WASHINGTON (AP) - When December 10th came, Rosa Gutierrez Lopez[1] did not go back to El Salvador as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had ordered. Instead, she got herself a room just 9 miles away from the White House.
The Salvadoran became the first unauthorized immigrant to get refuge inside a religious institution of the Washington area - according to advocates - hoping to be able to stay permanently in the country with her three U.S.-born children.
“I feel good because immigration cannot enter here,” Gutierrez[2] told The Associated Press during an interview inside the chapel of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church, a 7-acre campus in a Washington suburb. “It is a sanctuary place they respect.”
While she is legally a fugitive who could be arrested at any time, ICE considers churches and some other places to be “sensitive locations” and generally does not pursue people inside.
Gutierrez[3], 40, traveled by ground for 72 days in 2005 from her home in La Paz until she made it to the Texas border, where she was detained, released and ordered to appear in court. She didn’t show up for the hearing, so the following year received an order of deportation in absentia.
Gutierrez[4] moved soon after to Fredericksburg, Virginia, and had three children before finding out in 2014 that the authorities were after her; ICE agents had stopped her then-partner and asked where she was. She got a lawyer and went to ICE to find out more.
She kept working in a restaurant while checking in periodically with ICE, but things changed dramatically in May 2017, four months after Donald Trump moved to the White House.
ICE placed an electronic bracelet in her ankle - a device that keeps a little blister on her skin and that she tries to hide beneath her clothing - and ordered her to leave the country by December 10.
But Gutierrez[5] refuses to leave behind her three kids, especially the youngest, a 6-year-old with Down syndrome who receives weekly therapy.
She also ruled out taking the kids with her because she said gangs have killed three members of her family in El Salvador over the last two years and she fears for her life.
“I don’t deserve to get deported. I deserve to stay here in this country with my children because they are American citizens,” she said.
She said the hardest part of her situation at the church is living apart from her children. Though they visit her weekly, “it’s not enough,” she said.
Gutierrez[6] got in touch with Omar Perez, lead organizer with DMV Sanctuary Congregation Network, a group of congregations in the Washington area that provide support to immigrants who fear being detained, deported or profiled.“Wearing the bracelet, ICE knows her location at all times,” Perez said. “There...