{"id":7939,"date":"2016-12-09T19:30:09","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T00:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=7939"},"modified":"2019-10-12T10:15:08","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T14:15:08","slug":"usa-inside-the-churches-that-are-leading-new-yorks-sanctuary-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=7939","title":{"rendered":"USA: Inside the Churches That Are Leading New York\u2019s Sanctuary Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY .<\/p>\n

An Article from The Nation Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

On the Tuesday after the election, two dozen pastors gathered in the back room of a Lower Manhattan church to begin plotting the resistance. Most of the faith leaders were immigrants, and all of them members of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, an interfaith network of congregations, organizations, and activists. Since its founding in 2007, the coalition has worked on the front lines in the fight to protect undocumented New Yorkers from detention and deportation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n Members of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City protest in front of the Federal Plaza\u2019s immigration services building. (New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City \/ Facebook)<\/center><\/p>\n

The meeting began with a prayer\u2014\u201cWe pray you will give us all the right to remain in justice, in solidarity and in truth\u201d\u2014delivered by a soft-spoken Mexican priest, first in Spanish, then in English. Updates from the past week followed\u2014reports of congregations in crisis, sleepless nights spent consoling worried parents, tearful children afraid to go to school. The mood was tense but focused, and before long they\u2019d arrived at the main item on the agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are here today to discuss the future of physical sanctuary,\u201d said coalition director Ravi Ragbir, a towering Trinidadian immigrant who once spent two years in immigration detention over a wire fraud conviction. Since his release, he\u2019s managed to avoid deportation through prosecutorial discretion, though he fully expects to be among the first targets of the upcoming raids. \u201cIt\u2019s time for us to start thinking more radically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since it emerged nine years ago, the coalition has acted in two distinct capacities. Publicly, they advocate for the city\u2019s undocumented residents, lobbying for reforms while hosting legal clinics and solidarity events. Many of the group\u2019s best known actions, like their monthly prayer walk around Federal Plaza to protest deportations, fall into this category. The second capacity, called physical sanctuary, is more discreet. Premised on the quasi-legal expectation that federal agents will not raid houses of worship, physical sanctuary is the act of secretly housing immigrants facing deportation. Sometimes the tactic is used to provide a temporary safe haven during an overnight raid, while other times it involves housing an immigrant for months as they await a court ruling. At least eleven Christian congregations in the city currently offer physical sanctuary.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the meeting, Ragbir explained, was to begin thinking about how to expand the number of congregations dramatically before Donald Trump takes office. \u201cWe need to reach out to every group in this city, to every representative,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need faith leaders to step up and show their support for physical sanctuary, because the present situation is only going to get worse.\u201d <\/p>\n

The present situation, Ragbir noted, is that the United States is currently expelling immigrants at a rate unprecedented in history. Under Obama, at least 2.4 million immigrants have been deported\u2014a 21 percent jump from the previous record, held by George W. Bush. And these raids aren\u2019t just happening in border states, like Arizona and Texas. Just a few weeks before the election, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents rounded up 25 undocumented workers during a raid on four restaurants in Buffalo. Such workplace sweeps were especially common during the Bush years, and as the legal director of the New York Immigration Coalition recently told The New York Times, the model may serve as a blueprint for the coming administration.<\/p>\n

Should President Donald Trump decide to ramp up deportations\u2014as he has repeatedly promised\u2014there\u2019s very little the rest of the government could do to stop him. While he\u2019ll need funding from Congress to increase the size of ICE, there are currently 14,000 ICE officers, agents, and special agents already in place. In the past, only a fraction of those officers have worked on tracking down undocumented immigrants, but a single memo from President Trump could reshape the focus of the agency overnight.<\/p>\n

The gathered faith leaders were painfully aware of the human cost of such an amped-up deportation regime. They know firsthand what it\u2019s like to lose members of their community to ICE sweeps\u2014to watch a parishioner banished to Mexico, forced to leave behind her two children, Michel and Heidy, ages nine and 13; to see a Haitian father of four sent to an immigrant detention center for a twenty-year-old drug conviction. In some cases, the coalition has blocked these measures by working through the available legal channels. In others, a more creative approach has been necessary.<\/p>\n

(Article continued in the right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Questions related to this article:\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
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The post-election fightback for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(Article continued from the left column)<\/p>\n

