Editorial note: Since this article was
written, Stacy Merkt was convicted on
all three felony counts. Sentencing is
scheduled for June 27th. Sister Diane
Muhlenkamp, of the Indiana-based Poor
Hand Maids of Jesus Christ, chose not
to stand trial with Merkt. In pre-trial
plea bargaining, Muhlenkamp agreed
to testify for the prosecution in exchange
for a government promise that charges
will not be brought against her for one
year.
On May 14–the day of Merkt’s
conviction-Phil Conger learned that
the government had decided to charge
him with four counts of transporting
illegal aliens.
In Central America, refugees are sub-
versives; here they’re deportable illegal
aliens. If you aid refugees in Central
America you become a subversive or
dead. If you aid them here you become
afelon.
The Chicago Religious Task Force on
Central America
On February 17, Diane Muhlenkamp,
a Catholic nun, and Stacy Merkt, a lay
worker at Oscar Romero House–a
diocesan-supported refugee center for
Central American refugees-were de-
tained at 4 a.m. along with three Sal-
vadoreans and a journalist near San
Benito, Texas. The six were picked up
during the first leg of the Salvadoreans’
Lindie Bosniak is a legal worker and
collaborator with San Francisco’s Cen-
tral American Refugee Defense Fund
(CARDF). Jane Rasmussen, an attor-
ney, is CARDF’s executive director.
CARDF, a project of the National
Lawyers Guild, provides information
for and maintains communication with
lawyers, legal workers and others in-
volved in social service and legal poli-
cy advocacy for Central American
refugees. For more information, write
CARDF, 558 Capp Street, San Fran-
cisco, CA 94110, (415) 285-8040.
journey to sanctuary in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where the Old Cam-
bridge Baptist Community was await-
ing them. Immigration and Naturaliza-
tion Service (INS) officials stopped
their car-owned by the Catholic Dio-
cese of Brownsville, Texas-without a
warrant.
A second set of arrests occurred on
March 7th near Nogales, Arizona. The
U.S. Border Patrol detained religious
lay workers Phil Conger and Katherine
Flaherty, who, at the time of their
arrest, were acting as representatives
of several congregations in Tucson
which provide sanctuary and transpor-
tation relays for Salvadorean and Gua-
temalan refugees. They were detained
along with four Salvadoreans. The six
were stopped in an automobile regis-
tered to the Southside Presbyterian
Church, site of the first sanctuary de-
clared in the United States on March
24, 1982.
These episodes mark the first direct
attacks leveled against the church-led
movement to provide U.S. sanctuary to
Salvadorean and Guatemalan refugees.
Besides aiding thousands of Central
American refugees by providing them
with shelter, transportation to sanctu-
ary in other locations and other mate-
rial assistance, the two-year old move-
ment has proved to be an important
educational and mobilizing tool against
U.S. involvement in Central America.
The cases have proceeded different-
ly in the two states, however. After
being held for several hours, Conger
and Flaherty were released from cus-
tody. Despite threats, the government
has brought no charges against them.
Behind the delay appears to lie a sharp
difference of opinion between local
and Washington-based federal officials
about whether to press for convictions.
The INS Regional Commissioner for
Los Angeles, Harold Ezell, character-
ized the case as “extremely sensitive
and of great import to the Immigration
Service. . . . We’re not going to let it
fall through the cracks.” Ezell added
that his office would be clearing its
statements with INS Commissioner
Alan C. Nelson in Washington.
In contrast, the U.S. attorney for
Tucson held a press conference on
March 28 in which he responded to
questions about the directives he has
received on the case from Washington.
“I can tell you truthfully I have not
talked to a single person from the De-
partment of Justice. . . . They deem this
to be a local matter. We’re treating it as
a local matter, and it’s not being or-
chestrated by anyone anywhere.”
According to Conger, who is Project
Director for the Tucson Ecumenical
Council Task Force on Central Ameri-
ca, the U.S. Justice Department wants
to use the arrests as an opportunity to
crack down on the nationwide sanc-
tuary movement, while the local U.S.
attorney’s office is more reluctant to
proceed with the case since it is aware
that sanctuary efforts enjoy significant
local support.
