Denver Mayor Mike Johnston spent time in the nation’s capital last week, as Republican members of the House Oversight Committee asked him and several other Democratic mayors about their cities’ immigration policies.
The U.S. Small Business Administration also announced last week that it was moving out of Denver, citing the city’s immigration policies and referring to Denver as a “sanctuary city.”
While Denver has never called itself a sanctuary city, a church in neighboring Boulder did declare itself a sanctuary in 2017, ultimately leading Gov. Jared Polis to grant a stay of removal for an undocumented immigrant who had resided in the church for four years.
The decision of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder to declare itself a sanctuary goes back to a movement that began in the U.S. in the 1980s.
During that decade, people from El Salvador and Guatemala fled their native countries and sought asylum in the U.S., according to the Smithsonian Institute. Both groups were fleeing violence and civil wars, but their asylum requests were almost universally denied.
Faith groups across the U.S. were familiar with the dangers in El Salvador, particularly after the murder of Catholic archbishop Oscar Romero and four American nuns, Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, Dorothy Kazel and Jean Donovan in 1980.
According to the Smithsonian, many faith groups viewed the deportations of the refugees seeking asylum as both a violation of their morals and of the law. In 1982, six churches in Arizona and California publicly declared they would provide sanctuary for Central Americans, launching the Sanctuary Movement.
The Center for Constitutional Rights noted that sanctuary included shelter, medical care and protection for refugees from Central America.
The actions of the groups were done without legal approval, and the federal government sent undercover agents to the groups participating in the sanctuary movement. According to CCR, the undercover agents attended worship services, Bible study meetings and internal church discussions, and they tape-recorded many of the meetings and participated in transporting and protecting the refugees.
Indictments were brought against some of the movement’s participants in 1985. 71 counts of conspiracy and transporting and harboring refugees were brought against 16 people, including three nuns, two priests, a minister and lay volunteers, according to CCR.
58 refugees associated with the movement were also arrested as part of the government action.
According to an LA Times article from 1986, none of the 11 that were tried in October 1985 denied helping the refugees, but they argued that they acted out of religious conviction and were in line with international law.
The trial lasted seven months, and according to CCR, the judge in the case barred the use of the words, “death,” “kill,” “torture” and “refugee.” Arguments in the case were also limited by the judge, and the case was tried as an alien smuggling case.
Eight of the 11 on trial were convicted on 18 counts, but none of the accused saw jail time, as the judge sentenced them to probation.
The convictions didn’t stop the movement. Sanctuary activists continued their work throughout the 1990s and 2000s, which coalesced into the New Sanctuary Movement that formed in 2007, according to the Smithsonian.