8.30am: today could change their lives forever

In late October, at a Dunkin’ Donuts in lower Manhattan, a crowd of 40 volunteers gathered around Joe and Mei Chen and their three children.

An undocumented couple, the Chens were on their way to a check-in appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). That morning, they faced the prospect of being separated from their US-born children, taken into detention, and deported to China.

The volunteers wore long-tailed “S” symbols pinned to their lapels, signifying “Sanctuary for all”. They were with the New Sanctuary Coalition (NSC) of New York City, an interfaith network seeking to build solidarity with the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.



Every weekday, volunteers go to court hearings and Ice check-ins with undocumented people facing final removal proceedings. “It’s not as easy to violate someone’s rights if there are witnesses,” said Sara Gozalo, NSC’s supervising organizer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joe Chen and his children at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Brooklyn. Photograph: Ali Smith

The crowd slowly headed to Ice’s offices at 26 Federal Plaza. At a security checkpoint with metal detectors, armed guards chanted: “Keys, phone, belt, watch. Pockets empty.”

Gozalo whispered, “This place is a black hole of despair.”

8.45am: going through security at Ice

On the ninth floor, where Ice’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office is located, the group hugged the Chens goodbye.

“We love you, Joe and Mei, we’re praying for you,” called the Rev Donna Schaper, of Judson Memorial church. “We hope to see you very soon.”

With their attorney, the Chen family entered a windowless, fluorescent-lit waiting room, packed with some 130 people in final removal proceedings. Most stared grimly into space; some hushed crying babies. Signs commanded, “NO CELL PHONES, NO EATING, NO DRINKING.” Fox News played on a wall-mounted TV.

Joe’s body was shaking. While he waited, he contemplated Psalm 91, a favorite prayer, and tried not to think about stories of immigrants like Andrés Magaña Ortiz, a coffee farmer who was deported in July after 28 years in the US. Joe considers Ortiz’s case similar to his own: “No criminal history, father of three American citizens.”

The Chens sat for two hours, facing a bronze eagle clutching arrows in its talons.

Soon, they would have an answer that could shatter their future.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 26 Federal Plaza, which houses the Ice offices in New York. Photograph: Ali Smith

The turnout for the Chens’ hearing was especially big, in part because Joe Chen co-founded the NSC in 2007 – and also because it was the family’s first Ice check-in under President Trump.

“Since summertime, we’ve had sleepless nights,” said Joe, who owns two Brooklyn restaurants. “Under Obama, you could tell the Ice officer, ‘Hey, I’m a good churchgoing person, taxpayer, father, businessman, community man,’ and he’d say, ‘keep doing good work and everything will work in your favor.’ But this year, we really didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Joe arrived in the US from China in 1996, “seeking asylum, all alone, 17, not speaking a word of English”. Facing a threat after exposing corruption in their village, and persecuted for having a second child, Joe’s parents had paid smugglers to send him to San Francisco.

Upon arrival, Joe was thrown in a detention center. After four months, a distant cousin bailed him out. He moved to New York, learned English, applied for asylum, found food service work. Ice denied his asylum application; in 1999, he was ordered deported.

But soon, Joe married Mei, who had come to the US to escape China’s one-child policy. Mei was also ordered deported after a rejected asylum application, but deportation orders are not the final word; Mei’s mother, a permanent legal resident, has since filed a petition to change the couple’s status.

In 2005, the Chens were driving through Vermont with Joe’s cousin, a US citizen, who got pulled over for speeding. “The state trooper asked for ID,” Joe said. “We didn’t have it.”

Despite having no criminal record, Joe was jailed for three months; Mei for four. Their infant daughter, Crystal, stayed with a great-aunt. “In jail, I tried to stay positive – exercising, praying,” Joe said. “But it was a lot of anxiety about, ‘Am I gonna get kicked out of the country?’”

Since their release, the couple has been required to check in annually with Ice, pleading for time to legalize their status: “The deportation orders are always hanging over our heads.”

Today, they were about to find out whether they would be granted more time in the US, at their home in south Brooklyn, or detained once again, forced to leave their kids with Mei’s ageing mother, and returned to a country they haven’t seen in decades.