\u201cOur number one job right now is protect people,\u201d Donna Schaper, minister at Judson Memorial Church and a founder of the New Sanctuary Coalition, told the group. \u201cWe\u2019re about to enter a new, more radical phase of this movement. We need to get organized, fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so that\u2019s what they did. For the next ninety minutes, the faith leaders deliberated on their fast-approaching future. \u201cHow do we make sure a person can find us at 5 a.m. when ICE descends on their neighborhood?\u201d asked one pastor. \u201cWhat are the minimum necessities my church needs in order to offer physical sanctuary?\u201d asked another. And finally, the question on so many people\u2019s lips: \u201cWhat is the single most important thing we need to do next?\u201d<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Two days after the meeting, Ravi Ragbir stood in the basement of a different lower Manhattan church, addressing another circle of weary faces. About forty undocumented immigrants sat in silence before him, a mix of first-timers and long-serving members of the New Sanctuary Coalition. The goal of the meeting was to provide a different sort of sanctuary\u2014a venue for the community to, in the words of one activist, \u201cbe part of a movement that creates spaces where people can live in dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are here today to talk about our rights,\u201d Ragbir began, a translator helping him reach the mostly Spanish-speaking crowd. \u201cAnd to answer your questions of what comes next.\u201d Over chicken noodle soup, Ragbir and his fellow organizers did their best to address the concerns of the group. These questions were different than the ones they\u2019d fielded Tuesday\u2014less focused on the future of resistance than the pressing issues of the moment.<\/p>\n

One woman wondered if ICE could access the data she\u2019d turned over to IDNYC, the municipal identification card used by many undocumented New Yorkers. Another spoke of her husband, currently awaiting a court hearing at a New Jersey immigrant detention facility, and the impact that Trump\u2019s presidency could have on him. The most common fear was about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, an executive action issued by President Obama in 2012 to provide temporary work authorization and deportation protections to the children of undocumented immigrants. Donald Trump has promised to \u201cimmediately terminate\u201d the action, though it remains unclear what that would mean for the roughly 800,000 young immigrants currently receiving DACA protections. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf he does repeal it, I don\u2019t know what will happen to my son,\u201d said Judith, an undocumented resident of the United States for twenty years and longtime member of the coalition. Her two teenage sons have lived here their entire lives, but her oldest, 23, was born in Puebla, Mexico. After qualifying for DACA, he was able to get a work permit, a social security card, and a driver\u2019s license. \u201cIt was such a relief for him,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it feels like we are going back to the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the meeting ended, as the group filed slowly out of the church basement, Judith remained behind to help clean up. \u201cI wish they could see that we\u2019re not here to break the laws,\u201d she told me. \u201cWe are not here because we want to steal their jobs.\u201d Asked what she expected to change under a Trump presidency, she seemed reluctant to speculate. \u201cTrump has said so many things,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know what he\u2019s going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Judith and so many others, this is the frustrating new reality: While Trump\u2019s most incendiary rhetoric may be aimed at immigrants, he remains defiantly ignorant of the complex web of laws and executive actions that govern our immigration system.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Judith conceded that deportation remains a real threat. She tries to stay optimistic, she said, but the thought of her family being torn apart was never fully out of her mind. \u201cSometimes we, as parents, do feel guilty because we brought them,\u201d she said softly. \u201cBut we always thought that we would do better here.\u201d Still, it\u2019s not Trump\u2019s potential policies that top her list of concerns right now. \u201cWhat is more scary is that millions of people think the same way he does,\u201d she said. \u201cHow can we make millions of people change the way they think?\u201d<\/p>\n

That may seem like a rhetorical question, but it\u2019s not. In Judith\u2019s view, the ultimate goal of the sanctuary movement is to create a universal solidarity with immigrants, even among those who\u2019d like to see her expulsion. It\u2019s a radical idea, but one grounded in a lifetime of faith and activism.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Judith could can find solace in leaning on her community. \u201cI know the people will support us in any situations,\u201d she said, gesturing around the now empty room. \u201cOur work is to grow this group as big as possible, so that everyone understands what we go through.\u201d\t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY . An Article from The Nation Magazine On the Tuesday after the election, two dozen pastors gathered in the back room of a Lower Manhattan church to begin plotting the resistance. Most of the faith leaders were immigrants, and all of them members of the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, … Continue reading USA: Inside the Churches That Are Leading New York\u2019s Sanctuary Movement<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91,14],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-7939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-america","category-tolerance","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}