While local governments debate the largely symbolic label of becoming a sanctuary, faith communities in Boulder County are grappling with a more practical question — should they protect an undocumented immigrant from law enforcement seeking to deport them?
Two women are currently avoiding deportation by holing up in separate Denver churches.
Jeanette Vizguerra, who is originally from Mexico and has been fighting her deportation since 2009, is living out of First Unitarian Society of Denver. Ingrid Encalada Latorre is originally from Peru and was granted sanctuary from the Mountain View Friends Meeting in Denver in December, according to The Denver Post.
Unlike the symbolic gesture of becoming a sanctuary city or county for undocumented immigrants, a church or other place of worship can offer immediate and practical protection by offering sanctuary.
Both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have a sensitive locations policy in place. The policy states that enforcement actions (i.e., arrests) should be avoided at sensitive locations, including schools, hospitals and places of worship.
The policy is not ironclad. An arrest can occur in a place of worship if a supervisory official grants prior approval or there are “exigent circumstances necessitating immediate action without supervisor approval,” according to the ICE webpage on the policy.
The two Denver churches harboring the undocumented women from immigration authorities are part of the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition. While those two are hosting congregations, the coalition lists five support congregations that contribute to the sanctuary action by sending items for the people living in the host churches, including Unitarian churches in Boulder and Lafayette.
The Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder collects cards and other items to send the women after church services on Sunday.
Rev. Kelly Dignan, minister at UUCB, said her congregation is still determining where they stand on housing immigrants.
The Boulder Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Lafayette is also a support congregation in the Metro Denver Sanctuary Coalition.
Rev. Lydia Ferrante-Roseberry, senior minister at BVUUF, said they are a support congregation because their current building would be impractical to house someone.
But the church is in the middle of a capital campaign for a new building and Ferrante-Roseberry said she wants her congregation to discuss the question of giving sanctuary in the new building.
“For Unitarian Universalists, one of our primary foundational beliefs is the inherent worth and dignity of all people. That’s central to our work on immigration because we’re looking at the human indignity of our current immigration process where you go in and take people from their home or workplaces and the effect that has on children and families,” Ferrante-Roseberry said.
Ferrante-Roseberry also said that while ICE could easily override its own policy and arrest someone within a church, the practice of giving sanctuary is a useful one for elevating deportation cases in the public eye.
“One reason to offer sanctuary is that it becomes a highly visible public witness,” Ferrante-Roseberry said. “Part of the benefit of sanctuary cases is that they become highly visible and policy work can happen alongside that because the larger agenda is a human dignity agenda, at least for me.”
1980s Sanctuary movement
BVUUF was part of the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, when churches and synagogues around the country defied federal law by harboring and supporting refugees from Central America fleeing poverty and civil war.
At the height of the movement in the mid-1980s, more than 150 congregations openly defied the government by sponsoring refugees while another 1,000 congregations endorsed the practice of sanctuary, according to the nonpartisan think tank Migration Partisan Institute.
Ferrante-Roseberry wasn’t with BVUUF at the time, but she said that the church didn’t have space to house people, so some members of the congregation hosted Central American refugees in their homes.
Rev. Dr. Jason Hays, a former Christian minister who now teaches religious studies at Naropa University, said the sanctuary movement of the ’80s might inform many congregations’ decisions on sanctuary.
“The current process that congregations are using to discern whether or not to provide sanctuary is not a new issue,” Hays said. “Congregations that evolved from the sanctuary movement 30 years ago continue to be involved in it because they are clear that this is part of their mission and part of their ministry. Other congregations that were not involved in that movement are coming to the issue fresh and wrestling with a different set of issues.”
Being compassionate vs. following the law
Hays said that for many congregations that derive from the Christian tradition, the sanctuary question means weighing a belief that one should help thy neighbor while also following the laws of the land.
“It’s a prioritisation of ethical commitments that the congregation is going to take. Some congregations value deferring to federal law over the ethical mandate to protect vulnerable, undocumented immigrants,” Hays said.
For Gerald Brock, pastor at Nelson Road Southern Baptist Church in Longmont, the answer is pretty clear. While the church doesn’t have a written policy on giving sanctuary, it’s just not something the congregation would practice.
“We’ll help anybody with clothing or food or something but we’re not going to say, ‘We’ll hide you from the police here,'” Brock said about undocumented immigrants. “The Bible teaches us that we’re supposed to abide by the laws unless they require something that God teaches us not to do.”
Brock said harboring someone from the law in the church is “inappropriate.”
“If someone has broken the law, we shouldn’t be hiding them in a church. They have to face the music and pay their debt, whether they’re illegal or a citizen or not a citizen,” Brock said.
David Richards, stake president for 10 Northern Colorado wards or congregations in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, said the Mormon church as a whole doesn’t have a general policy on sanctuary.
Richards said that Mormons value familial ties and don’t like to see families separated. But support for immigrants comes in the form of advocating for policy reform and not harboring people from the law.