The Texas authorities don’t seem as
concerned with the movement’s popu-
lar support. By most accounts, Muhlen-
kamp and Merkt’s encounter with the
law was accidental. Such routine checks
are common to the border area. Never-
theless, the decision by the government
to prosecute was deliberate and marks
an end to the practice of avoiding con-
frontation with sanctuary activists. On
March 13, the religious workers were
charged with three felony counts, while
the decision to indict Dallas Times
Herald reporter Jack Fischer was de-
layed, pending further investigation.
Muhlenkamp and Merkt were released
on personal recognizance bonds and
are currently awaiting trial, which, ac-
cording to their attorneys, will prob-
ably be set in May or June. They each
face up to 15 years imprisonment and
$15,000 in fines if convicted.
The refugees were charged with the
misdemeanor crime of entry without
inspection. They were released on
$9,000 bond each, an unusually high
amount for persons charged only with
illegal entry. Their bond was posted by
Lutheran church groups. Jury selection
for the refugees’ trial is scheduled to
take place on May 3. If convicted, they
will likely be subpoenaed to testify as
material witnesses at the trial of the
4
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
4 REPORT ON THE AMERICASreligious workers.
The offensive against the sanctuary
movement in Texas has not stopped
with these arrests. On April 13, INS
arrested Jack Elder, directer of Casa
Oscar Romero. He has been charged
with transporting illegal aliens. The
government is currently holding three
Salvadorean refugees who received as-
sistance from members of the under-
ground railroad and sanctuary com-
munities in the Rio Grande area. Father
Wally Kusuboski, a defense attorney
for arrested lay worker Stacy Merkt,
says the government is expected to use
these refugees as material witnesses to
try to bring indictments against three or
four more sanctuary workers in the Rio
Grande valley. Kusuboski believes that
the government is attempting to close
down the underground railroad in Texas,
thus preventing Salvadoreans from mak-
ing it further north. By their presence
and their personal testimonies, refugees
in communities throughout the country
help increase the already deep-felt op-
position to U.S. policy in Central
America among church groups and in
the public at large.
Sanctuary and the Law
Those involved in the sanctuary
movement know full well that the act of
providing refuge for Central Americans
fleeing their countries is defined as a
felony by U.S. law. That has not de-
terred the mushrooming of the move-
ment. According to the Chicago Re-
ligious Task Force on Central Ameri-
ca-clearinghouse for much of the na-
tion’s sanctuary activity-in only two
years, the movement has grown to em-
brace over 1 10 congregations of almost
all religious denominations. Renny
Golden, a founding member of the task
force, estimates that well over 70,000
people could be charged with defying
U.S. law for providing shelter to refu-
gees or for participating in the under-
ground railroad.
And the movement continues to
grow. According to The New York
Times, at least one church joins the
sanctuary movement weekly, while
hundreds of others help by providing
food, clothing and other assistance.
The movement has also begun to find
fertile ground in universities. On Feb-
ruary 21, the Graduate Student Assem-
bly at the University of California at
Riverside declared the university an
extended stop on the underground rail-
road, and other California graduate
schools have since met to consider do-
ing the same.
Each congregation or community
that considers providing sanctuary
painstakingly examines the decision to
challenge U.S. law. Those who have
chosen to participate do so out of an
allegiance to a moral imperative which,
under current conditions, entails risk-
ing imprisonment, fines and felony
records. Individuals convicted of har-
boring, transporting and conspiring to
transport persons not lawfully in the
United States face up to five years in
jail and a $2,000 fine per alien for each
count..
“We are breaking the laws of our
government because of a higher moral
law . . . the need to save the lives and
protect the liberty of these refugees,”
explains Dick Simpson of Wellington
Avenue United Church of Christ in
Chicago.
Jim Corbett, a Quaker and one of the
founders of the sanctuary movement,
similarly states, “For those of us who
would be faithful in our allegiance to
the Peaceable Kingdom, there’s also
no way to avoid recognizing that in this
case collaboration with the U.S. gov-
ernment is a betrayal of our faith. …
When the government itself sponsors
the torture of entire peoples and then
makes it a felony to shelter those seek-
ing refuge, law-abiding protest merely
trains us to live with atrocity.”
MAY/JUNE 1984
5
MAY/JUNE 1984 5Sanctuary is a concept which has a
long and solid tradition in Judeo-Chris-
tian doctrine. Historically, the churches
played a critical role in the underground
railroad for runaway slaves during the last century, and were also in the fore- front of the movement to provide pro- tection for conscientious objectors and AWOL servicemen during the Vietnam War.
