When Sanctuary Isn't

The current deportation of undocumented (and some documented) immigrants crisis is reaching a crescendo, soon to be a human crisis never experienced in this country (if one overlooks the February 19, 1942 executive order 9066 ordering the internment in concentration camps for Japanese Americans, or the earlier ongoing slavery of African Americans over the past centuries).

Cruel scenes of a Latino woman, awaiting brain surgery, bound hand and foot and taken from a hospital; young men and women who thought they had protection as Dreamers arrested as “drug lords and really bad dudes” for having no less than a traffic violation; others who have pending charges but arrested and deported before they are even tried and found; and children afraid to go home from school lest their parents be arrested and gone.

And now ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is being ramped up, as the White House explained, the president wants to “take the shackles off” of agents, an expression the officers themselves used time and again in interviews to describe their newfound freedom. With a 10,000 agent increase to the already 40,000 agents (even now the largest law enforcement agency in the country) risking an influx of quickly trained and inexperienced agents, and joining ICS with what sort of motivation?

National Catholic Reporter published a good piece on this whole issue. One of the points they raise is that “sanctuary” has no standing today in civil law.

A second point raised is, that from a legal standpoint, a church is not a generally a “living space” which requires a warrant to enter. Granted, churches, hospitals, and some other institutions are classed by ICE as “sensitive locations”, not to be entered, and ICE agents are not likely invade a church, because it’s bad PR for them. But they could. Already there are reported incidents of ICE agents laying in wait outside churches operating homeless shelters.

Reading of such reminds me of an incident, actually more than just an incident, that took place in San Francisco in the 60’s. Protesting against the Viet Nam war was at it’s height when the president of South Vietnam visited that city. He was to speak at one of the hotels atop Nob Hill and his arrival there was greeted by hundreds of protestors. Also situated atop Nob Hill is Grace Cathedral, the cathedral of the Episcopal diocese of California, just a block away from the hotels. The San Francisco Police Department deployed their mounted officers, using batons, to disperse the large crowds of protesters, many of whom ran to seek sanctuary within in that

great cathedral. As the protesters fled into the building the officers on horses rode right in behind them, chasing and striking the protestors with their batons. With only three major doors into the building, the scene became one of carnage, what the San Francisco Chronicle later described as like shooting fish in a barrel. On the scene was Fr. Stan Rogers, the cathedral’s canon chancellor and vice dean. In order not to give the protestors a sense of false security, or sanctuary, he ordered that the doors be closed while cathedral staff escorted the protesters out through less obvious exits. Grace Cathedral took a lot of flack for closing its doors. Stan, a good friend, told me later that it was the hardest decision he ever had to make. But it was the right decision.

Stan died in December 1977, collapsing in his chair immediately after preaching at the cathedral’s major service.

Last Wednesday, Henry Rousso, one of France’s preeminent scholars landed at Houston's George Bush International Airport after an 11-hour flight, en route to Texas A & M University in College Station. There, he was to speak Friday afternoon at the Hagler Institute

for Advanced Study. As the historian attempted to enter the United States, he was detained for more than 10 hours -- for no clear reason, and almost deported. Rousso is an Egyptian-born French citizen (France is a beneficiary of the U.S. visa waiver program which permits French citizens to enter the United States without a visa). Rousso described the arresting agent as “inexperienced.”

Last Sunday Rousso wrote in the French edition of the Huffington Post:

"What I know, in loving this country forever, is that the United States is no longer quite the United States."

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