“Forced separations between parents and children degrades the family and has its toll on society.” Richards said. “Some believe that just by coming into the church, they’re separate from the laws of the land. We don’t believe in that, because we believe people should be accountable for their own actions according to the law. However, we do hope those laws can be reformed … We want to keep those families together and give them ways and means to become legal without too much time and money and effort.”
Willing, but no space
John Hughes, minister’s assistant at the Longmont Buddhist Temple, said that the sangha, or congregation, hasn’t taken an official position on sanctuary but is informed by another period in American history.
“Jodo Shinshu is our tradition and it’s a Japanese form of Buddhism. The vast majority of the members of our tradition who were in the U.S. in the early 1940s were interned when President Roosevelt signed an executive order to set up internment camps,” Hughes said. “So as an organization, we are really against discrimination and against executive orders that exclude specific groups.”
Hughes added that the temple is not equipped right now to house someone, but if it came down to it, he thinks the sangha would come down on the side of offering sanctuary if they could.
Derek Barnett, pastor at Great Exchange Church, also said his congregation supports the idea of sanctuary but they just aren’t practically able to offer it. Great Exchange Church doesn’t own any property and meets at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
“We have a younger congregation, so I know some people are talking about opening their homes and stuff like that, but we don’t have many homeowners, so we’re encouraging them to sign petitions and support immigrants in other ways,” Barnett said, adding that the church would rather send money and volunteers to others who have space to host someone.
Barnett said there were other legal and political contexts to the question of sanctuary. Barnett considered American history, such as the Underground Railroad, when Quakers played a major role in breaking the law to hide escaped slaves.
“It’s hard to have tidy answers to this. God called us to be the best citizens we can be but we’re citizens of the country and the county of Boulder and the city of Boulder, so we’re in a sanctuary city in a sanctuary county in a non-sanctuary country and we’re also citizens of the kingdom of heaven,” Barnett said. “The church has to have the courage and be willing to speak out against injustices in society and in our country …
“I think our responsibility is to God above our nation and so if those things contradict each other, we follow God’s laws but also strive to be peaceful people and how that works out practically is hard to say.”
Kevin Utile, pastor at Reach Boulder, also said his church doesn’t own a building.
Utile said Reach Boulder members sometimes take homeless peoples under their roofs if they can’t get into the local shelter. Utile said he hadn’t thought about the issue of housing undocumented immigrants much, but he reflected on some historical context from the Roman Empire and Nazi Germany.
“Obviously, it isn’t the same case but when the first century Christians were persecuted, they were hiding from the government and people put them up. I’m thinking of, ‘Would I go against lawmakers in the sense of Nazi Germany, when Christians were hiding the Jewish people?’ It’s not to that point here but if the question is, ‘Am I going to put someone’s life above the law?,’ then the answer is yes,” Utile said.
Utile concluded that congregants would most likely host undocumented immigrants facing deportation in their homes.
Rabbi Sarah Gershuny at Nevei Kodesh Jewish Renewal Community in Boulder said that their building is not equipped for housing someone. She attended a webinar recently hosted by T’ruah Rabbis for Human Rights where she learned that there are several logistical concerns to giving sanctuary.
“While giving sanctuary is an admirable humanitarian act, congregations who go this route need to … be aware that there is no exit strategy and that this sanctuary could last, potentially, several years,” Gershuny said in an email. “It’s expensive to house someone for that long, and it’s important that the person have what is truly a private space to themself; and also that they’re never alone in the building, so that they’re supported and not de facto taking responsibility for the church.”
Gershuny said the Nevei Kodesh congregation is instead trying to support local immigrants rights leaders and donate money to the Colorado Immigrants Rights Coalition. She is assembling a leadership team to guide the congregation on being good allies to the immigrant community.
Unsure and studying
Other faith leaders said their congregations hadn’t arrived at a position on the issue yet, but are studying the various facets of harboring an undocumented immigrant.
Lilly Moore, communications manager for United Church of Christ of Longmont, said they have a ministry team looking at the issue and the congregation needs to have a conversation about it.
Duncan Miller, the interim pastor at Pine Street Church in Boulder, said that a woman in his congregation brought up the issue of sanctuary at a Wednesday meeting.
“We had a meeting after church and kind of said, ‘Hey, if anyone is interested in this, stay after church on Sunday so we can talk about it,’ and about 20 people came. The conclusion out of that is that we are forming a team of leaders to help the congregation understand ways to be supportive,” Miller said. “We don’t know yet whether support will be in the form of hosting an actual family in need or other supportive ways.”
Miller said the church is heavily involved in efforts to minister to the poor and homeless, opening the fellowship hall in the colder months to people who need a warm place to sleep. Nonetheless, Miller said his congregation is politically split and he isn’t sure what would happen on the question of sanctuary for undocumented immigrants.
“I always say, ‘We’ve got the tea party and the Green Party all worshiping together … so what we’ll do is hear recommendations from this team that is forming and if the congregation became a sanctuary church, it would take a congregational vote to do so.”
Karen Antonacci: 303-684-5226, antonaccik@times-call.com or twitter.com/ktonacci
