Church protects immigrant dad from deportation
Man promised a visa after nearly one year spent in sanctuary
Facing deportation to Mexico and fearing separation from his children, Javier Flores Garcia took refuge last year in a Methodist church in downtown Philadelphia. Members of the congregation prepared a makeshift bedroom for him in the basement and promised to give him sanctuary, no matter how long he needed it.
On Wednesday, after nearly 11 months, Flores walked out of the church for good, a rare winner among the tens of thousands of unauthorized immigrants who have fought battles over deportation this year.
His case was resolved in an unusual way: He has been promised a special type of visa given to victims of crime who assist the police. But even so, Flores’ freedom gives the growing sanctuary movement, organized by houses of worship across the country, a small victory in the face of a widespread federal crackdown.
Flores’ case shows “that when we fight and when we resist, that we win,” said Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos, an immigrant rights organization in Philadelphia that took up Flores’ case.
President Donald Trump came into office vowing to rid the country of millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, and immigration arrests have risen by nearly 40 percent in 2017, compared with the previous year, to a rate of almost 400 people a day.
Since Trump was elected, 34 people facing deportation have publicly taken refuge inside of churches, including four this week, according to the Rev. Noel Andersen, a minister of the United Church of Christ and the national grass-roots coordinator for Church World Service, an ecumenical human rights and refugee resettlement organization. So far, seven of those 34 have left their sanctuaries after winning relief from deportation, he said.
Flores settled into life inside the church, helping out with painting and repairs, setting up tables for the church’s soup kitchen and praying in the magnificent Gothic sanctuary. His young sons, missing him at home, sometimes stayed with him overnight at the church.
“The hardest thing for me was all the suffering my kids had to go through, all the psychological trauma,” Flores said in a conference call with reporters. “But we knew that I had a strong case, and I needed to keep on fighting to be with them.”
His stay in sanctuary was among the longest, but given that President Barack Obama also made extensive use of deportations, there are two other people still taking refuge after more than a year and a half.
This week, churches in Raleigh, N.C.; Meriden, Conn.; and Highland Park, N.J., announced that they were offering sanctuary to a total of four people. The New Jersey church took in a couple who say they could face persecution for their Christian faith if they were deported back to Indonesia.