Sanctuary Churches: Who Controls The Story?

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.9K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2017

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

Code Switch's Adrian Florido has been covering the new sanctuary movement for us. For this episode, he spoke to key players to understand why hundreds of churches are ready to start a public fight with the current administration to prevent deportations of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He also looks at why the movement has to wrestle with important questions: Who controls the story and the message? How much say does an individual or family have in how a sanctuary church leverages their story? Adrian also has a candid talk with Jeanette Vizguerra, who is living inside a Colorado church, as she fights a legal deportation battle. It could be years before she is able to step outside the church. As Adrian reports, the decisions, intentions and relationships complicate the work of sanctuary churches.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Code Switch. I'm Shereen Marisol Maraji and I'm Jean Demby Shereen.
0:04.8	Today we're talking about churches, places that provide for people in need and people who are in
0:09.1	danger and right now there are a lot of people in need. That's right and congregations all over
0:14.2	the US are stepping up and offering to protect immigrants facing deportation. It's being called
0:20.0	the new sanctuary movement but it's actually decades old and our Code Switch teammate Adrian
0:25.6	Flodido is here with more on that. Hey Adrian. Hey too. So Adrian this is happening now because of
0:30.3	the Trump administration right? Yeah because people are afraid that the Trump administration is going
0:34.9	to be coming after a lot more undocumented immigrants than the Obama administration did.
0:40.0	Under Obama a lot of immigrants here illegally were allowed to stay in the country if they didn't have
0:46.3	a serious criminal conviction. Even people in a lot of cases who had already been ordered deported
0:52.0	they were often allowed to stay as long as they checked in with their immigration agents from time
0:56.4	to time. But now under the Trump administration we're hearing these stories about people showing up
1:00.9	for these meetings with their immigration agents and being detained or deported whereas you know
1:05.4	in the past they'd been allowed to stay. So instead of going to these meetings some people are
1:10.0	choosing to hide out in churches. A woman named Jeanette Vesghera her story has gotten a lot of media
1:15.6	attention and we're going to talk to her in a bit. Jeanette was about to check in with her
1:19.6	immigration agent but was afraid that if she did she'd be deported. Right so last month she actually
1:25.8	took refuge she moved into a church in Denver and on her first day there she gave a press conference
1:31.2	from the inside. Even though it's been eight long years up to this point I know that this is not
1:40.1	the point to give up and my fight is going to continue. So that was on February 15th and she hasn't
1:46.0	come out of the church since. So this is what's been called the new sanctuary movement. Hundreds
1:51.7	of churches have stepped up across the country to say that they're basically going to become places
	...

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