Rosa Sabido, along with several other members of the National Sanctuary Collective, held a virtual news conference Tuesday to call on the Biden administration to liberate the roughly 50 families who have taken sanctuary in churches throughout the country to avoid being detained or deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Members of the National Sanctuary Collective told their stories at the news conference and demanded that any immigration policy change grant them a stay of deportation and a pathway to U.S. citizenship. Only then would they comfortable leaving the houses of worship they’ve been confined to, many of them for years.
“We are holding this conference to send our message to President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas,” Sabido said Tuesday. (Mayorkas awaits confirmation by the Senate.)
“We are asking for our liberation from sanctuary. We need to be included in the immigration policy changes made by the administration, and we urge them to consider approving stays of removal and freedom from persecution, detention and deportation after we leave sanctuary to continue pursuing the legal paths available to us,” Sabido said.
According to Sabido, about 50 families live in sanctuary throughout the nation. Most sought sanctuary in the past few years as then-President Donald Trump sought to deport immigrants who were living in the U.S. illegally. The previous administration, under President Barack Obama, focused on deporting those who had criminal records.
Sabido, who has not obtained legal citizenship, took sanctuary in Mancos United Methodist Church on June 2, 2017. In the more than three years Sabido has spent in the church, her mother has died, along with five elderly dogs she left with a stepfather. She once operated two food trucks in Cortez, but now they sit idle behind her empty mobile home.
Sabido, who grew up in Mexico City, was 23 when she entered the United States in 1987 on a visitor visa to see her mother, Blanca, and stepfather Roberto, legal residents living in Cortez.
Her mother filed a petition for Sabido to become a permanent resident, a process that takes years. In the meantime, Sabido traveled between the United States and Mexico on a visitor visa.
In 1998, during questioning by immigration officers at the Phoenix airport, she admitted to working as a babysitter in the United States and was sent back to Mexico.
A month later, she crept through a narrow tunnel into Nogales, Arizona, and made her way to Cortez, where she sold food, prepared taxes and worked as a secretary at St. Margaret Mary Church.
She was eventually arrested by ICE and repeatedly applied for stays of removal – which she was granted six consecutive years. Her seventh request was denied, and in 2017 she was ordered to leave the country. She then took sanctuary at Mancos United Methodist, where she remains.
“We are tired of being ignored and left behind,” Sabido said Tuesday. “We are tired of being overlooked and not considered a priority. Please learn about our stories and hear our pleas.”
Shortly after Biden took office, the top official at Homeland Security issued a memo that ordered a 100-day pause on deportations. But on Tuesday, a federal judge in Texas issued a temporary restraining order that blocked the policy for 14 days following a legal challenge by Texas.
Sabido confirmed Tuesday that she and other leaders of the sanctuary movement had a brief meeting with an official from the Biden transition team on Jan. 5. She hopes that they were able to get their message across and potentially get the chance to speak with Biden himself in the future.
Several members of Congress, led by U.S. Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas, plan to join the sanctuary movement’s leaders in a letter demanding that Biden free those in sanctuary and make them a priority for relief.
David Bennion, executive director of Free Migration Project, called for Biden to overturn Trump’s policies.
“Sanctuary Leaders have been at the forefront of the struggle against oppressive and unjust immigration policies under the Trump administration,” Bennion said. “President Biden should show he is serious about turning the page on this chapter of history by freeing the Sanctuary Leaders, who each qualify for protection under the enforcement priorities guidelines his administration released last week.”
anicotera@the-journal.com