Ingrid Encalada Latorre was scheduled to be deported to Peru on Tuesday but instead moved into a Fort Collins church to continue her fight to stay in Colorado with her two children, despite a pardon denial from Gov. John Hickenlooper and despite an expired stay of removal.
Encalada Latorre in December claimed sanctuary at Mountain View Friends Meeting in Denver to buy time to fight a criminal conviction for using someone else’s papers to work. She left sanctuary in May after she was granted a stay of removal that extended 30 days past her court date to try to overturn her felony conviction. The judge denied her request, though, so she turned to Hickenlooper for a pardon of the criminal conviction, which could have allowed her to reopen her immigration case.
Her latest stay of removal ended this week. On Tuesday, she claimed sanctuary at Foothills Unitarian Church in Fort Collins.
The two Denver churches where three people claimed sanctuary to avoid deportation in recent years — the Mountain View house and First Unitarian — were both completing construction projects in their living quarters this past summer and were not available for sanctuary seekers. Meantime, three new sanctuary congregations — Park Hill’s Temple Micah and Park Hill United Methodist Church, which share a building, and All Souls Unitarian in Colorado Springs — have opened their doors to those seeking sanctuary.
“Until last night, I truly believed I had made peace with the difficult decision to be deported to Peru, taking my two sons with me and splitting our family,” Encalada Latorre said in a news release. “(But) I decided I have to be strong for my family. I have to do what’s best for my children.”
Encalada Latorre’s two children, 9-year-old Bryant and Anibal, who will be 2 next month, are U.S. citizens.
“I think she made a decision about the risk to her family if she did get on the plane or if she didn’t. I don’t know what I would do if it were my babies,” said the Rev. Gretchen Haley, senior pastor at Foothills Unitarian Church.
Three other people are living in sanctuary in Colorado: Rosa Sabido, who claimed sanctuary at Mancos United Methodist Church in June; Araceli Velasquez, who claimed sanctuary at Temple Micah and Park Hill United Methodist Church in August; and Elmer Peña, who claimed sanctuary at All Souls Unitarian in Colorado Springs in August.
The sanctuary movement began in the 1980s when churches in Arizona offered a safe haven to refugees crossing the border from war-torn Central America. The modern movement began during the Obama administration, when congregations felt called to open their doors to prevent families from being split by deportation. But the number of congregations in the sanctuary movement nationally has doubled since November to more than 800, according to Church World Service, the national organizer for the movement.
To offer sanctuary, congregations rely on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that limits operations at “sensitive locations” such as schools, medical treatment facilities, public demonstrations and houses of worship.
Congregations go through a discernment process before they decide to offer sanctuary. At Foothills Unitarian Church, 92 percent on Aug. 27 voted in favor of becoming a sanctuary congregation.
Haley said they are called to act based on the Unitarian belief in “courageous love.”
“We believe that all life is interconnected, all love is interdependent. So there is no justice or liberation for any one of us if any one of us is oppressed,” she said. “And we believe the immigration system is profoundly broken.”
