Seattle’s laws look past immigrants on the run

SEATTLE - When a coalition of pro-immigrant church groups kicked off the “new sanctuary” movement on May 9, 2007, Seattle was one of five cities chosen to host a kickoff press conference.

The venue was fortresslike St. Mark’s Cathedral, a stone-and-brick building that housed Salvadorans and Nicaraguans during the sanctuary movement of the 1980s.

“What’s at the heart of this is that we have 12 million people who’ve been productive members of our communities,” said the Very Rev. Robert Taylor, then dean of Episcopal St. Mark’s. “It’s not a family value to tear these families apart.”

Seattle is one of the most liberal cities in the country on immigration and one of eight cities visited by The Washington Times in its examination of the sanctuary movement - its activists, pastors and the illegal immigrants they are sheltering. The subjects offered firsthand accounts of living on the run, insights into the goals of the movement and spiritually based justifications for flouting U.S. immigration laws.

In 2003, the Seattle City Council adopted an ordinance barring police from checking on the immigration status of people they arrest unless they had reason to think the suspect was guilty of a felony crime.

Washington state has long been a hub for Asian immigrants. The state, particularly its eastern half, is a top agricultural producer, a provider of forest products and a stop on the way to Alaskan salmon canneries - all in need of cheap, unskilled labor.

Maria Elena, an assumed name for a single Mexican mother of two small girls, divides her time between her apartment and a Seattle church that has offered her sanctuary.

Because an abusive former boyfriend lurks about her hometown in El Salvador, going back there is not an option.

In addition, her eldest daughter, 6-year-old Natalia, is profoundly handicapped. Salvadoran doctors had told her mother to seek help overseas, i.e. the United States, because there were no decent facilities in the country. The family briefly lived in Silver Spring, but after the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office ferreted them out, they fled to Seattle. They arrived at the downtown Greyhound station, knowing no one.

“I went to a Presbyterian church where I told a woman my story,” Maria Elena said. ” ‘I guess I’ll have to call Immigration,’ the woman there told me. So I grabbed my kids and my suitcase and got out of there.”

She ended up at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, a 400-family congregation that worships in a plain brick building on a ridge overlooking Puget Sound. A sign in front of the church proclaims: “The Good Samaritan was an undocumented alien.”

“They gave me food and clothes,” Maria Elena said. “Ever since I got here, they have treated me well.”

A friendly, animated woman in her early 30s with her hair pulled back in a bun, she would train as an orthodontist if she were legal. Meanwhile, Natalia is getting much-needed therapy.

“I do not want to settle for less because of my daughter,” she said. “That is my driving force.”

The church has raised $10,000 to support her and other illegal immigrants. St. Mary’s also has renovated a spacious second-floor apartment - down the hallway from the Rev. Tony Haycock, the parish priest - to make room for yet another sanctuary family.

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