U.S. church people say too that
they’ve been challenged to re-examine
their moral and political obligations at
home by the witness of Central Ameri-
can Christians. “The willingness of the
church in Latin America to stand with
the poor, the tortured and the oppressed
is a very powerful example,” says David Chevrier, pastor at Chicago’s
Wellington Avenue Church. “Their
fearlessness in the face of incredible
intimidation and terror, torture and
death. It makes what we’re doing so
little and the strength needed to do it so minimal in light of it. The connection
between faith and what the church is
doing in Central America is very im-
portant.”
Less Than 4% Granted Asylum
The compelling force behind the
sanctuary movement has been U.S.
government refusal to recognize Sal-
vadoreans and Guatemalans as bona
fide refugees. The United States signed
the United Nations Protocol on the
Status of Refugees in 1967 and its
principles were integrated into U.S.
law through the Refugee Act of 1980.
The protocol and the Refugee Act re-
quire the United States to grant politi-
cal asylum to anyone who possesses a
well-grounded fear of persecution on
the basis of race, religion, nationality,
membership in a particular social group
or political opinion.
Nevertheless, those Central Ameri-
cans who apply for political asylum
have little chance of success. In keep-
ing with U.S. foreign policy concerns,
the State Department routinely recom-
mends against granting political asy-
lum to Salvadoreans and Guatemalans.
Immigration judges and the INS con-
sistently interpret the Refugee Act in
extremely narrow terms, thus render-
ing most applicants ineligible for asy- lum.
It is difficult to calculate the num-
bers of individual asylum applications
that have been submitted, and of these, how many have been approved and
denied, because INS no longer keeps
such records. But according to Lou
DeSitter, Legal Services coordinator of
the El Rescate refugee center in Los
Angeles, of the total number of cases
decided in the last three years, less than
4% of the applicants were granted po- litical asylum. Moreover, many refu-
gees never apply for asylum. Some are
coerced into waiving their rights by
signing “voluntary departure” forms;
others lack access to legal resources to
help them file their claims.
In addition to the international obli-
gations created by the Refugee Pro-
tocol, international humanitarian law
defines Salvadoreans and Guatemalans
who have fled their countries as refu-
gees of armed conflict. The Fourth
Geneva Convention prohibits the forci-
ble return of refugees to their country
of origin. Yet since 1980, more than
35,000 Salvadoreans have been deported
from the United States. Available fig-
ures indicate that a significant number
of repatriated refugees are found dead-
usually with signs of torture-within a
few months of their return.
The most widely known case of the
death of a deported Salvadorean is that
of Santana Chirino Amaya. Chirino
Amaya was found decapitated in the
department of San Vicente one month
after his deportation from the United
States. The Central American Refugee
Project in San Francisco recently re- ceived a letter from a deported Salva-
dorean who reports that upon arrival at
San Salvador airport, all the deportees
were separated from the other passen-
gers and detained by the police. Each
of them was questioned and registered,
and all their belongings confiscated.
U.S. Violates International Law
In 1981, the office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refu-
Carol Larsen of Wheavon United Methodist with an arriving Salvadorean in 1982.
REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6gees (UNHCR) found that the United
States has engaged in a “systematic
practice” of returning Salvadoreans to
their country, regardless of the merits
of their claims for asylum. Such prac-
tice, according to the UNHCR report,
is in violation of the UN Protocol on the
Treatment of Refugees, which bans the
deportation of a refugee to a country
where persecution is likely to occur.
Although the United States has failed
to comply with international law, the
Reagan Administration has made no
move to remedy the situation. Central
Americans are treated as illegal aliens-
or economic refugees-and afforded
no recognition as persons fleeing from
persecution in countries at war. The
United States does have a specific legal
mechanism for allowing persons escap-
ing violence and persecution to remain
here until hostilities in their home
countries have ceased. This “extended
voluntary departure status” has been
extended to refugees of many countries
over the years, and is currently in effect
for persons from Poland, Afganistan,
Lebanon, Uganda and Ethiopia.
Late last year Congress adopted a
resolution calling upon the president to
grant extended voluntary departure
status to Salvadorean refugees who
have been in the United States since
January 1983. Moreover, the DeCon-
cini-Moakley Bill introduced last No-
vember essentially calls for the halting
of all deportations of Salvadoreans un-
til the situation in their country is such
that they may return safely. Yet the
Administration has so far rejected peti-
tions from Congress and a broad spec-
trum of individuals, organizations and
community groups asking that Salva-
doreans be permitted to find temporary
safe haven in this country, and the
deportations continue en masse.
