‘Sanctuary’ for Central Americans Becomes a UC Cause

Despite a federal crackdown on similar efforts by ministers and churches in Arizona, student groups on three University of California campuses have formed “sanctuaries” to help Guatemalan and Salvadoran refugees who are in the United States illegally.

No UC sanctuary leader has said that any refugee is hiding on any campus, but UC Riverside students--who claim to have started the movement a year ago--said they provided off-campus housing last spring for a mother and two young children from El Salvador.

An Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman in Washington said this week that the students involved “aren’t above the law and could be prosecuted.” The spokesman noted that a federal grand jury in Arizona last month indicted 16 church-affiliated activists for providing sanctuary, or protection from arrest, to illegal immigrants from Central America.

Nonetheless, leaders of the growing campus sanctuary movement say they will continue their fund-raising efforts to pay for food, shelter and transportation for undocumented Salvadorans and Guatemalans.

“We answer to a higher law,” said Deborah Allan, 32, a graduate student and leader of the sanctuary movement at UC Riverside.

“We believe these refugees have a legitimate right to seek asylum in the United States and are being denied that right,” said Brian Moffat, 27, chairman of the UC Irvine sanctuary movement.

Allan said there will be a conference Feb. 9 on the Riverside campus, aimed at expanding the sanctuary program to the California State University and community college systems.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- The U.S. has said the immigrants are not true political refugees, but are coming for economic betterment.

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University of California officials so far have shown a hands-off attitude toward the movement--neither giving it official blessing nor condemning it.

UC Irvine, with the recent formation of a Sanctuary Club, is the latest campus to join. Duke Austin, an INS spokesman in Washington, said this week that immigration authorities simply must enforce the law.

“It’s illegal for anyone to hide, protect or harbor any illegal (immigrant) from the federal government,” Austin said, adding:

“We prosecute without regard to someone’s motives. Whether it’s a church group or the University of Oompity Oomph doesn’t make a difference. If people are conspiring to break the law, the federal government prosecutes. No one is above the law.”

Ron Kolb, Berkeley-based director of communications for the University of California system, said Thursday, “There is no formal university position on the issue of sanctuary.”

Kolb added that the university “will condone no violation of the law,” but he said the UC students so far have been careful to keep refugees off campus.

“The university reminds students that federal authorities say it is a felony to harbor illegal immigrants, and the university also stresses to the students that no university money, including student fees or university property, can be used (in sanctuary work),” Kolb said.

The students involved in sanctuary work, however, are permitted to meet in UC facilities. At the Irvine campus, the Sanctuary Club operates from the University Center building.

And the Feb. 9 statewide conference will meet in Watkins Hall, on the Riverside campus.

“We want to get all the colleges participating so that we can have a network,” said Allan. “Eventually, we want to spread this (sanctuary movement) throughout the nation.”

So far, the three UC campuses involved in the sanctuary movement have served mainly as fund-raising and political action centers. The only illegal immigrant from Central America known to have been on any of the campuses was the unidentified Salvadoran woman who lived in a “safe house” near UC Riverside.

Allan said the woman talked to student groups on the campus last spring, and, after about a month, moved to Los Angeles with her two young children. “We just provided her one long stop,” Allan said.

At UC Berkeley, graduate student Joan Cardellino said a number of Guatemalans and Salvadoran refugees are being housed by churches near the campus, but she would not say how many.

“We give our help to these East Bay churches,” she said. “Our whole idea was not to house refugees, because the churches provide that service. But we’ve had campus-wide food drives. We’re also doing education work on campus.”

The Berkeley graduate-student government association, like its Riverside counterpart, passed a resolution designating the campus a “sanctuary.” UC Irvine’s graduate-student government plans to vote on a similar resolution later this year.

Such resolutions are symbolic, according to the student leaders, since the university has no legal power to grant sanctuary to anyone.

While sanctuary is a privilege long associated with organized religion, the INS said in its legal actions in Arizona that U.S. churches have no right to aid or harbor illegal immigrants. Among those indicted by the federal grand jury in Phoenix were three nuns, two priests and a Presbyterian minister.

UC Irvine faculty members active in the Sanctuary Club include Roni Lebauer, 28, of Orange, director of the English as a Second Language program, and Stephen Vlastos, 41, a visiting professor in the history department.