This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

In the 1980s, the United States experienced a refugee crisis.

Thousands of Central Americans were fleeing brutal civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.

They were traveling north through Mexico and crossing the border into the US.

We covered this history in the show last week if you haven't heard that episode yet.

Go listen now. This is part two.

In response to this mass migration, a network of churches across the country declared themselves

sanctuaries. That's producer Delaney Hall. In defiance of federal policy, some of these churches helped

smuggle Central Americans across the border and offered shelter to people who were threatened

with deportation. And most of the churches did this publicly without trying to hide what they were

doing. By the mid 1980s, the sanctuary movement had become very visible and also very controversial.

Here's a report that aired on NBC around that time.

In the eyes of the congregation at St. Mary's Church, they are heroes. In the eyes of the

federal government, they are criminals who smuggle aliens into this country illegally.

The government didn't like that churches were openly defined immigration law in harboring

undocumented immigrants. The Immigration and Naturalization Service, now known as Immigration and

Customs Enforcement or ICE, contended that many of these people didn't have legitimate asylum claims.

The agency's stance was that many of these migrants had come to the US to find jobs,

not because they feared political persecution.

A refugee from El Salvador. The administration contends he and others like him have come here for

economic reasons, but the young man listed other reasons for fleeing his homeland.

Matanzas killings, repression, repression, misery,

...