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Long Beach church offers sanctuary to undocumented mother

By: North County Times wire services -

LONG BEACH - A woman married to a U.S. citizen, but facing imminent deportation because she lacks legal residency status, has been told by a Long Beach church she can have sanctuary there, it was reported Saturday.

The woman, from Ventura, is the parent of three young United States citizens but barred from legal residency or citizenship herself, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported.

The woman would only give her first name, Liliana. She told the newspaper she is permanently ineligible for citizenship or residency and has been ordered deported because she had posed as a U.S. citizen to gain entrance to this country.

That conviction came 10 years ago, when she was trying to join her parents in California. Jobless, they had immigrated from Michoacan. Since that time, the woman says she and her husband have both paid their taxes and worked multiple jobs simultaneously to provide for their children.

Church leaders say they are entitled to offer sanctuary from immigration agents under an ancient tradition of allowing churches to shelter people.

Liliana and her baby are living inside St. Luke’s Epsicopal Church in Long Beach, where the associate rector said they are welcome for at least three months. “We went in knowing we were committing to something serious,” said Julia Wakelee-Lynch, quoted in the Press-Telegram.

A similar sanctuary movement spread across U.S. churches in the early 1980s, and resulted in several clergymembers being jailed. That movement ended when President Ronald Reagan signed an immigrants amnesty bill in 1986.

A spokesman for the “New Sanctuary Movement” said there are at least 600,000 families in the United States facing breakup because of the large number of families with at least one member violating immigration laws.

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