The Future of Sanctuary

ABSTRACT: In the summer of 1984, a caravan of vehicles full of religious activists sped across the United States. Moving from Tucson to Los Angeles to Denver and finally ending in Detroit, this self-styled "Sanctuary Freedom Train" was transporting a Salvadoran family of four that had fled their war-torn country and arrived in the United States seeking political asylum. Raul and Valeria Gonzalez had escaped with their two children after Raul, a teacher, had been arrested and beaten by government soldiers and threatened with worse if he were to continue his literacy work among the country's poor. The Gonzalez family found refuge in Detroit's St. Rita's Catholic Church, where people of faith had pledged to offer sanctuary to migrants who had been unduly denied asylum by the American government. Once settled in his new temporary home, Raul became an organizer himself, inviting congregations across the country to join a national movement for migrant justice. As he noted a year after disembarking the Sanctuary Freedom Train, "solidarity is doing whatever is needed to stop the suffering of others."