Sanctuary Leaders Get Support, Vow to Fight

Religious workers in the Central American sanctuary movement said Tuesday that the federal indictment of 16 activists on alien-smuggling charges has strengthened their resolve and brought an outpouring of support for their cause.

But supporters of the interdenominational church movement across the nation also deplored the government’s use of Immigration and Naturalization Service agents and informants to gather evidence for the case, characterizing it as an attack on religious freedom.

On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment of 16 people, including two priests, three nuns, a minister and religious lay workers. The 71-count indictment, brought by a federal grand jury in Phoenix, includes charges of conspiracy, smuggling aliens into the country, and transporting, concealing and harboring persons in the country illegally. Each of the charges carries a maximum penalty of five years of imprisonment and fines ranging from $2,000 to $10,000.

Among those indicted were leaders of the national movement: the Rev. John M. Fife, pastor of the Southside Presbyterian Church of Tucson; James A. Corbett, a retired Tucson rancher; and Philip M. Conger, director of the Tucson Ecumenical Council’s Task Force on Central America. There also were arrests in Phoenix, Seattle, Rochester, N.Y., and Philadelphia.

The interdenominational sanctuary movement provides safe haven for Central American immigrants, principally from El Salvador and Guatemala. Leaders said that about 150 churches, temples, Quaker meetings and other religious groups nationwide have publicly embraced the movement.

The activists said that thousands of individuals aid the movement by transporting the refugees on an “underground railroad,” and by providing safe houses along the way.

“There is a lot of determination to move ahead with sanctuary and with the protection of refugees,” Fife said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “I’ve got a pile of messages on my desk a foot high from religious leaders around the country and the response is all the same. There is a lot of support.

“This will continue to be the same, open, above-board ministry it has been,” Fife said. He said the four government informants who infiltrated the movement by attending meetings with hidden recording devices “did not discover anything we had not already told everyone we were doing.”

Fife said that he did not believe the indictments--aimed at the leadership--would debilitate the sanctuary movement because it is not centrally run.

“Sanctuary is built on grass-roots, local initiative and leadership and it was intentionally kept like that in case something like this happened,” he said.

The National Council of Churches, the Quaker American Friends Service Committee and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Monday reiterated support for the sanctuary movement and urged the government to change its position on the issue.

Government Criticized

Dean Lewis, director of the Advisory Council on Church and Society for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) said in a telephone interview from New York: “The whole thing is clearly an attempt on the part of the government to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

Forty-five Unitarian Universalist ministers at a regional meeting in Palm Springs issued a statement criticizing the government for using informants.

“The use of government spies in our churches is destructive of religious freedom and contrary to constitutional guarantees,” said the clergy, who are from California, southern Nevada, Hawaii and Arizona.

“In spite of government threats, intimidations and surveillance, we have no choice as religious leaders other than to continue to stand with our Central American neighbors even at the risk of our own arrest and trial,” they said.

In addition to the indictments, the government has detained 65 refugees as material witnesses in the case. Although none are believed to have been seized in churches, all apparently were aided by the sanctuary movement. The seizure prompted worries among refugees living under sanctuary in Seattle that government agents will “come get us” in the church.

“It’s impossible to sleep. My nerves are just so tight,” said Maria Vazquez, a Salvadoran mother who lives at the University Baptist Church in Seattle. Vazquez--which is not her real name--said: “They could come here. They could come get us, too.”

But Duke Austin, INS spokesman in Washington, said that INS policy not to enter churches to make arrests remains unchanged and added that all the refugees detained Monday had been released on bail or their own recognizance Tuesday. He also stressed that the government investigated a smuggling ring, not a church.

“These indictments were not against a church,” he said. “Our indictments are based on evidence, not occupation.”

Contend It Is Legal

Austin noted that the 16 people indicted were not all members of the same church or even all from the same city.

Sanctuary proponents argue that providing haven for refugees from violence-torn nations in Central America is in compliance with the 1980 Refugee Act, which provides for granting legal asylum to such persons, and with the international law. They say that many of the refugees face death if returned to their countries.

But the U.S. government considers the immigrants to be fleeing economic problems rather than political persecution and thus ineligible for political asylum.

Sanctuary workers in Seattle, Rochester, and Tucson--the cities where the 65 refugees were detained as material witnesses--said Tuesday that they have received a barrage of telephone calls from people around the country asking how they can help.

In Seattle, a monthly sanctuary meeting normally attended by 15 supporters drew more than 50 people Monday night, and on Tuesday about 150 people demonstrated their support for sanctuary in front of the federal building there.

L.A. Groups Meet

In Los Angeles, representatives of 23 church sanctuaries met to discuss what they could do, as did representatives of 14 religious sanctuaries in Tucson. Similar meetings were held or scheduled in San Diego, Rochester and other cities. Demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns and fund-raising drives are being planned.

Timothy Nonn, who is organizing the first national conference on sanctuary, scheduled in Tucson next week, said he does not believe that the indictments will keep people from working in the movement.

“Spirits are high and people are not paranoid. People always understood the risks and the context. . . . People will probably have to go to jail, but it is nothing like what the refugees will have to face if they are deported,” Nonn said in a telephone interview from Tucson.

Also contributing to this story was Times staff writer John Dart.