Photo: Photo by: Ilana Panich-Linsman — For The Washington Post, For The Washington Post / For The Washington Post

A church-based movement to provide sanctuary for immigrants fearing deportation is emerging in Houston for the first time in response to the strict policies of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“It’s a historic step for our city,” said Alain Cisneros of the immigrants advocacy group FIEL Houston, highlighting what appears to be the first example of a Houston religious organization publicly offering safe harbor to immigrants in the country illegally.

The initiative began July 13, when U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, called for church leaders to volunteer houses of worship as sanctuaries in anticipation of raids the administration had said would begin the following day targeting immigrants with deportation orders. The leader of the Living Water International Apostolic Ministries in north Houston, Apostle Robert Stearns, immediately agreed to participate.

“When I got the call, I couldn’t do anything but accept,” Stearns said.

The predicted raids have yet to materialize on a large scale, with just two enforcement actions confirmed in Houston last week. But immigrant advocates say sanctuaries are still needed as the administration continues to tighten enforcement. On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced its intention to expand authority for expedited removal of immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the U.S. for two years.

Meanwhile, Cisneros said the sanctuary movement is gaining traction . FIEL is talking to leaders of two other churches —one in southwest Houston and the other on the southeast side — about potentially offering sanctuary, Cisneros said.

A representative of a Montgomery County church told the Houston Chronicle that it was working on legal representation to become a sanctuary. A formal announcement is expected soon, the church leader said.

Jackson Lee said she was “moved and delighted” by the response to her plea.

The sanctuary movement has been active for decades in cities densely populated by immigrants such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, but generally has been absent from Texas cities other than Austin. The state capital has a network of over 20 religious and community organizations with a history of successful efforts.

The network was founded in 2015 when the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin gave sanctuary to Sulma Franco, a Guatemalan woman facing deportation, prompting activism that achieved a formal suspension of her expulsion from the country.

Another high-profile case in Austin is that of Hilda Ramirez, an indigenous Guatemalan woman seeking asylum who is sheltered in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church with her son Iván, 13.

A long history

Historians trace the origin of the religious sanctuary movement in America to the early 1980s, when the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Ariz., declared itself a sanctuary for Central Americans escaping civil war.

Since then, the movement has played a central role in providing shelter and mobilizing religious communities, particularly at moments when national policies have led to widespread “fears of persecution among immigrant communities,” said Myrna Orozco of Houston, the organizing coordinator for Church World Service’s immigration and refugee program.

The practice by religious communities of sheltering people perceived as persecuted has a long history. In the book “Faith-Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service to the World,” author and Lutheran pastor Alexia Salvatierra wrote that the tradition is documented in religious records such as the Book of Numbers in the Bible. The book calls for the creation of cities of refuge where people accused of crimes could be safe until receiving a fair hearing.

Experts say the tradition has flourished among Jews, Christians, Muslims and adherents of other faiths around the world. A frequently cited American example is the Underground Railroad, a network of safe routes and houses that helped enslaved African Americans fleeing the South.

Orozco said the sanctuary movement has grown rapidly since the 2016 election of Trump, who has made tougher immigration policy a cornerstone of his presidency.

“More and more congregations have been signing up every day,” she said, noting that the number of participating organizations has increased from around 400 before Trump’s election to over 1,200.

Orozco said advocates expect the #SacredResistance campaign launched this month to attract still more participants. The campaign calls for people and communities of faith to offer safe havens and stand against what they consider unjust persecutions of families that are not a threat to society.

“In the face of President Trump’s extremist anti-immigrant agenda we must respond with a prophetic and bold voice,” the campaign states on its website.

Reducing immigration, legal and illegal, has been a central theme of Trump’s since his speech announcing his campaign for office in June of 2015, portraying immigrants from Mexico in particular as criminals and rapists. A series of policy pronouncements, executive orders and other steps followed, including separating children from parents seeking asylum at the border.

“There have been continuous revivals of the sanctuary movement when it has been needed, and this is one of them,” said the Rev. Noel Andersen, a grassroots coordinator with the Church World Service.

Houston on the map

It’s unclear why Houston and most other Texas cities have not embraced the movement until now. Houston in particular would seem a logical place for sanctuary efforts to flourish, advocates said.

“Houston has a strong tradition of fighting for immigrants; it has a strong foundation of advocacy organizations tirelessly offering legal and supporting services to them,” said Orozco.

Cisneros, of FIEL, noted that a religious argument was invoked in a Houston lawsuit seeking to prevent the deportation of a Salvadoran immigrant, Juan Rodriguez. The suit, based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, contended that deporting Rodriguez would violate his family’s strong commitment to its Adventist Christian principle of keeping the family together.

Orozco suggested that a burdensome process of gaining permission from superiors in church bureaucracies may have inhibited Houston religious organizations from embracing the sanctuary movement.

Sheltering undocumented immigrants could present legal challenges for church leaders. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement has designated places of worship as sensitive locations where “enforcement actions may occur … in limited circumstances, but will generally be avoided,” as stated on the agency website.

Another factor in the light imprint of the sanctuary movement in Texas may be that many state business leaders support relatively tolerant immigration policies because of the crucial role immigrant labor plays in the state’s economy. But circumstances have changed in the last few years as Republican state leaders have pushed for harder stances.

“Perhaps there wasn’t a great necessity for a sanctuary movement in Texas” before, said Lenna Baxter, co-chair of the Interfaith Welcome Coalition in San Antonio. “Houston, in particular, is a microcosm of what cities are going to be across the country in the future; it’s a very diverse and tolerant city,” she said, which may have contributed to its absence from the national trend.

Immigrant advocates said the Catholic Church had been notably absent from the movement considering its extensive base of immigrant parishioners, particularly Latinos.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ communications officer did not provide comments from its leadership regarding the sanctuary movement.

Catholic institutions have been among the most active supporters of immigrant humanitarian causes. On Thursday, 70 Catholic representatives were arrested in Washington during a demonstration against Trump policies.

A map developed by the #SacredResistance campaign shows a resurgence of the movement in Texas, with new participants such as La Trinidad United Methodist Church in San Antonio.

Initiatives continue to evolve in Houston and elsewhere.

“We were able to secure churches offering to keep people safe from the horror of having families separated and parents separated from children,” Jackson Lee told the Chronicle. Several organizations have also made “commitments to provide groceries and other necessities to those too frightened to leave their homes” in the event they are targeted with immigration raids, she said.

olivia.tallet@chron.com