9am: the Chen family enters the Ice waiting room

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sara Gozalo, a New Sanctuary Coalition organizer. Sara is originally from Madrid, Spain. Photograph: Ali Smith

Until November 2016, Gozalo and NSC co-founder Juan Carlos Ruiz, a Mexican priest, often accompanied undocumented people to court by themselves. That changed after a freshly inaugurated President Trump signed executive orders that effectively made every one of the nation’s undocumented immigrants, except for Daca recipients, a priority for deportation.

Panic among immigrant communities followed, as did a massive uptick in volunteer participation. The accompaniment program now has more than 400 volunteers. Newcomers are trained regularly and taught ground rules: “respect; no judgment; do no harm”.

Every week, the organization coordinates approximately nine accompaniments for “friends”, as they call undocumented immigrants, who often attend their pro se legal clinic.

US arrests at border fell while Ice arrests rose during Trump's first eight months Read more

“The reasons for this growth are twofold,” Gozalo said. “One, there’s more fear out there. The administration’s rhetoric has done its job. Our friends are very scared to go anywhere. And two, US citizens have become more aware of the immigration system’s injustices – which aren’t necessarily new with this administration, but they’re more apparent, because we’re talking about them more openly.”

Volunteers are trained to stay quiet and show respect for Ice employees. But as the program expanded, guards grew annoyed with the people wearing “Sanctuary” pins flooding Federal Plaza.

“Guards were getting madder and madder,” said Josh Bardavid, the Chens’ attorney. “They yelled at lawyers whose clients showed up with supporters. They said, ‘If this continues, we’ll shut it down.’”

In July, volunteers were banned from joining defendants in Ice’s enforcement and removal operations office waiting room. Now, only a couple of volunteers are periodically granted short visits, a policy change that illustrates the delicacy of these situations.

10am: Volunteers bear witness

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Rev Donna Schaper, minister at Judson Memorial church and founding member of the NSC. Donna is a longtime friend of Joe Chen. Photograph: Ali Smith

While the Chens waited, a pair of volunteers came every 10 minutes to check on them, then returned to drinking watery coffee in a cafeteria downstairs, waiting for news.

“Accompaniment is a form of sanctuary, which we define very broadly,” said Schaper, a co-founder of NSC. Whatever form it takes, “sanctuary” offers a corrective to the dehumanization of so-called “illegal aliens”.

Methods range from letter-writing campaigns to providing physical sanctuary by housing those facing deportation in places of worship, traditionally off-limits to Ice raids.

Gozalo shared a text message from the son of a man in detention, whom volunteers joined at a recent hearing: “My father wanted me to tell you that you didn’t just send people to be there for support … he says you sent him seven angels.”

Volunteers also serve as translators and messengers, sending updates to defendants’ family members who are often themselves undocumented, and therefore terrified to join loved ones at hearings, fearing courthouse arrests.

And, increasingly, they act as watchdogs. “We’ve seen less humanitarian discretion by authorities since Trump’s election,” Gozalo said. In July, volunteers watched as a judge ordered detention for Natacha, a New Jersey-based home health aide with no criminal record, who, in 2015, fled earthquake-decimated Haiti on a boat.

“Natacha was shaking, physically clinging to us,” said NSC faith leader Micah Bucey. “We were hugging her goodbye. And a guard said to us, ‘Cut that out. We need to move the body.’ I’d never seen someone get killed with language like that. A living person referred to as ‘the body’.”

After her detention, NSC arranged a bond hearing for Natacha. In November, a judge set bond at $7,500, claiming a “flight risk”, but noted on record that the “defendant is clearly connected to her community”, since volunteers packed the courtroom. Through its Bond Program, launched in June, NSC raised money for Natacha’s release, making her the 16th immigrant they have bailed out of detention this year.

11am: While the Chens wait, the Jericho Walk starts

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The weekly silent Jericho Walk outside 26 Federal Plaza. Photograph: Ali Smith

At 11 o’clock, while the Chens sat waiting, their supporters lined up behind Federal Plaza and donned white ceremonial robes. Led by Joe’s pastor, the Rev Gaylon Barker, they embarked on a Jericho Walk: A form of prayer derived from the Book of Joshua, in which the Israelites march around the city of Jericho.

“This ancient Hebrew story basically says, if you walk around a building seven times, and pray, and don’t talk, you’ll have the power to break the building down,” Schaper said.

