SAVE SANCTUARY

New Sanctuary Coalition
4 min readSep 30, 2020

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#AbolishICE Now!

Recently, ICE defiled a sanctuary with hatred and violence and proved themselves to have no respect for what a sacred space actually is. By allowing ICE to kidnap and detain Binsar Siahaan, an Indonesian asylum-seeker, on the grounds of Maryland’s Glenmont United Methodist Church, our government violated their own policy, an unprecedented breach of trust that is just the latest in this government’s cruel and relentless attacks on immigrants. Until now, the U.S. federal policy allowing faith communities to protect and house immigrants seeking sanctuary was recognized as a sacred imperative. But following this violation, no sanctuary can ever again truly feel or be safe.

As faith leaders working to provide sanctuary in all its forms to immigrants through our work with New Sanctuary Coalition, we take this egregious overstep personally. Since our founding in 2007, we have striven to not only offer refuge, community, safety, and services to immigrants, but to also call on our country to respect a centuries-old tradition, that of faith communities modeling an embodiment of morality that transcends political partisanship and calls us to love our neighbors in radically hospitable ways.

Forever enshrined in the various religious teachings upon which our country was built, the faithful and the just have willingly acknowledged a responsibility to the immigrant. In the Hebrew Bible we are, in no uncertain terms, commanded to: provide legal protections for the immigrant and respect them as if they were a citizen; not to wrong or oppress the immigrant; and above all to love the immigrant. In the Gospels, Jesus reveals that he is one with the immigrant in the parable of the sheep and the goats. The prophet Muhammed was himself an immigrant and the Quran maintains that it is our duty to grant asylum for those who seek it. Buddhism, with the philosophy of dependent co-arising, also teaches that when any one of us is harmed we are all harmed. We believe that, to actually live into any potential true greatness of this country, the ethical and humane treatment of immigrants must be foundational to our American ethos and self-identity. We believe that, when our government fails to live up to the promise of America, communities of faith must be allowed to take up the torch of justice and tend the lamp of welcome for all who seek to make this land their home. This is a central religious tenet for us and any governmental infringement thereof undermines the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

In the increasing glare of the realization that our government’s word is not enough, it is now painfully clear that if we wish to fulfill what we see as a religious obligation to protect the rights of our immigrant friends we cannot depend on empty words alone. Today, as the Trump administration continues to ramp up affronts and threats to immigrants, houses of worship are more important than ever.

Paula Gunn Allen taught us “The root of oppression is loss of memory.” But we have not forgotten. Evidence leading up to the moment has been mounting for years. We were stunned in 2018, when a faith community was arrested for attempting to stop the kidnapping of an immigrant they had been housing. We were maddened in 2019, when the Trump administration began to impose outlandish fines on immigrants in sanctuary. We were sickened when the Chair of our Board, the Reverend Kaji Dousa, was surveilled and investigated because of her work with migrants at the southern border. But with each new outrage, we have grown less surprised and more committed. This most recent violent invasion of sacred space is the last straw.

With the bosses at ICE now decimating its 2011 rule to respect “sensitive locations,” we can no longer trust that it will ever again respect any faith community’s right to do what our faith compels us to do. Given the propensity of certain politicians to cavalierly throw around the term “religious liberty” to encite division and oppose such fundamental protections as a woman’s constitutional right to choose and every person’s right to love and marry, our own faith communities no longer have any assurance that our faith-based call to welcome the stranger, protect the oppressed, and offer sanctuary to the refugee will be respected. With this latest case added to the examples of arrests, fines, and the surveillance leading up to it, our own religious liberty has been abused again and again.

The fact that these same politicians have nothing to say about this defilement of our religious liberty speaks volumes about their apparent racist, xenophobic aims. We, people of compassion and deep faith, continue to believe in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that, “the arc of the universe bends towards justice.” However, we also know that the bending of this arc requires faithful vigilance, if we are to see it through to the end. We call on all people of moral conscience to join us in loudly condemning ICE’s continued attacks on sacred spaces and communities, until the definition of the word “sanctuary” is respected, upheld, and actively embodied by all.

In solidarity, rage, and hope,

Ravi Ragbir, Executive Director, New Sanctuary Coalition

Reverend Micah Bucey, Multi-Faith Organizer, New Sanctuary Coalition

Preston Neimeiser, Rabbinical Student, HUC-JIR

Preston Neimeiser, Rabbinical Student, HUC-JIR

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New Sanctuary Coalition
New Sanctuary Coalition

Written by New Sanctuary Coalition

For over 10 years, the New Sanctuary Coalition has been led by and for immigrants to stop the inhumane system of deportations and detentions in this country.