story that made you want to make a film about it?

Four million children in the U.S. are affected by the threat of their parents being deported. So while it was a very personal story, it was also a story that we felt wasn't being told and we wanted to share this story with churches, synagogues and all people of faith. We thought we could be on the forefront of discussing this very complicated issue, with a uniquely personal angle of how this is affecting families. When you see the news and you hear about the drug wars happening on the border, it seems very distant and theoretical. But when it happens to someone you know and you watch families getting torn apart, it's a very different story.

When the church talks about "family values," this should be a top family value, for all people of faith. Families should be not torn apart. When man's laws break God's law, that's not right.

You say this is really a story about Anabella, more than anything. What happened to Anabella in the course of making this film?

It's been an interesting three years. The film has really become about how Anabella finds her voice. At the beginning of the film, she doesn't really have a choice in what's going on. She hides in the car when she doesn't want to be interviewed, she's really quiet. But over the last three years, she's gotten more confident. She's in college, she drives now, she's grown up and is trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life. And she's started advocating for other families like hers. It's just been beautiful to watch her grow, and I've had the privilege of watching that process up close and personal through the making of this film.

When did you know the film was finished?

Very good question. We weren't sure -- when does the story end? Especially when immigration reform has taken such a back seat in the Obama Administration. So we weren't really sure when the right moment was, however Anabella had the opportunity to go to Washington, DC and be part of this immigration march ironically the same day the health care reform bill was signed. She got to meet with her representative. We used the trip to DC as the climax of the film to show how much she's grown as a young woman. So we think we have a sense of an ending, although Yolanda's situation is not resolved and there's no guarantee it will ever be resolved. So her story will continue, there is no resolution.

How did making this film affect your thoughts about immigration reform?

We need comprehensive immigration reform. Perhaps there are people that are in Yolanda's situation that need to be separated out from the 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. I would hope we could say, let's stop separating families, that's not helping anybody, that's not good for anybody. I hope that one of the outcomes of this film is that it will get people talking about the issue because it is urgent. It is separating families, right now, today. Time is of the essence. I'm hoping Obama will push forward and make this a legislative priority. It's really a broken system in our county where 12 million people have no path to become legal in this country. They're good members of society, they're members of churches, they pay taxes, they're involved, they're such a big part of our life. It's such an injustice to provide no hope, let alone a path to citizenship in this country.

You plan to distribute this film widely to faith communities. What is the hoped outcome of that?

We hope it brings up the tough questions of what is the role of the faith communities and churches in terms of Jesus' example of radical hospitality. What should we be doing as people of faith? I hope this process takes the story beyond our little liberal, progressive church in downtown LA, and that people of faith across the country will use it to get a dialogue going about what should be done, what can be done, what we should be doing as people of faith.

How has making this film impacted your own faith journey?

It's definitely been an interesting journey for me. It's been very lonely for Yolanda and Anabella and depressing for all of us at times. I've struggled with what the role of Christians is in all of this. I really like to see the church on the forefront of justice issues and taking the lead on these issues -- that feels right.

I come from a really fundamentalist and evangelical background and it's been interesting showing the trailer to my family and friends. It never dawned on some of them that this could be happening in their community. I've been so excited to see people become aware and compassionate about this issue.

What would you say to other Christians who, while agreeing that there is a biblical imperative to welcome the stranger, believe strongly that there is also an imperative to not break the law?

What's become clear to me through this is that when man's laws take precedent over God's law -- for example, God's law of a family staying together and parents being able to stay with their children -- when the laws of the land deny that and when the laws of the land are unjust and don't allow any options, we as people of faith cannot sit back and say they should just obey the law. The problem is, the law is broken; the law is not working. I feel like everybody on every side of the spectrum would agree with me on that. And then I would talk about this sub-group of people who have been long-time residents of this country, with no criminal activity, who are upstanding members of society and who have close relatives who are American and would face tremendous hardship if they would go back to their country of origin.

I've thought about showing this film to a group of evangelical youth and how I'd set it up for them. I think I'd say, imagine how hungry you'd have to be, how hard your life would need to be to leave your house right now, this country, to sneak into another country where you don't know anybody, or the language and it's going to set you back years. Put yourself in those shoes. People that have come here out of sheer poverty, left situations of violence, hunger...so I'd want them to imagine such a choice. They're not coming here to vacation. People forget too that Jesus was an immigrant. He fled through Egypt for a couple of years with his parents. He was the stranger in a foreign land.

I do think for Christians, now is one of those times in history that we need to stand together for family values. And shouldn't this be Family Value #1: Keeping Families Together? People think that only the liberal progressive Christians care about this issue, but I've been very touched and moved to see so many Evangelicals take up this cause.

If you've lived in Southern California or any other border state, you've grown up with this shadow economy of immigrants. I don't believe God would want people to live in the shadows and be vulnerable to exploitation. That's not God's plan. That's not just.

What ultimately do you hope people will take away from this film?

I hope that people might watch the film and consider Anabella and Yolanda as something more like a friend than just an "illegal immigrant," so that when they open up the newspaper or are talking to their friends they might have a different perspective. I hope that once people have "met" someone who's talked openly about this situation and what's happened to them, they might stop and their hearts might be softened a little bit.

To see a trailer for Sanctuary's Daughter and read more about the film and how you can support it, visit www.sanctuarysdaughter.com . Funds are currently being raised to finish the editing of the film and develop educational materials to be sent out with the film to churches and other faith communities.