Churches have been a safe space for undocumented immigrants for decades. During the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, churches played an important role, offering shelter, protection, and even help with legal services for Central American refugees fleeing civil war.
Today, it’s estimated that over 800,000 undocumented immigrants call L.A. County home.
President Trump’s promised crackdown on immigrants has made people like Wendy Perlera afraid.
“It’s nerve-wracking it brings an anxiety that is unexplainable,” said Perlera, the senior warden at an Episcopal church in the L.A. area.
Some of the congregants at her church are undocumented, and lately, it’s become difficult to answer this question: Are churches a still sanctuary?
“It’s a yes and no,” Perlera said.
Los Angeles is a sanctuary city, meaning local law enforcement is under direction not to help federal immigration officers. But protections for churches have become less clear.
The Obama and Biden administrations prohibited immigration arrests in so-called “sensitive” locations such as schools, hospitals, and churches. Earlier this year, the Trump administration rescinded that policy.
“ICE officers can come into our church during our service, and they could potentially come in and intimidate,” said Perlera.
Perlera hopes it never comes to that. But more recently, after religious groups sued, a federal judge declined to block the Trump administration’s policy change.
As immigration officers carry out the president’s directive to make more arrests, the church community is finding ways to fight back through information and activism. One recent morning at Perlera’s Episcopal church, parishioners sought answers from legal expert Laura Urias, the program director of RepresentLA, a program at the nonprofit Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
She fielded questions from attendees about whether local police were cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
“They can’t help ICE, pursuant to state law,” Urias reassured them.
The church has been organizing these monthly know-your-rights trainings. They’re designed to help immigrants understand how best to handle an encounter with ICE agents and understand their rights as an individual.
“Everybody remember, you have the right to remain silent, you do not have to answer any question, remain calm,” Urias said.
Urias has a background in advocating for legal representation and providing deportation defense to marginalized immigrant communities in California, and the training are one way to educate people about their rights regarding ICE.
Perlera’s Episcopal church partnered with a faith-based organization called C.L.U.E, or Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, to help orchestrate the trainings. CLUE is a faith-based group that works to mobilize people of different faiths for social justice and immigrant rights.
In addition to the trainings, local faith leaders from CLUE have helped other churches mobilize their communities to make their voices heard.
Some members turned out March 1 for a rally called the March for Dignity. The march included people of various faiths and political backgrounds who came out to support the undocumented community.
“They’re afraid to even come worship in their churches. We wanted to bring out the whole faith community. We wanted to let them know that they are not alone in this struggle,” said Jennifer Gutierrez, executive director of CLUE, who was there.
CLUE is part of what’s called the Southern California Rapid Response Network, a group of local NGOs that aims to let people know about ICE arrests in their communities, and to run down false alarms. They partner with Latino churches around L.A.
Gutierrez said she wants to ensure that undocumented people feel seen, and make sure they feel safe within their places of worship.
“The whole community of people of faith, Jewish, Muslim, variety of Christian denominations, Unitarians, etc, were all with them,” said Gutierrez. “We wanted to show that out here in the street.”
For now, the status of churches as sanctuaries is at stake, but L.A. church leaders like Wendy Perlera are doing what they can to continue protecting their communities.
“There is hope, we know that churches have played a very big role in immigration,” Perlera said. “We still have that voice as a sanctuary city, as a church in every state, you still have the right to be able to close the door. It’s educating our priests, educating our parishioners...protecting our most vulnerable individuals, because they are neighbors.”
While the safety of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. remains in question, Perlera and others say there is hope that in educating the community, making their voices heard in public spaces, and keeping churches as safe as possible to worship, they can help undocumented individuals and their families weather the storm.