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Founded in 1981-82 in Arizona and California, the “Sanctuary” movement is believed to involve 280 churches or other religious organizations and some thousands of individuals. According to spokesmen, its purpose is to provide humanitarian aid to refugees fleeing political persecution by anti-Communist governments in Central America. According to Samuel T. Francis, author of Smuggling Revolution: The Sanctuary Movement in America (Capital Research Center, 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 605, Washington, D.C. 20006-2802; $5), Sanctuary’s real interest is in challenging and discrediting U.S. foreign policy in Latin America (El Salvador and Guatemala in particular), and infecting North American religious institutions with the liberation theology of the South. Sanctuary had its beginnings in the Southside United Presbyterian Church of Tucson, Arizona, whose pastor, the Reverend John L. Fife, publicly declared in 1982 its official policy of offering refuge to illegal immigrants from El Salvador. Southside’s example was immediately followed by churches in the East Bay area of northern California, and in December of 1982 Rosemary Smith, a Catholic lay worker, established the Casa Oscar Romero in San Benito, Texas, which, under the direction of a former Peace Corps worker and his wife, processed more than eight hundred immigrants in its first 15 months.

By the end of the year the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America had succeeded in its task of “[building] a network headquarters for the movement on a national scale”; three years later, Sanctuary had been endorsed by 28 affiliates of national religious organizations. On January 14, 1985, the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, Arizona, announced a 71-count indictment against 16 activists in Arizona and New Mexico, resulting in the conviction of eight defendants (including Fife) on May 1, 1986. (Three others were acquitted.) According to estimates, Sanctuary in its first two years of formal existence handled somewhere between a “few hundred” and “about three thousand” illegals—not a large number given the state of the border these days; but where Sanctuary is concerned, it is not the numbers that count.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Founded in 1981-82 in Arizona and California, the “Sanctuary” movement is believed to involve 280 churches or other religious organizations and some thousands of individuals. According to spokesmen, its purpose is to provide humanitarian aid to refugees fleeing political persecution by anti-Communist governments in Central America. According to Samuel T. Francis, author of Smuggling Revolution: The Sanctuary Movement in America (Capital Research Center, 1612 K Street, N.W., Suite 605, Washington, D.C. 20006-2802; $5), Sanctuary’s real interest is in challenging and discrediting U.S. foreign policy in Latin America (El Salvador and Guatemala in particular), and infecting North American religious institutions with the liberation theology of the South. Sanctuary had its beginnings in the Southside United Presbyterian Church of Tucson, Arizona, whose pastor, the Reverend John L. Fife, publicly declared in 1982 its official policy of offering refuge to illegal immigrants from El Salvador. Southside’s example was immediately followed by churches in the East Bay area of northern California, and in December of 1982 Rosemary Smith, a Catholic lay worker, established the Casa Oscar Romero in San Benito, Texas, which, under the direction of a former Peace Corps worker and his wife, processed more than eight hundred immigrants in its first 15 months.

By the end of the year the Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America had succeeded in its task of “[building] a network headquarters for the movement on a national scale”; three years later, Sanctuary had been endorsed by 28 affiliates of national religious organizations. On January 14, 1985, the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix, Arizona, announced a 71-count indictment against 16 activists in Arizona and New Mexico, resulting in the conviction of eight defendants (including Fife) on May 1, 1986. (Three others were acquitted.) According to estimates, Sanctuary in its first two years of formal existence handled somewhere between a “few hundred” and “about three thousand” illegals—not a large number given the state of the border these days; but where Sanctuary is concerned, it is not the numbers that count.