{"id":4835,"date":"2016-02-23T20:03:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T20:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=4835"},"modified":"2016-02-23T20:03:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T20:03:20","slug":"texas-congregation-gives-sanctuary-to-guatemalan-refugee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=4835","title":{"rendered":"Texas Congregation Gives Sanctuary to Guatemalan Refugee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong>by Mark Richardson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><strong>AUSTIN, Texas<\/strong> &#8211; A church in Texas has given a Guatemalan refugee sanctuary and is hoping that more religious organizations will follow suit. Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas has taken in a woman who church officials will only call Hilda. She says she came to the U.S. to escape violence in her home country and is concerned that she may be deported.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Reverend Jim Rigby, a minister at Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church, says he hopes the church\u2019s actions will counter what he sees as hypocrisy in American policy toward refugees.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_4836\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gr-50316-1-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4836\" class=\"wp-image-4836 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gr-50316-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"gr-50316-1-1\" width=\"600\" height=\"371\" srcset=\"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gr-50316-1-1.jpg 600w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gr-50316-1-1-300x186.jpg 300w, https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/gr-50316-1-1-405x250.jpg 405w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4836\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. immigration officials say they are taking a hands-off policy toward churches that provide sanctuary to refugees who could be deported. Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cIt\u2019s very disturbing when the subject of immigration comes up and we don\u2019t tell the part about powerful nations destroying helpless people,\u201d says Rigby. \u201cWhen somebody comes to our border whose nation we destabilized, we can\u2019t act like we\u2019re innocent; we have to start taking responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Rigby says most of Central America, including Guatemala, is beset with drug-gang violence, and thousands of people, including families, have come north in recent years to escape. He says deporting Hilda would be a death sentence for her.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Rigby adds he believes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, also called ICE, will not arrest Hilda and others on church property.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u201cAt this point, what we are hoping to do is get a network around the city of churches that can just adopt individual families, and synagogues and secular groups that want to do this,\u201d Rigby says. \u201c The premise that is being worked on is that ICE doesn\u2019t want to come on church territory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Contacted about the situation, ICE officials said while it is illegal to provide sanctuary from federal officials, there is an agency policy that advises agents to generally avoid enforcement actions at schools and churches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Mark Richardson AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; A church in Texas has given a Guatemalan refugee sanctuary and is hoping that more religious organizations will follow suit. Saint Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas has taken in a woman who church officials will only call Hilda. She says she came to the U.S. to escape violence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4837,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions\/4837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}