Pastor Offers Sanctuary To Undocumented

If federal immigration authorities descend on New Haven, the undocumented now have a literal sanctuary in which they can find shelter: a 146-year-old church in Fair Haven.

Pastor Hector Luis Otero is opening the doors of his house of worship, Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal at 99 E. Pearl St., for those threatened with detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Without a proper bathroom and kitchen, the congregation would only be able to host undocumented immigrants for short-term stays. While the church couldn’t function as a permanent safe house, Otero said he hopes a few extra days would buy time to hire a lawyer, assemble news cameras and rally activists — their best shot at halting a deportation.

His is one of four local houses of worship that recently declared themselves ​“sanctuary congregations.” The other three are First & Summerfield Church, Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, and Congregational Mishkan Israel. A fifth congregation, the New Haven Friends, plans to meet this Sunday to discuss whether to make the same declaration, according to congregation Peace and Social Outreach Committee member Paul Hammer, who will clerk (or ​“facilitate”) the session.

The local congregations are part of a nationwide sanctuary movement; an estimated 700 religious communities have declared themselves ​“sanctuary congregations” in some form. But the term has many meanings. Not all take the ultimate step that Otero’s did of inviting undocumented immigrants to reside, however temporarily, on the property in the face of deportation.

“You were created in God’s image, and you have the dignity God bestows. No matter what your legal status or your political beliefs, I need to help you. That’s it,” Otero said.

During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump took a different view: ​“We have some bad hombres here, and we’re gonna get ​‘em out,” he said during the final debate. Since his election, New Haven activists have been readying for a crackdown. In one untested strategy of resistance, they’re looking to house people within churches, where ICE activity is generally prohibited.

That’s because, back in October 2011, ICE’s then-Director John Morton issued a memo that advised officers not to conduct enforcement operations in ​“sensitive locations,” including churches, synagogues and mosques, as well as schools, hospitals and protests. The policy allows exceptions when ​“exigent circumstances exist.” While Morton’s guidance is being followed now, it has no statutory authority to back it up; another memo could easily undo its protections, endangering many immigrants from Latin America who’ve made a home in Fair Haven.

Most of the 350 worshippers who fill up Iglesia de Dios’s pews for its bilingual Sunday service are Puerto Rican, but the membership represents a total of 14 countries. Several members have told their pastor they lack legal status to reside in this country. Yet the offer of sanctuary is not just for them. It’s open to the entire city.

“I am not the pastor only for the congregation, but for my community,” Otero said during an interview at the East Pearl Street church. He said he believes his church must serve the needs for Fair Haven’s Hispanic community — whether that means demanding more funding for Wilbur Cross High School, pushing for Hispanic candidates to fill top spots in the police and fire departments or, most pressingly now, safeguarding immigrants.

Otero’s strong beliefs derive from his Bible reading. ​“Jesus came to touch the people. You see him walking where the people live, going outside to talk about the Gospel. [His disciples] were working on the streets, house by house, helping the people where the people were,” Otero explained. ​“After the third century, [when Constantine shifted Catholicism’s center to Rome], they concentrated too much on the building. I think now, we come to the building only to worship, and we serve the people in the community.”

Otero’s missionary drive has been an important aspect of his faith since he was a teenager. Otero, now 44, grew up in Carolina, Puerto Rico, site of the country’s main airport and neighbor to the capital, San Juan. At age 19, he entered rehab for drug and alcohol addiction. There, the program’s instructors told him he could transform himself with Jesus’s help.

“I don’t know who he is, but if he can change me, I’ll try,” Otero recalled thinking. ​“After that moment, I’ve never been the same person.” By 26, Otero had his own parish.

In 2010, a call came in from the Pentecostal Church of God​’s New York City office asking if he’d start a congregation in New Haven. He told the leadership that he didn’t speak English and that he’d never been north of Walt Disney World. They told him to pray on it. A few weeks later, an evangelist called and said he’d dreamt of the pastor standing in front of his church, with luggage in hand. Otero took it as a sign. He sold his car and dry cleaning business, and his wife and two children moved to East Haven. ​“God remembered me when I was nothing,” he said. ​“He never left me alone.”

Emerging Movement Leaders

In his current role, Otero’s clear that he doesn’t want to play politics. But he said he believes religion still has a role to play in building a more just society. ​“I understand our Constitution says to separate church and state, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together,” he argued.

So far, he has teamed up with three main partners — Rev. Paul Fleck of Hamden Plains United Methodist Church, Rabbi Herbert Brockman of Congregation Mishkan Israel and the Center for Community Change’s Kica Matos — to spread the sanctuary movement throughout Greater New Haven.

Matos, who lives in Fair Haven and organizes immigration reform efforts nationwide, said Otero has played a ​“critical” role in New Haven’s movement.

“Pastor Otero has stepped up in words and in deeds during during a critical time. There is tremendous fear among the undocumented in this community and he has extended himself and his church to offer protection,” Matos said. ​“He has been leading the efforts at the city level with Rabbi Brockman to recruit sanctuary congregations, while also mobilizing Latino church leaders to get involved. His leadership in this city has made a huge difference.”

