The Undocumented Americans (One World Essentials)

by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

In the United States, the tradition of immigrants claiming sanctuary in churches dates back to the 1980s, when a network of churches took in nearly five hundred thousand refugees fleeing the death squads in Central America. An underground railroad of sorts moved people through Mexico to more than five hundred places of worship across the country. After sending in undercover informants to infiltrate the movement, the federal government charged two Roman Catholic priests, a nun, and a Protestant minister with conspiracy to smuggle aliens, and they faced jail time of up to twenty-five years. They got probation instead. But the tradition of sanctuary is even more ancient than that. In the Old Testament, Mosaic law determines that some cities should be set aside as “cities of refuge,” where an individual who accidentally killed someone could be protected from prosecution. Saint Paul taught that any stranger who asked for help could be an angel undercover, and medieval churches would establish a range outside their walls within which refugees could not be arrested. There was an ancient Greek belief that someone turning away a supplicant ran the risk of turning away Zeus himself.