Verdicts Steel Supporters of Sanctuary

The conspiracy convictions of sanctuary activists in Tucson has strengthened, not lessened, the resolve to help political refugees from Central America, leaders of the sanctuary movement said Saturday.

“If anything, it has stiffened the determination of our people,” said the Rev. Maurice Ogden of the Unitarian Church of Orange County in Anaheim.

“Nothing has changed, in our opinion, about the situation in Central America,” Ogden said. “These people are still fleeing terrorism. The fact that the (federal) court in Tucson was unwilling to hear such an argument, we believe, is an indication of . . . the justice of the argument.”

Eight Arizona sanctuary movement activists were convicted Thursday in Tucson of 16 felony charges of helping illegal aliens fleeing Central America. Three other defendants were acquitted after a six-month jury trial in U.S. District Court.

Range of Charges

The charges ranged from felony conspiracy to actual participation in the smuggling, transporting, harboring or aiding and abetting of illegal aliens.

Meanwhile, at a meeting in Los Angeles on Saturday, Southern California sanctuary supportgrs also vowed to continue to help smuggle refugees into the United States.

“We will continue serving the people of Central America. It will not stop us; we will continue to be a public sanctuary as we have for the past three years,” said the Rev. Fernando Santillana, pastor of Pico Rivera United Methodist Church, one of about 40 Southern California congregations that have declared themselves “sanctuary churches.”

Santillana and other sanctuary supporters met Saturday in a Los Angeles church to plan strategy in light of Thursday’s convictions.

He conceded that movement activists are apprehensive that the guilty verdicts may trigger more arrests or indictments of people who defy the federal government by transporting or harboring illegal aliens.

“We are only human,” Santillana said. “But we are a people of faith. We are worried, but not afraid.”

The jury in Arizona deliberated more than 47 hours over 9 days on 30 felony and misdemeanor charges against the 11 defendants, who included a Presbyterian minister, 2 Roman Catholic priests, a nun and 7 church lay workers.

6 Guilty of Conspiracy

Six were found guilty of conspiring to smuggle illegal aliens, mostly from El Salvador and Guatemala, into the United States. Two other church workers were convicted on lesser charges and the remaining defendants were cleared of all charges.

In the Tucson trial, U.S. District Judge Earl H. Carroll had disallowed testimony or evidence on religious issues or on the conditions aliens were fleeing in Central America. As a consequence, no defense witnesses were called. The prosecution presented 17 witnesses, including 15 Central Americans, a paid undercover informant and an undercover agent for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Donald M. Reno Jr. hailed the verdict, saying “justice was done.” But the 11 defendants Thursday expressed defiance and continued support for the sanctuary movement as they left the courthouse.

Defense lawyers said they would appeal the convictions.

Sanctuary leaders claim that the U.S. government has violated its own refugee laws by denying asylum to most Central Americans and ordering them deported if they reach the U.S. border. Immigration officials contend, however, that the illegal aliens are mainly seeking better jobs rather than fleeing political persecution.

Since the church workers were indicted 17 months ago, the sanctuary movement has almost doubled in size to about 300 churches, synagogues, meeting houses and religious orders nationwide, according to Gloria Kinsler, sanctuary coordinator for the Southern California Ecumenical Council. Nearly 20 cities and the state of New Mexico have also symbolically declared themselves sanctuaries.

Key Questions Ruled Out

Sanctuary leaders indicated disappointment--but not surprise--at the verdicts. They noted that the question of religious motives and whether the U.S. government itself is obeying its own laws were essentially ruled out by the court.

“We know the government spent over $1 million infiltrating churches and hiring paid informants and building a case over a three-year period against a small group of . . . active sanctuary ministers,” said Jo’Ann De Quattro, who chairs the Southern California Interfaith Task Force on Central America.

A statement from the Rev. James E. Andrews, the chief executive of the Presbyterian denomination, said that the jury attempted to judge the defendants “without adequate information and evidence related to their own religious motivation, to the situations out of which the refugees came, and to U.S. . . . and international law.

The Rev. William Schulz, president of the Unitarian Univeralist Assn., which includes more than 40 sanctuary congregations, said the question of whether “the Immigration and Naturalization Service is the vehicle of partisan foreign policy of this Administration . . . is the nub of the whole controversy.”

In New York City, activist minister William Sloane Coffin also criticized U.S. immigration policy for its selectivity.

“No Jews are being sent back to the Soviet Union, thank God, and hardly a Pole has been returned to Poland. Yet the immigration service has forcibly repatriated hundreds of Guatemalans to a country where a Lech Walesa wouldn’t last a week,” Coffin told reporters.

Roman Catholic Bishops Jerome J. Hastrich of Gallup, N.M., Manuel D. Moreno of Tucson, and Thomas J. O’Brien of Phoenix said in a joint statement, “It is obvious that several aspects of this case have been handled in a restrictive, legalistic manner that made it difficult for all the issues to be presented and argued fully.”

‘A Blow to Fairness’

An editorial in the Arizona Star on Friday was headlined: “A Blow to Justice--Sanctuary Workers Never Got to Present Their Real Defense.” The jury outcome was “a blow to fairness, hope and government ethics,” the newspaper said.

In Orange County, Shirley Cereseto, an Anaheim sanctuary worker whose network of friends has given shelter to dozens refugee families over the last year, called the convictions “a great miscarriage of justice.”

“We were terribly upset with the verdict,” Cereseto said Saturday. “These were religious people trying to do their religious duty. . . . We think that because the judge did not allow certain kinds of testimony, it was a very unfair trial.”

Cereseto, a sociologist who says she has studied Central America for many years, blamed U.S. policy in the region for the increasing numbers of refugees fleeing violence in their countries.

“These people are fleeing from terrorism, otherwise they would certainly prefer to stay at home,” she said.

In light of the Tucson convictions and fearing a government crackdown on the sanctuary movement in Southern California, Cereseto was unwilling to shed much light on the local network.

But she said they have provided homes for “dozens” of families, most from El Salvador and a few from Guatemala, over the past year.

Asked if they would continue their work, Cereseto responded, “absolutely.”

Discussion of Implications

Ogden, whose congregation three years ago joined a network of Southern California churches aiding illegal immigrants from Central America, said that they will discuss the implications of the Tucson decision at their regular meeting today.

He could not say how many illegal aliens his congregation had aided, because the church also helps other homeless people and doesn’t separate the two. However, he said most Central American refugees have sought private refuge among the network of community activists.

He predicted those activists would remain unflagging in their support for the sanctuary movement.

“It is our opinion the central point of the sanctuary movement was simply not heard in the Tucson case,” Ogden said. “And that is the terrible conditions from which these people are fleeing.”