A few months earlier, he had received a letter from a Lutheran pastor in Los Angeles who described an incident in East LA. INS agents had chased a Salvadoran teenager into his church, eventually dragging him out in handcuffs. Members of the church were outraged that the agents had violated a sacred space, and when the pastor wrote the local INS office to complain, the district director apologized and promised to forbid his agents from making arrests in churches, schools, or hospitals.
