The Origins of a Political Trial: the Sanctuary Movement and Political Justice

The Origins of a Political Trial: The Sanctuary Movement and Political Justice Sophie H. Pirie* INTRODUCTION According to many accounts,' the Sanctuary Movement first arose in the United States-Mexico border region in response to a dramatic increase in the flow of Salvadoran refugees' to the United States in 1980. Churches responded by providing food, shelter and solace. At the time, all that most people knew about El Salvador was that its archbishop, Oscar Romero, had recently been assassinated after appealing to President Carter to stop sending arms to his country. The refugees, however, brought eyewitness and personal accounts of death squads roaming their country and of church and other humanitarian aid workers being tor- tured. These accounts provided a "traumatic awakening"' for many people, a trauma then intensified by the bureaucratic response of the Immi- gration and Naturalization Service (INS). Rather than recommending that refugees receive a temporary haven in the United States until hostilities in El Salvador abated and political conditions stabilized, the INS de- tained-essentially imprisoned-as many of the new refugees as it could * I would like to thank Prof. Bob Gordon for encouraging me to believe in this article enough to submit it for publication, and the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities for accepting it. I am also very indebted to the Journal's staff for their extensive editorial assistance. 1. See, e.g., MacEoin, A Brief History of the Sanctuary Movement, in Sanctuary: A Resource Guide for Understanding and Participating in the Central American Refugees' Struggle 14 (G. MacEoin ed. 1985) [hereinafter Resource Guide]. 2. In both United States and international law, "refugee" is a term of art which refers to people who have a "well-founded fear" that they will face persecution on account of their "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion" if repatriated. See Immigra- tion and Nationality Act of 1952, § 101(a)(42), Pub. L. No. 82-414, 66 Stat. 163, 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42) [hereinafter INA]; Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, July 28, 1951, 19 U.S.T. 6259, T.I.A.S. No. 6577, 189 U.N.T.S. 137; Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, opened for signature Jan. 31, 1967, 19 U.S.T. 6260, T.I.A.S. No. 6577, 606 U.N.T.S. 268. Collo- quially, the term refers more generally to persons displaced from the security of their homes, families, and communities particularly because of military hostilities, political instability, or human rights abuses. People who have entered the United States without proper visas and whom the INS has not yet deemed to be "refugees" are called "illegal aliens." To avoid using this latter and pejorative term, this article will refer to people fleeing instability and human rights abuses in Central America and claiming to be refugees, whether or not they are aware of the law's technical requirements, as refugees. When "refugee" is used as a term of art, it will be so clarified either specifically or by context. 3. MacEoin, supra note 1. Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol. 2, Iss. 2 [1990], Art. 7 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities [Vol. 2: 381 arrest and then set about deporting them as fast it could arrange, only minimally observing their rights to legal counsel and an opportunity to petition for asylum in the United States. In contrast to the relief efforts that followed such dramatic events as the Mexico earthquake and Cuba's 1980 expulsion of political prisoners and handicapped persons, local involvement did not wither this time. Rather, a church community had been awakened to two realities: The existence of widespread human rights abuses in Central America and the U.S. government's refusal to harbor people fleeing those atrocities-an interlocking and "institutionalized process of injustice obviously call[ing] for organized 4 counter measures. ' The Tucson Ecumenical Council and later the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America organized the sheltering and hiding of as many refugees as possible in church basements and "safehouses" in their communities. They also initiated a continuing public proclamation of the religious motivation of many of the people providing charity and sanctuary to the refugees. They solicited community-based legal services and immigration attorneys to assist the refugees to obtain asylum in the United States. They raised funds to bond refugees out of INS detention centers while. their asylum claims were pending. Finally, and most significantly for the political importance of the Sanctuary Movement, the Chicago and Tucson groups organized the dissemination of the refugees' message and sum- moned other faith communities and later whole towns, cities, and even states to consider providing similar charity assistance and sanctuary. These efforts helped some refugees find a haven in the United States and avoid deportation back to Central America.5 But they had no discern- ible ameliorating effect on immigration practices or policies concerning Central Americans. But this