Churches “Playing Games”
Until the Texas and Arizona inci-
dents, the Immigration and Naturaliza-
tion Service had apparently sought to
avoid confrontation with the sanctuary
movement. Obviously aware of the
sanctuary activity, they chose not to
act. Bill Joyce, assistant general coun-
sel to the INS told the Christian Sci-
ence Monitor in 1982 that “this [the
sanctuary movement] is just a political
thing that the churches are dreaming up
to get publicity, a game to pressure the
government to allow Salvadoreans to
stay here. If we thought it was a signifi-
cant problem, then maybe we’d take a
look at it. But there are plenty of illegal
aliens out there.”
Yet in spite of its disparaging por-
trayal of the movement, INS has al-
ways emphasized its legal right to take
action whenever it sees fit. “We are
permitted to enter church property with
a proper warrant of inspection. God
will not strike us dead if we go in. But
as a practical matter, we have more
than we can handle apprehending il-
legal aliens at the worksite,” said
David Ilchert, northern California re-
gional director of INS.
That the sanctuary movement did
not face notable harrassment by the
U.S. government until the Texas ar-
rests does not, however, mean that the
Immigration and Naturalization Service
has been entirely passive with respect
to the growing support movement for
Central American refugees. On the
contrary, it has been escalating attacks
against exiles and curtailing their mea-
gre legal resources. For example, INS
commonly coerces Salvadoreans into
waiving their rights, including the right
to counsel, the right to a hearing and
the right to apply for political asylum.
Refugees are often physically or ver-
bally abused during arrest and while in
detention, and attorneys are routinely
denied access to their clients. These
and other violations of the refugees’
due process rights are being challenged
by a class action suit in Los Angeles,
Orantes-Hernandez v. Smith. A Fed-
eral District Court judge in Los Ange-
les ordered a preliminary injunction
against these practices in April 1982
while the case is pending. Though the
injunction is still in effect, violations
commony occur. The case will be tried
this summer.
The government’s most recent tactic
in its offensive against the refugees and
their defenders is the transferral of
large numbers of apprehended aliens to
detention centers in remote rural areas,
where their bond redetermination and
deportation hearings also take place. In
recent months, for instance, most Sal-
vadoreans detained in San Francisco
have been sent to a holding facility in
Florence, Arizona. Such a practice iso-
lates the refugees from any family,
friends and other support systems they
may have in this country, and renders it
virtually impossible for them to gain
access to legal assistance and to bond
out of jail while they await their depor-
tation hearings. Feeling virtually cer-
tain they will be sent home after a long
incarceration, many opt to return at
once.
Underground Railroad Surfaces
In response to the arrests of the
Texas sanctuary workers, sanctuary
and underground railroad activists or-
ganized a public car caravan carrying a
Guatemalan refugee family of seven to
sanctuary. The fifteen-car caravan left
Chicago on March 16 and arrived in
Weston, Vermont on March 24, doubled
in size. The cars were covered with
signs calling for “INS Hands Off” and
“Save Central American Refugees.”
According to Renny Golden, the or-
ganizers decided that if it was no longer
safe to transport refugees clandestinely,
they would surface the railroad, forc-
ing the Reagan Administration to make
public “the sinister nature of its depor-
tation policy,” and with it, “its bloody
foreign policy.” The caravan received
significant media attention and public
support along the way, and the authori-
ties did not interrupt or harrass the
caravan in any manner.
Whether or not the federal authori-
ties plan to launch an all-out offensive
against the sanctuary movement is still
not apparent. The political costs in-
volved in prosecuting large numbers of
religious workers and dragging refu-
gees out of churches before national
television cameras would be high. Yet
if they don’t take action, the sanctuary
movement will continue to help turn
public opinion against U.S. involve-
ment in Central America. The govern-
ment is aware that the real goal of the
movement is not to proliferate sanc-
tuaries and clandestine transportation
relays for Central American refugees.
Rather, its goal is to eliminate their
necessity by stopping the U.S.-funded
war in Central America. It is this un-
derlying objective, and the potential of
the movement to help achieve it, that
represents its true challenge to the gov-
ernment and the real strength of its
work.
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