Since 2014, at least 50 undocumented immigrants facing imminent deportation have taken sanctuary in houses of worship across the nation. More than half have been since January alone, when Donald Trump was sworn into office after promising mass deportations. For some of these immigrants, these fights have been successful. Undocumented mom Jeanette Vizguerra won a stay of deportation until 2019 after nearly 90 days in a Colorado church. Others are still waiting for their good news:
Amanda Morales sees her children off to school each day from the entrance of a gothic church, but she won’t even venture onto the sidewalk for fear of what may happen if she leaves the building where she has been a virtual prisoner for more than two months.
Morales has been living in two small rooms of the Holyrood Episcopal Church at the northern edge of Manhattan since August, shortly after immigration authorities ordered her deported to her homeland of Guatemala. She says she cannot go back to her country and does not want to leave her three kids, who are all U.S. citizens by birth, so she sought sanctuary at a house of worship.
“Being cooped up like this is starting to drive me crazy,” the 33-year-old said on a recent morning as her two oldest children headed off to school escorted by a volunteer and she stayed behind with her youngest. “Some nights I hardly sleep.”
“Most of her life revolves around a small church library where there are two bunk beds for the family of four to share and an adjacent room with a refrigerator, small table, a few chairs and a microwave oven,” notes the Durango Herald. “They eat simple meals, a lot of macaroni and cheese or chicharron and yuca.” A friend helps her two eldest daughters get to school and back—if Morales leaves the church, she’s at risk of being swept up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Since Trump’s inauguration, the number of houses of worship offering sanctuary doubled to 800, with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder voting just days ago to become a sanctuary church. ICE policy generally prohibits agents from entering a house of worship to conduct immigration enforcement, but there have been cases of agents stalking churches from a distance, and sometimes right across the street, in order to arrest immigrants as they leave.
Daily Hampshire Gazette profiles Lucio Perez, another undocumented dad in sanctuary in a Massachusetts church since this fall. Like Morales, Perez has no violent record and shouldn’t be a priority for deportation. Under President Obama, he was given numerous stays of deportation, so long as he kept checking in regularly with ICE and showing he was out of trouble. But this past summer, he was told to buy a one-way ticket and prepare for deportation:
Perez’s dress slacks conceal the bulky electronic monitoring bracelet that ICE put on his ankle, but its weight is a constant reminder that his movements are tracked. That’s why he doesn’t leave the walls of his new home, where he can do nothing but wait: for immigration officials to reopen his case, for community members to bring him food, for his family to make the drive from Springfield to visit him.
To pass the time, Perez listens to music, attends church service, has visitors and, most importantly for him, reads the Bible.
“If I close myself in there, without my family and not hearing their voices and laughter, loneliness follows,” Perez said in his native Spanish. Having left poverty and violence behind in Guatemala at 18, the 35-year-old Perez said he dreads being completely separated from his children and wife — the loved ones he moved to the United States to give a better life, he said.
“Jesus said to love your neighbors as you love yourselves, and whenever you care for the least of these—people who are marginalized, oppressed, poor—you’re caring for me,” said Rev. Vicki Kemper of First Congregational Church, where Perez has been living. “So we take those scriptural injunctions and tenets of our faith very seriously.” Following Trump’s inauguration, the church at first voted to become a “welcoming sanctuary,” since it had no physical space for a sanctuary. Then came Perez’s imminent deportation:
When Perez’s deportation date came in September, however, the urgency of the situation meant local advocates had to make quick decisions.
“We went to our members and asked whether they thought we could provide sanctuary for him,” Kemper said.
There was some discomfort in the congregation with the rushed decision process, Kemper said. “But nobody said, and nobody has since said, that they didn’t want us to be doing this.”
Now, the church is dealing with the logistical challenges of providing sanctuary: finding 24/7 staffing to be in the building with Perez, bolstering security, installing a shower. Normally, the church’s doors are open to the community from morning to evening, but for now church officials are keeping the building locked to provide a secure place for Perez, Kemper said.
Like Perez, Morales is willing to keep fighting if it means a future, together, for her family here in the U.S. Some comforting news is that their churches are willing to stand by their side throughout:
“It would be taking the future away from my kids if they go to Guatemala,” she said.
While Dulce and Daniela attend an after-school program at the church, Morales puts David down for a nap and watches Spanish-language TV at low volume. Throughout the day she often looks at the photos and videos on her phone of her kids’ birthday piñata parties in her Long Island yard and talks with excitement about her big family and the most recent job she had at an instrument strings factory.
The church pastor, the Rev. Luis Barrios, said she will be there as long as needed, which for some immigrants in church sanctuary has meant a few days, weeks or many months, usually until the government grants a temporary stay of the deportation.
On a recent evening, the girls and David sat on the floor and tried to put together a toy volcano. Morales complained because Daniela ate only a hard-boiled egg and some mango for dinner. The girls did some homework and read in bed.
“I tell myself,” Morales said, “this is going to end one day.”