Otero is capitalizing on the links he made with other denominations as president of New Haven’s Hispanic clergy association for the last three years, and he’s calling in favors to African-American ministers, with whom he’s joined in calling for educational equity and policing reform.

Given the ​“America First” nativism that propelled Trump to victory, Otero worried that racial animosity would stymie his outreach in the suburbs. But at the last meeting of interested ministers a few weeks ago, more than two-thirds of the clergy in attendance were white, Otero reported. ​“When I saw that, I said, ​‘This is America.’”

Together, the assembled interfaith team is still hammering out how to allocate the limited spaces in their basements and sacristies. Generally, Otero said, he expects the church will host those who have the best shot of staying in the country. The parents of children with citizenship are more likely to get a spot, he suggested, than convicted felons.

Next, Otero plans to ask the Hispanic business community, centered on Grand Street, for monetary support for food, transportation, legal services and maybe the capital costs to construct a long-term residence for those seeking refuge.

During moments of doubt, Otero tries to remember God’s providence. He prays that politicians in Washington, eyeing their prospects in the 2018 midterm elections, strike a grand bargain on comprehensive immigration reform, like Ronald Reagan’s 1986 compromise.

Still, he doesn’t want to be caught unprepared by a raid that could ensnare his flock. If parishioners reveal their undocumented status, Otero asks them to draft a plan he can take to a notary, detailing how to handle their estate and their children’s guardianship.

“I’m working to keep people calm,” Otero said. ​“I’m trying to give faith and hope as we keep working, trying to do the right thing.”

Weighing ​“Harboring”

Congregation Mishkan Israel (CMI) has yet to decide whether to take the final step of agreeing to house undocumented workers who are fleeing arrest. Members of the congregation are researching the legal implications, according to Rabbi Brockman.

Hamden Plains is also in the process of deciding whether to take that final step. ​“We continue to be in deep prayer and discernment regarding this decision,” reported Rev. Fleck. First & Summerfield, like Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, has agreed to offer short-term shelter.

An estimated ​“five to 10” Jewish synagogues nationwide have declared themselves sanctuaries, with another 20 ​“looking into it,” according to this report in the Jewish Forward.

CMI has a long history of welcoming and helping to resettle refugees, beginning with Jews fleeing the former Soviet Union in the early ​‘90s and then a Bosnian family fleeing war in the former Yugoslavia. Working with Integrated Immigrant and Refugee Services (IRIS), CMI has taken a leading role in a coalition of synagogues and churches currently volunteering to ​“adopt” Syrian and other refugee families by helping them get settled here.

In deciding to became a ​“sanctuary congregation” for undocumented immigrants in the face of President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown, CMI has agreed to perform similar tasks for families whose members are being detained by federal agents. CMI members plan to attend court proceedings (such ​“witnessing” almost always helps put arrestees’ cases near the bottom of the pile, Brockman said), help find pro bono lawyers, arrange for power of attorney to care for children who might otherwise enter state care, drive family members to court or on errands, and find other legal assistance for families to keep their homes.

None of that is against the law. It’s unclear whether allowing targeted immigrants to live inside the synagogue — the kind of space (like schools) that ICE agents have so far been instructed to try to avoid entering to make arrests — is against the law.

Brockman, who has been a visible presence at immigrant rights events including a Jan. 26 City Hall rally, noted that two U.S. Court of Appeals decisions have offered conflicting directions in previous rulings. The Ninth Circuit ruled that a congregation may not ​“hide” an immigrant targeted for detention — but that as long as it publicly acknowledges the immigrant’s presence inside the house of worship, that no longer constitutes ​“hiding.” So under that interpretation, CMI would be following the law if it is public about its actions, and then allows an agent to enter the premises assuming the agent shows identification as well as a proper warrant.

But the Second Circuit issued a ruling in a similar case that made no such distinctions about being public about harboring a targeted immigrant, Brockman said. Other immigrant-rights activists have interpreted the Second Circuit ruling as shielding congregation members from arrest if they both publicly convey their assistance to sheltered immigrants and their commitment to avoid interfering with the work of immigration agents. The issue remains to be settled, perhaps at the Supreme Court level.

Meanwhile, CMI has to decide how much of a legal risk it’s ready to take, including theoretically risking arrest.

“For me it’s not a dilemma. My job as a rabbi is to be a teacher, to tell them what I think our tradition requires of us. Taking a risk is certainly in my view” part of that tradition, Brockman said during an interview this week on WNHH radio’s ​“Chai Haven” program.

The tradition goes back to the Torah, in which God commands Moses to tell the Jews to establish six cities of refuge in the Promised Land, Brockman said.

“For us as Jews, we have the experience of people not welcoming us,” Brockman said, citing the decision in 1939 of the United States and other nations to turn away the St. Louis, a transatlantic liner carrying 960 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. Other nations agreed to divide up accepting the refugees, but since half of the refugees ended up in countries occupied by the Nazis, they were killed. In the same era, Muslims in Albania understood harboring Jews to be part of their own religious tradition, and saved many lives, Brockman noted.

Today, ​“we have within our community a vulnerable population. If we have the ability to support them in one way or another, we would like to step up,” he said.

Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the full conversation with Rabbi Brockman about sanctuary congregations, on WNHH radio’s ​“Chai Haven” program.