Reagan fails to derail Sanctuary

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After a lapse of 120 years an underground railroad is again operating in the United States. This time the travelers are not slaves fleeing Southern plantations, but Salvadorans running for their lives from torturers and death squads. If they reach the United States, they believe... they can find asylum until it is safe to return home.

But the Reagan administration refuses them asylum. If they recognize these desperate people as refugees, they admit that the Central American governments the United States supports are bloody dictatorships. So they say these immigrants are only seeking an easy life.

In many cases the government packs the refugees into planes and flies them directly back to El Salvador where the death squads are waiting. So notorious have these one-way "death flights" become that Western Airlines backed out of a contract to fly them.

Many U.S. citizens are unwilling to stand by while their government violates the tradition of asylum and the moral precepts of humanity. Like the Quakers who led thousands of slaves to freedom in the 19th century, 120 churches today have organized a network of safehouses and sanctuaries to support and protect the refugees. Originating in the border areas, particularly in Arizona, an underground railroad is conducting refugees to sanctuaries as far away as Boston and Seattle.

The tradition of church sanctuary goes back to the middle ages when priests would shelter refugees from tyrannical rulers. No agent of the king could pursue a fugitive onto church property. Churches no longer have such temporal power but their moral authority and the separation of church and state in America have shielded congregations from obvious intrusion by government agents.

Despite this, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has not stopped at the church door in its pursuit of undocumented workers. In Tucson, Ariz., undercover agents attended meetings at the Southside United Presbyterian Church. The meetings discussed the plight of the refugees. Material on about 100 tapes was turned over by the snoopers to a federal grand jury in Phoenix.

On Jan. 10, the grand jury indicted 16 people, among them two Catholic priests, three nuns, a Protestant minister, and a retired rancher. They are charged with violating immigration laws and could face five-year prison sentences. At the same time the INS arrested 60 refugees in such widely separated cities as Seattle, Philadelphia, and Tucson.

The INS has made it clear that this is only the first step in a continuing assault on the right of asylum. "There are 50 or 60 aliens we should be picking up pretty soon, said Harold Ezell, regional director of the INS in California. Further indictments of church workers are to be expected, according to Ezell, challenging the concept of sanctuary. "There is no federal immunity because someone makes a declaration that their intentions are pure, said another INS official.

Supporters of the right to asylum are not intimidated and are preparing their lines of defense. Foremost is the right of churches to conduct their business without government snoopers in their midst. Evidence obtained by secret taperecording of a church meeting is inadmissable in court, according to civilrights lawyers. Churches are seeking assurance from the local police that there are no bugs in their meeting rooms.

The Rev. Gus Schultz, pastor of the University Lutheran Church in Berkeley, Calif., told Socialist Action that the impasse on refugees could be solved if the INS would grant them the right of voluntary departure. This means that en's reproductive rights.

almost disappeared. "

cuted.—THE EDITORS the refugee could stay until it was safe for him to return home. Most refugees who have left spouses and children behind are anxious to get back to them. So far the INS has turned down this proposal.

The wide range of denominations involved, including Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Catholics, indicates a broad base of support in the religious community. Behind them stand the many millions in the Hispanic community and the estimated 300,000 undocumented Central Americans living in the West.

SPEECHES we win "You're on your own, kid, once you're born!" The hundreds of thousands who are actively opposing U.S. intervention are also allies in this fight to save the lives of Central American refugees.

Public rallies and protest demonstrations are bringing the facts before everwider audiences. Funds are needed by the Sanctuary movement to carry on the fight. Checks should be sent to the American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102. Checks should be made out to the National National Sanctuary Defense Fund.