Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. From pretty much day one of Donald Trump's

presidency, the battle over immigration and deportation has been at the top of the agenda, from the so-called

Muslim ban to the negotiations over DACA and the fate of the dream, from the so-called Muslim ban to the negotiations over

DACA and the fate of the dreamers.

We're going to be spending the entire hour looking hard and deep at these issues, and we're

going to start here on a street in Manhattan where staff writer Jonathan Blitzer is on

his way into a church.

I'm standing outside the Holy Rude Episcopal Church in Washington Heights.

It's a giant neo-Gothic stone structure just across the way from the George Washington Bridge.

Standing out here because there are a few places where immigration authorities aren't allowed to go. One of those

places, churches, churches, schools, hospitals, according to regulations by immigration and customs

enforcement, ICE, agents can't go into these spaces in pursuit of undocumented immigrants.

Standing here precisely, because there's a woman inside who sought sanctuary.

She's a 33-year-old Guatemalan mother of three named Amanda Morales-Gueira.

She came here in August precisely because she worried that she'd be detained and deported by

ICE if she stayed in her hometown in Long Island, where she lived with her family.

She's here now, thanks to the generosity of members of this church, who have joined a new movement

called the New Sanctuary Movement. We're going to go inside.

It's pretty quiet here.

There's one person praying in these old wooden pews.

The floor creaks underfoot.

There's the sound, the hissing sound of old radiators, kind of plugging away in the nooks and crannies of this building.

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