More & More Illegal Immigrants Taking Sanctuary In Churches
DENVER (CBS4) - Some immigrants in the U.S. illegally are finding sanctuary inside Denver area churches.
One woman has been living since November at the Quaker Mountain View Friends meetinghouse in southeast Denver.
Ingrid Encalada LaTorre feels safe only to the doorway of the church.
"What will happen if you go back to Peru?" CBS4 Investigator Rick Sallinger asked her.
"I have two children here that go to school I don't want to go back," LaTorre responded.
She and her two children have been living for the past three months in the church. The assumption is U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would not come and get her in a church.
Tom Kowal at the church says they can only hope she is safe there.
"We don't expect that ICE would violate that sanctuary here," Kowal said.
She came to the U.S. from Peru 17 years ago to visit a relative and never left. She was convicted of a felony for using a false Social Security number and has been ordered to be deported.
It's a similar situation for Jeanette Vizguerra, a mother of four who took sanctuary in a Denver's First Unitarian Church last week.
It's just a small percentage of an estimated 50,000 believed living in the area without papers, according to Kowal,
"So people are afraid to leave their homes, pick their kids up from school, go to their jobs," he said.
LaTorre says her partner lives separately, but is also without documents. In effect, she says the people at Mountain View Friends meetinghouse have become her family in a political climate that has turned a warm February quite cold.
"President Trump … is doing a lot of bad, it's not right deport a lot of people," she said.
LaTorre has become a prisoner there by her own choice. The Mountain View Friends meetingcenter is providing legal assistance to her in hopes her deportation order will not be pursued by immigration authorities. The church is one of nine in the metro area that is involved in the sanctuary movement.
LINK: metrodenversanctuary.org
CBS4's Rick Sallinger is a Peabody award winning reporter who has been with the station more than two decades doing hard news and investigative reporting. Follow him on Twitter @ricksallinger.
