Burglars or Snoopers? : Break-Ins in 11 Cities Are Aimed at Churches, Groups Involved in Sanctuary Movement

Churches and legal aid groups working with Central American immigrants have been the targets of break-ins in which intruders rifled sensitive files in at least 11 cities over the last 15 months, according to sanctuary workers and some officials who say they suspect the incidents were politically motivated.

The most recent of the estimated two dozen break-ins occurred in Los Angeles on Dec. 30, when intruders sawed through a wall of the Pico Rivera United Methodist Church, pulling out sanctuary-related files, church membership lists and tax records, according to Pastor Fernando Santillana. As in most of the previous break-ins, nothing was stolen.

“I just thought it was one of those isolated cases at first,” Santillana said. “Then I found that quite a few churches involved in the sanctuary movement had been broken into. . . . It’s too many to be a coincidence. It seems to me either the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) or the FBI may be harassing churches in the sanctuary movement or else maybe some right-wing groups are doing it,” he said without offering evidence to substantiate his suspicion.

Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), who heads the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights, said in an interview this week that he has received similar complaints from more than a dozen sanctuary groups around the country.

“We’re very interested in these break-ins,” he said. “We have had people call us who say they suspect the FBI or the INS is behind this. We don’t think so. We think the FBI and the federal intelligence agencies no longer engage in this type of operation.”

Congressional investigations during the mid-1970s revealed that several federal agencies, including the FBI, had been involved in vast illegal counterintelligence operations designed to disrupt dissident groups. The investigations led to stricter regulations against such operations by federal agencies.

Edwards, who participated in those investigations, said he is requesting the FBI this week to investigate the break-ins to determine if foreign agents, possibly from Guatemala or El Salvador, may be involved. The sanctuary movement has offered refuge to immigrants from both countries, saying that their governments have histories of killing people they suspect of opposing them.

Lane Bonner, an FBI spokesman in Washington, said Edwards’ request will be considered.

Both Bonner and Greg Leo, spokesman for the INS in Washington, dismissed allegations that federal agents were involved in the break-ins as “absurd.”

Workers in the sanctuary movement who have been victimized by the odd break-ins say they have no evidence to implicate anyone. But they say they are disturbed by similarities in the crimes.

“There seems to be a pattern emerging in these break-ins,” said Adelita Medina, coordinator of the Movement Support Network at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has begun coordinating reports of such incidents.

“Nothing of monetary value is taken,” Medina said. “Usually file cabinets are broken into, and a lot of files that deal with refugees or other solidarity work are gone through, as well as church membership lists. We believe that this is harassment either to gather information or to intimidate people or both.”

Medina and a dozen other activists said their suspicions have been heightened by the recent federal investigation into the sanctuary movement, which led to the current trial of 11 religious and lay workers in Tucson for conspiracy involving illegal alien smuggling.

The bulk of the evidence presented by the federal government during the trial has come from informants who in some cases secretly tape-recorded church meetings. Edwards has already announced plans to hold a hearing on those practices, which he says may violate the First Amendment, after the trial ends.

The break-ins began in late 1984 and have occurred since then in at least 11 cities: Berkeley; Boston; Cambridge, Mass.; Detroit, Guadalupe, Ariz.; Los Angeles; Louisville, Ky.; New York, Philadelphia; Phoenix and Seattle. There are about 300 churches nationwide that have declared themselves sanctuaries for refugees from Central America.

The Pico Rivera United Methodist Church is considered perhaps the most active sanctuary church in the Los Angeles area. Only a few hours before the break-in in the early morning hours of Dec. 30, Santillana said, a Salvadoran refugee had been housed in the exact room in the church that the intruders chose to enter. The refugee had once been sought as a witness by the federal government to testify in Tucson.

Once inside the church, Santillana said, the intruders used what appeared to have been an electric saw to cut holes in the wall to his office, where church records were kept. The intruders left typewriters and calculators untouched, he said, but rifled a book on Fidel Castro and Christianity and another document involving U.S.-backed rebels in Nicaragua.

Two characteristics of the entry were similar to other burglaries, he said: The intruders apparently had used a chain saw to enter, and they put the church’s membership record and tax books atop the desk when they left.

“To us, this was a shock,” he said. “But we are more determined than ever to keep working.”

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy assigned to the case said that the incident “appears to be a normal burglary.”

‘No Workable Clues’

“There doesn’t appear to be anything uncommon except that there was no property taken,” said Deputy Marshall Schexnayder, who added there were “no workable clues.”

Some sanctuary offices, particularly those in Cambridge, have been hit several times. The Old Cambridge Baptist Church, a sanctuary church that houses several Central American-related support groups, was broken into five times between December, 1984, and December, 1985, leading the City Council to order a police investigation.

An initial police report to the City Council said the intruders “were interested only in the organizational files and data” of the offices. One police sergeant confirmed that nothing of value was taken, but he dismissed the importance of the break-ins.

“This particular church has a lot of street people hanging around there,” Sgt. Fred Centrella said. “And they keep saying CIA or FBI involvement in this. Well, maybe they have something to hide there, and that’s why they’re so upset. If they could tell us what they’ve got in those files, then maybe we’d have something to investigate.”

David Sullivan, Cambridge city councilor, said the City Council is upset that police “have come up dry” on the investigations and plans to ask for a congressional investigation of the break-ins.

Among the other incidents in 1985:

Feb. 25--Intruders broke down the door of the office of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant office and other related offices in the basement of Trinity Methodist Church in Berkeley, taking only an old typewriter. The office coordinates sanctuary services for 25 East Bay sanctuary congregations.

June 17--The Los Angeles office of Amnesty International was broken into and an extensive file of 1,500 Hollywood celebrity donors was taken. David Hinkley, regional Amnesty director, described the file as “sensitive material” that profiled Amnesty celebrity supporters, many of whom are active in Central American issues. The group hired a private investigator instead of calling police to avoid creating an incident, said Hinkley, who is not sure if this incident is related to the sanctuary burglaries.

July 16--Intruders broke into the University Baptist Church in Seattle, which has given shelter to 40 refugee families since 1982. The Rev. Donovan Cook, the pastor, had been listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in Tucson. Mail on sanctuary was opened, and mailing lists were reviewed.

Sept. 16--The office of Jesuit priest and immigration attorney David Myers in Guadalupe, Ariz., was broken into and a file of his political asylum cases involving Guatemalans and Salvadorans was stolen.

Oct. 25--The office of the Central American Refugee Project in Phoenix was broken into twice in one weekend. Susan Giersbach Rascon, staff attorney for the project that handles political asylum cases for 1,000 clients, said the intruders took out months of telephone logs and other records, leaving bloody fingerprints on the logs from hands cut on glass during the break-in. An old typewriter and computer were taken.

Nov. 22--Intruders broke into the home of Father James Flynn, pastor of an inner-city sanctuary Catholic church in Louisville. Flynn said his files had been opened and reviewed. Books on theology, slides taken during a trip to Nicaragua, and a new file on a family about to leave El Salvador were left open. No items of value were taken.