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Desecration of Sacred Ground as Federal Policy [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-02-20

My favorite example of legally protected sacred ground (and my favorite hiking spot) is the Blackhand Gorge, a breathtaking and beautiful nature preserve in central Ohio. Indigenous nations once came to the gorge to harvest flint and to travel on the Licking River, which was part of the canal system between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. The nations, legend says, agreed that no one would raise a hand to another in the gorge and that it would be neutral space.

The concept of protecting sacred temples and other places of worship goes back thousands of years in cultures all across the globe. Greek and Roman temples and their pagan priests offered sanctuary to fugitives, which became part of Roman imperial law and later, English law. Roman Catholic priests in England protected people in their churches from law enforcement officials up through the fifteenth century.

There are modern examples too! A church in the Netherlands held a 96-day long rite in 2019 to protect an Armenian family from deportation. There is a Dutch law that forbids law enforcement from entering a church during an active service, and immigration officials dared not commit the indecency of breaking that law and violating the church. The government eventually agreed to review their asylum applications thanks to the church’s heroism.

We go to houses of worship with our family, we send our children to school, and we dutifully attend hearings in courthouses trusting that these are safe places where we can get the help we need. Attorneys at Public Justice have been removing obstacles to the courthouse and fighting racism in our schools for decades because those places are sacred to us. We believe that no one should be excluded from the services and protections of schools and courthouses because of their race, national origin, or immigration status. We are well recognized as national leaders working to ensure people have meaningful access to the courts. We have extensive expertise bringing Title VI claims against schools who discriminate against students because of their race.

The Republican Administration’s rescission in January 2025 of the Department of Homeland Security’s Protected Areas Policy, which once protected schools, courthouses, hospitals, churches, and other sensitive locations from immigration enforcement, flies in the face of Public Justice’s values. It is intended to horrify and offend us.

The rescission of the DHS Protected Areas Policy is intentionally indecent and purposely violates the universal principle of sanctuary. It is designed to dehumanize and segregate immigrants and their children from the rest of society as part of a white supremacist agenda. Data shows the segregation of immigrant families is not just a fear – it is a guaranteed outcome. When courthouse arrests by ICE increased 1200 percent in New York in 2017, an ACLU Report showed that advocates and legal services providers saw a 40 percent decrease in court cases filed on behalf of immigrant crime survivors from 2017 compared to 2016. Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson noted that 13 women decided not to pursue domestic violence cases against their abusers after a videotape of ICE waiting in a courthouse hallway in Denver was released. Their fears were valid – a woman was arrested by ICE agents in a courthouse in Texas while seeking a protection order from her abusive boyfriend in 2017. ICE did not just desecrate the sacred ground of the courthouse in 2017 – they made arrests at hospitals and schools too. Data shows that there was a 43.3 percent decrease in doctors’ visits for primary care among undocumented children from 2015 to 2018. In a national survey conducted between October 2017 and January 2018, 70 percent of school administrators and certified staff across all regions reported an academic decline among immigrant students and reported absenteeism to be a problem. This is already happening anew, as Denver Public Schools reported a 10 percent decline in attendance over the last week of January 2025.

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