Giving back: Family in sanctuary connects Germantown residents to resources
By: Kelly Ann Brennan, Matthew Altea, Melany Nelson, and Louis C. Hochman
On the last Friday of every month, you can find Oenita and Clive Thompson preparing a community dinner featuring authentic Jamaican food at the First United Methodist Church of Germantown.
The Thompsons, who are undocumented Jamaican immigrants, have lived in sanctuary at the church since August 2018. They left Jamaica to seek asylum after Oenita’s brother was murdered, she said.
The family lived in New Jersey for several years under supervision but were slated to be deported last year. Just days before that could happen, they were provided sanctuary at the church in Germantown.
More than a year later, the smells of oxtails and macaroni and cheese fill the church once a month, serving as a reminder of the family’s roots.
The Thompsons, along with another family living in sanctuary at the church, serve the food about 200 Germantown residents who are encouraged to pay for a plate to support the family’s living costs while residing at the church.
But the Thompsons wanted to do more for the community. With the help of the church’s Senior Pastor Bob Coomb, the family has brought community speakers and local agencies to speak to residents at the dinners with the hope of connecting people to resources in the community.
“It’s just neighbors reaching out to be neighbors, and recognizing the people who are in sanctuary as neighbors,” Coomb said. “It’s hundreds of people who have been through here. I don’t know what more you can ask for than that.”
Other undocumented families live in sanctuary in Germantown and can do so because of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s “sensitive locations” policy. The agency does not arrest people in schools, places of worship, health care facilities or at rallies and marches, according to its website.
Supaya Reyes and her family are living at First United in Germantown. Nearby, at the Germantown Mennonite Church, Carmela Appolonio Hernandez and her children are in sanctuary.
Reyes and the Thompson’s applied for asylum in the U.S. but were denied. ICE routinely checked on the families as they lived undocumented for several years, but immigration policy crackdowns changed things.
The New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, an interfaith immigrant justice group, helped get the families to Germantown before they could be deported.
The Thompsons hadn’t planned to become Germantown residents. Philadelphia hadn’t been their home. But Oenita Thompson said the Germantown community embraced her family through the dinners and other acts of service.
Residents purchase groceries for the families at First United of Germantown and drive their children to and from school because their parents cannot leave the church without the risk of being detained and deported.
Judy McDowell, a Mount Airy resident, was one of several volunteers who drove the kids to school and purchased groceries for the families.
Most of the time, the groceries on the list are solely for ingredients for the monthly community dinners Oenita Thompson said.
But McDowell often asked Oenita Thompson for the list of items that didn’t make it on the first shopping list. Tearing up, she recalled a time where she had left feminine hygiene products for her and her daughter off of her grocery list.
“I was so embarrassed to ask for feminine products for me and my daughter,” she said. “Judy knew I needed things that was not on that list.”
“I was so grateful that someone was willing to help me, and she did not make me feel bad because at that time I could not afford to purchase feminine products,” she added.
McDowell does not deliver groceries to the family anymore, but the two have developed a friendship, McDowell said.They talk on the phone, and McDowell drops by the church to talk to Oenita Thompson when she feels like.
Oenita Thompson enjoys the friendship because she is treated “like a normal person,” she said.
Still, the family awaits policy change and a chance to live in the country without fear.
In the meantime, they continue to host community dinners and hope to one day live in Germantown permanently.
“I really want to be where people care about people,” Oenita Thompson said. “They are not doing it for money or fame, they are doing it because they really care.”
