Transcript: How Today’s Debates on Immigration Were Shaped by a 1980s Church-Led Refugee Network

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 3-6-25):
NEWS REPORT: Now to the battle over so-called sanctuary cities.

NARRATION: Sanctuary cities that protect undocumented immigrants have once again become a flashpoint in the country’s debate over illegal immigration.

ARCHIVAL (ABC NEWS, 3-6-25):
NEWS REPORT: Clashes on Capitol Hill as sanctuary cities face new scrutiny.

NARRATION: But sanctuary cities aren’t new. They have a long and controversial history. The concept of sanctuary captured public attention in the 1980s, when Guatemala and El Salvador were in the middle of violent civil wars. Death squads targeted political opponents, including union leaders like Patty Barcelo’s father, who was kidnapped and tortured by the Guatemalan military.

PATRICIA BARCELO: He just disappeared. For months, they had him. One night, my aunt’s car pulled up and I see this man, and he was skin and bones, he looked so old. And he called my name, but I ran from him because he did not look like my dad.

NARRATION: The family fled the country, along with hundreds of thousands of refugees heading for the U.S. When one group of migrants nearly died crossing the border near Tucson, a local minister named John Fife got involved.

JOHN M. FIFE (PASTOR, SOUTHSIDE, PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 1969-2005): They told me about death squads, they told me about, uh, people who had been kidnapped and tortured. These were middle-class folks who were fleeing for their lives.

NARRATION: Fife started helping migrants apply for political asylum. But he quickly ran into a problem: The government said they were economic migrants in search of better jobs.

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 3-11-82):
ELLIOTT ABRAMS (ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE): They come here for a better life, they come here for better jobs, but that doesn’t entitle them to asylum.

JOHN M. FIFE: We’d take in people who had torture marks all over their body, and the immigration judge would order them deported the next day.

NARRATION: Fife and a small group decided to take matters into their own hands, sneaking migrants across the border and hiding them in churches.

JOHN M. FIFE: I assumed it was illegal, but I could not claim to be a Christian and not be involved in trying to protect refugees’ lives.

NARRATION: One of the refugees was Patty Barcelo. American church workers took her family across the border from Mexico.

PATRICIA BARCELO: We walked and walked, and they said once you have one foot on the other side, we will help you guys to have a new life, and they did.

NARRATION: Afraid he might be arrested, Fife did something unexpected – he went public.

JOHN M. FIFE: If we were public with what we had been doing, then we might have a base of support. The major breakthrough occurred when ‘60 Minutes’ called and said, can we film a border crossing?

ARCHIVAL (CBS, 60 MINUTES, 1982):
NEWS REPORT: They crawled through a hole in a fence and dropped into a ditch. Several minutes later they emerged onto a side street in Douglas, Arizona.

JOHN M. FIFE: We were inundated with phone calls.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 10-23-85):
NEWS REPORT: It is the concept of religious sanctuary: churches giving refuge to undocumented Salvadorans and Guatemalans.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 5-7-84):
NEWS REPORT: At least 100 sanctuaries are now open.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 10-23-85):
NEWS REPORT: 270 churches in 33 states using an underground network to smuggle aliens across the border.

JOHN M. FIFE: Colleges and universities got the idea, and then cities.

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 4-9-85):
NEWS REPORT: . . . voted to make its city a sanctuary for illegal aliens.

ANN CRITTENDEN (AUTHOR, “SANCTUARY”): The national press just ate it up. They were appealing. They were doing a moral cause.

NARRATION: For nearly three years, the sanctuary movement operated in the open, bringing Central Americans into the country, getting them immigration lawyers, and helping them start new lives. It was a dilemma for federal prosecutors, like Melvin McDonald.

MELVIN MCDONALD (UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF ARIZONA, 1981-1985): Usually you’re pursuing really bad people that have committed bad crimes. With the sanctuary movement, you had nuns, rabbis, priests. After a while I felt it was almost a farce. It went way beyond the religious argument that was being used, to be a political statement. They were basically sticking their nose at law enforcement, saying, we don’t care what your laws are.

ARCHIVAL (SOUTHWEST REPORTS, 1985):
JOHN M. FIFE: Sometimes you cannot love both God and the civil authority. Sometimes you have to make a choice.

MELVIN MCDONALD: We’re not going to let any group or organization, even if you’re people of the cloth, go forward and defy the laws of the country. We’re just not going to do it.