failure does not mean that these efforts were only significant as stop-gap or band-aid measures. Sanctuary participation taught people about certain political, religious, and legal realities from which they formed new perceptions about their world, their responsibility, and possibilities for action. "Sanctuary" began to carry a double meaning: It embraced not only sanctuary for those fleeing oppression, but also the sanctuary of the church as a forum from which to act upon political be- liefs. Direct confrontation between prophetic witnesses and potential participants in intimate but communal surroundings characterized this forum. Sanctuary work gave rise to the sense of a shared commitment to and participation in politicized moral activity. It also provided participants with a sense of belonging to a tradition of empowerment, rather than one based only in protest or charity. 4. Id. 5. Estimates of the number of refugees "successfully" harbored by the Sanctuary Movement range from 600 to 3000. Ryan, The Historical Case for Sanctuary, 29 J. Church & St. 209 (1987). https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjlh/vol2/iss2/7 2 Pirie: The Origins of a Political Trial 1990] Pirie As the Movement spread its relief activities across the country, and pro- pelled whole cities and some two hundred congregations into offering their confines as sanctuaries for Central American refugees, it ran increasingly and flagrantly afoul of United States immigration law which prohibits harboring "illegal aliens." 6 After first ignoring or dismissing the Move- ment as an expression of frivolous and misguided piety, the government became increasingly affronted by how the churches publicized their sanc- '7 tuary activities. Such publicity became a "trademark of the movement." In response, federal agencies undertook the extended, undercover "So- journer" investigation that led to the criminal indictment of various of the Movement's leaders and church workers. As the following pages will argue, the confrontation between the government and the Movement sug- gests that the interaction between the Movement's inner dynamics and its national and international environments had significant implications, not just for refugees seeking asylum, but crucially for the nature and quality of political participation in the United States. Rather than providing a participant-oriented telling of the Sanctuary story based on purportedly exhaustive, systematic, or statistically sound research, the following pages seek, on the basis of what facts and stories are presently known and available, to understand the Sanctuary Move- ment and its criminalization as a socio-political phenomenon with significance for practices of legality, social protest, humanitarian charity, and communitarianism in the United States. To so analyze the Sanctuary Movement, it is obviously necessary to "interpret" the various stories told by the Movement's participants, government actors, the media, and other observers. Although the mass media, by its claim to "all the news that's fit to print," often provides a useful source of information for penetrating a con- temporary phenomenon like the Sanctuary Movement, the media is neither the sole creator nor the most accurate reflector of an event's con- temporary or historical significance. Sometimes the creation of meaning and the writing of history are done by a political movement's own practices and self-reflective dialogues. But once one abandons the distilling ho- mogenization of media sources of fact and interpretation, the problem be- comes not just penetrating the.stories of and about a phenomenon, but managing their diversity and multiplicity. Which story of the many consti- tuting or concerning the Sanctuary Movement is the best one to retell? Whose viewpoint should inform that selection and retelling? One's inter- 6. See supra note 2. 7. Helton, Ecumenical, Municipal and Legal Challenges to United States Refugee Policy, 21 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 493 (1986). These statements have also been interpreted and promoted as efforts by Sanctuary participants to bear " 'public witness' to the belief that their actions are morally and legally justified." See Christie Institute, Information Package on Religious Sanctuary and Rights of Refugees (Apr. 15, 1985); Godar, The Sanctuary Movement: An Analysis of the Legal and Moral Questions Involved, 30 St. Louis U.L.J. 1221, 1224 (1986). Published by Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository, 1990 1 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, Vol. 2, Iss. 2 [1990], Art. 7 Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities [Vol. 2: 381 pretive purposes or goals can guide selection, but perhaps too teleologi- cally. Alternatively, a phenomenon's outstanding features may suggest foci and principles of selection and ordering. The Sanctuary Movement seems to present such a case. One finds extraordinary and alarming features in the government's treatment of the Sanctuary Movement: The legal briefs presented to the United States Court of Appeals by those convicted in the Tucson Sanctu- ary Trial, argue, for example, that the defendants were denied their con- stitutional right.

Load more