“That’s obviously magical thinking, but a kind of beautiful magical thinking. It comes out of a terrible powerlessness. Since we know we’re powerless politically, and that we’re fighting a very hard wall, we try to add spiritual power. And even we are kind of surprised when it works.” NSC holds Jericho Walks every Thursday.

The group marched in silence, double file. After completing a lap, they paused on the steps to recite a silent prayer.

NSC is an interfaith movement, and many volunteers learn about accompaniment through various places of worship. “The Torah says, ‘don’t abandon your neighbor,’” said Joan Dichter, a retired schoolteacher sporting purple lipstick, who signed up through her synagogue. Others come through secular organizations, like the Democratic Socialists of America. What volunteers share is a belief in the moral imperative to “welcome the stranger,”, as Schaper puts it.

When asked what happens to those who refuse to welcome the stranger, Schaper declared: “They go to hell.” She clarified: “I don’t believe in the afterlife. They’re already in hell. When you don’t welcome the stranger, you’re not welcoming God, and hell can be defined as distance from God.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Minister Ross Upshaw participates in a Jericho Walk. Photograph: Ali Smith

11.20am: The Chens are ushered into a cell

While the Jericho Walk circled, an officer called Joe and Mei’s “A-numbers” – short for “Alien Numbers” – and ushered them into a cell with their lawyer. The kids waited outside with Mei’s mother.

“Immediately, the Ice officer said it showed ‘poor judgment’ that we’d brought our kids to the check-in,” Joe said. “He said they should be in school.”

This was exactly the reaction the Chens had feared: for weeks, they had deliberated over whether to bring the kids.

“I explained the situation to the officer: ‘The kids are concerned they’ll be separated from their parents,’” Joe said. “We’d let the kids decide. They took a vote. We had a democratic process. They all decided to come. But the officer insisted it was poor judgment. He said he’s a father, too, and parents should tell their kids what to do.

“But we changed the dynamic,” Joe said. “I told him, I understand he’s just doing his job. He said, yes, he’s getting a lot of pressure from his supervisor, who’s getting pressure from DC. I asked, would you like to be separated from your kids? He didn’t answer. But I was able to speak with dignity, human to human, explaining our struggle, our values, why they shouldn’t separate our family. If we’re serving our community, why would the government want to bother us? NSC gave me the courage to fight.”

For 20 minutes, the officer went on about all the reasons he should deport them. Her knew about the Chens’ army of supporters. Ice had received hundreds of letters – from Congress members, business owners, bishops, church congregants; from a retired NYPD sergeant – that told of the Chens’ “generous hearts”. If the couple, who “pose no threat”, were deported to China, the letters said, they would probably face religious persecution. Dozens of Brooklyn restaurant employees would lose their jobs. Their children would endure “irreparable harm”.

On their fifth lap around the building, the Jericho walkers got word: the officer had granted Joe and Mei a one-year stay of removal. They will be allowed to stay in the country, petitioning their case, until their next Ice check-in in October 2018, when they will have to repeat the whole process.

12pm: Finally, an answer

“We got lucky this time,” Joe said. “They gave us a year. Two others in the waiting room got just two months. We don’t know what’ll happen at the next check-in.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Chens’ daughter plays in a park in south Brooklyn. Photograph: Ali Smit/Ali Smith

Across the country, more organizers are adopting community-driven defense models like the NSC’s, but it’s a difficult model to scale up, and millions of undocumented immigrants still lack the resources to argue their cases. Many go through removal hearings alone.

As they emerged from the building, the Chens passed a framed Department of Homeland Security mission statement: “With honor and integrity, we will safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values.” Outside, white-robed Jericho walkers descended upon them, cheering.

Joe and Mei thanked and shook hands with every volunteer.

At their Bay Ridge church on Sunday, the Chens lit candles at a “Healing Station”, then went to a playground, where the kids climbed on a jungle gym and played with a tiny stuffed dog named Chichi. Joe stood by watching, until nine-year-old Francesca pulled him over to the gymnastics bars, saying, “Do a flip!”

If the Ice appointment had gone differently, Joe might have been in prison scrubs that Sunday, or 7,000 miles away.

He hoisted himself on to a gymnastics bar and did a flip.