ARCHIVAL (GOVERNMENT FOOTAGE):
U.S. Immigration officers, federal agents! Open the door!

NARRATION: The government launched a 10-month undercover investigation to infiltrate the sanctuary movement.

JOHN M. FIFE: They sent paid informants and even tape-recorded worship services in our churches.

ARCHIVAL (GOVERNMENT FOOTAGE):
A file for sanctuary site information.

MELVIN MCDONALD: When you use the sanctuary of a church to plan the breaking of laws, I don’t think that the sanctuary should be protected.

NARRATION: Fife and other church workers were charged with smuggling and concealing undocumented immigrants. In the end, eight of them were convicted, but didn’t serve any prison time.

After religious groups filed a separate lawsuit, the government let hundreds of thousands of Central Americans reapply for asylum, including Patty Barcelo. She went on to raise a family and work at a hospital in Tucson.

PATRICIA BARCELO: We had an opportunity to stay here because of people that cared enough, because of people that wanted us to live.

NARRATION: The sanctuary movement faded from the headlines for decades. But then…

ARCHIVAL (KNTV, 11-25-14):
NEWS REPORT: The sanctuary movement has reignited once again.

NARRATION: . . . by the mid-2000s, things had changed. It wasn’t refugees in other countries seeking sanctuary, it was undocumented immigrants already living here, trying to avoid deportation. And it wasn’t just churches at the center of the controversy.

ARCHIVAL (CBS, KGAN, 12-2-16):
NEWS REPORT: The issue: so-called sanctuary cities.

ARCHIVAL (FOX NEWS, 7-16-10):
NEWS REPORT: Dozens of cities across America that protect illegals and do not report them.

Many so-called sanctuary cities, like Seattle, took a public stand by not asking about immigration status when providing services, and not always cooperating with federal immigration officials.

SHERIFF JOHN URQUHART (SHERIFF, KING COUNTY, 2012-2017): If people are afraid to call the police because they’re going to get deported, chances are they’re not going to report crimes, they’re not going to be good witnesses of crimes and we have to have people to cooperate with their local police if we’re going to have any effect at all on the crime rate.

NARRATION: But starting in 2015, crimes committed by undocumented immigrants became a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s campaign and first term in office, and while studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, the issue fanned a heated political debate about illegal immigration.

ARCHIVAL (NBC, 2-22-17):
NEWS REPORT: Millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are bracing for raids and deportations.

NARRATION: In response, during the first Trump administration, hundreds of new churches promised to give sanctuary again, decades after John Fife helped start the sanctuary movement.

JOHN M. FIFE: The ancient tradition of sanctuary is going to be as viable as it’s been for thousands of years, and it may be more relevant than ever. 

MELVIN MCDONALD: It’s déjà vu all over again. Don’t complain when somebody enforces the law just like we did in the 1980s.

ANN CRITTENDEN: There is unquestionably this gigantic anti-immigrant feeling and backlash. There is a mass movement that did not exist in the ’80s to deport people in the country illegally.

NARRATION: In 2016 Sixto Paz, who had been ordered deported to Mexico after overstaying his work visa, sought sanctuary in this church in Phoenix. 

SIXTO PAZ (TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH): It never would’ve crossed my mind that I’d end up here in sanctuary. I came because there is no other choice.

NARRATION: He was in the country illegally but he had also spent more than 20 years building a life here, and has three kids who are U.S. citizens.

SIXTO PAZ (TRANSLATED FROM SPANISH): I came here for my family, for my daughters, for my son, who still depend on me. It’s simple, you love your kids, so you’re not going to leave your family behind just because a judge says you have to go.

NARRATION: Paz stayed in the church in Phoenix for most of the first Trump administration. 

ARCHIVAL (KPNX-TV,  1-22-25):
NEWS REPORT: A new warning from President Donald Trump.

NARRATION: But  In his second term, Trump has threatened more aggressive immigration enforcement, prompting lawsuits . . . 

ARCHIVAL (KPNX-TV,  1-22-25):
NEWS REPORT: He’s directed federal prosecutors to investigate any state or local officials who do not enforce his immigration policies. 

NARRATION: . . . and he has changed policy to allow immigration officials to make arrests in schools and churches, calling into question the future of the sanctuary movement.

(END)