Pastor Jose Chicas the third undocumented immigrant to go into sanctuary in North Carolina this year

Pastor Jose Chicas, a faith leader who has lived in the U.S. for nearly three decades, has become the third undocumented immigrant this year to go into sanctuary in North Carolina. Pastor Jose, a father of three U.S. citizens and one DACA recipient, began living at Durham’s School for Conversion just one day before his scheduled deportation date, following an invitation from the religious education center’s director, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and civil rights and NAACP leader Rev. William Barber.

“Jesus was an undocumented migrant,” Rev. Barber, recently banned from the state’s legislative building by Republicans fearful of his fight for justice, wrote in a tweet, “who said nations will be judged by how we treat the stranger among us”:

Chicas, fifty-two, came to the U.S. in 1985 from El Salvador, which at the time was embroiled in a brutal civil war. He was stopped by immigration officials in Texas and released on bond. Before, in his words, he was “rescued by God,” he struggled with alcoholism and in the 1990s was convicted of driving under the influence and domestic abuse. Now the pastor of Iglesia Evangelica in Raleigh, Chicas is asking to be able to stay in the place he has called home for more than thirty years.

“I am not a delinquent,” Chicas said. “I have been with my wife for twenty-five years. I did my time.”

ICE itself seemed to agree, repeatedly issuing Pastor Jose work permits and allowing him to return to his family, church, and community throughout years of check-ins. But like so many other undocumented immigrant victims of “silents raids” this year, Pastor Jose was told following his first ICE check-in under the Trump administration to prepare to be torn from his home of nearly 30 years.

”If anybody else were about to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their sobriety, we would be as a country congratulating him, patting him on the back and his friends and family would be celebrating twenty years of sobriety,” said attorney Helen Parsonage about Pastor Jose’s attempt to turn his life around. “Instead, they’re trying to deport him and tear him away from his family.”

Following Juana Luz Tobar Ortega in May and Minerva Garcia this week, Pastor Jose is the third undocumented immigrant to go into sanctuary at the invitation of a North Carolina church. The sanctuary movement, initially sparked in the 1980s in response to Central American refugees fleeing civil war, has experienced a resurgence following Donald Trump’s popular vote loss. Since November, the number of houses of worship offering sanctuary to undocumented immigrants has doubled.