Manuel Rodriguez | December 2020
A year after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration established a controversial program called the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) or better known as “special registration.” The program, initiated by the Department of Justice in December 2002, was inherited by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003. Under NSEERS, nonimmigrant males over the age of 16 from 25 specific countries, including Indonesia, were required to “register at local immigration of offices for fingerprinting, photographs, and length, invasive interrogations.” According to the DHS, a “nonimmigrant” refers to any foreign national who is “admitted to the United States temporarily for a specific purpose.” To communities from Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian backgrounds this was a controversial program because NSEERS specifically targeted only those communities as potential terrorists. The Bush administration’s goal to catch potential terrorists through NSEERS failed to produce any type of achievement during its nearly nine-year existence.Instead, it led to the wrongful deportations of countless individuals who were simply complying with the U.S. government. According to the DHS, 83,519 people registered for the program, and out of that group, 13,799 received deportation orders.
An Indonesian immigrant community at Highland Park, New Jersey felt the disruption brought over by NSEERS. On the morning of May 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a nearby apartment complex in the area where they detained a total of 35 Indonesian immigrant men, who were soon deported. Dozens of Indonesian families left the apartment complex fearing that some of their family members could be deported next. The Reformed Church of Highland Park, led by Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale and Rev. Stephanie Kaper-Dale, allowed 40 members of the Indonesian immigrant community to “camp out at the church until they found new housing.” Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale described this action as “sanctuary behavior.” Such a term is noteworthy because it attempts to promote sanctuary while at the same time not holding the responsibilities of sanctuary. Additionally, it must be noted that these actions occurred before the start of the New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) which can make one assume that a lack of network and support for sanctuary most likely influenced the church’s choice of words.
Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale elaborated on the meaning of “sanctuary behavior” in a short interview with me. He began by stating his interpretation of the Sanctuary Movement as “we are not hiding you [immigrants] we are highlighting you.” Rev. Kaper-Dale referred to the Reformed Church’s act of sanctuary to nine Indonesian men in 2012 to explain his concept of highlighting not hiding. He explained, “That was us saying we are clearly engaged in this thing where we are basically laying out what we are doing and how we are doing it. We are being public. We are not hiding. We are highlighting you and highlighting the horrors of a family breaking policy.”
When compared to the broader Sanctuary Movement’s tactics, the Reformed Church’s “sanctuary behavior” of 2006 differed because it “was more like hiding and protecting than it was highlighting” and not actual sanctuary, according to Rev. Kaper-Dale. To the Reformed Church, sanctuary behavior was a “behavioral response to the abuse of 35 tenants being taken in one night.” As Rev. Kaper-Dale expressed, the Reformed Church’s main goal “was to offer love, care, support, and protection.” Rev. Kaper-Dale offered a reflection on sanctuary and sanctuary behavior by portraying, “But it [sanctuary behavior] was all based on this sort of innate sense that you provide safety and protection. You provide sanctuary. You give this to people. So I think that’s the distinction there. One [sanctuary] was sort of calculated and almost political ethical and all that, but there was a strategy on it. The first one [sanctuary behavior] was just like more flight or fight.”
The Reformed Church’s action of sanctuary behavior is noteworthy in the sanctuary timeline because the moment happened before the existence of the NSM. Before the launch of the NSM, the first high-profile case of sanctuary occurred in the summer of 2006 when Elvira Arellano “took sanctuary in her church to avoid deportation and separation from her U.S. citizen son” (13). Afterward, the NSM officially started on May 9, 2007, with “the launch of a national interfaith network of local activist coalitions working for immigrant rights.” Without the resources from the NSM, the Reformed Church “didn’t have the language” to properly explain their actions (14). Additionally, Rev. Kaper-Dale did not prioritize claiming sanctuary because he “wasn’t planning on a strategy.” The complications of NSEERS made the situation much more difficult because many of the targeted communities were unsure if they should comply or not. Initially, Rev Kaper-Dale urged the Indonesian nonimmigrants in his community to register because he didn’t want them to be labeled as potential terrorists, so he believed compliance was the best decision at the moment. With the discovery that NSEERS registration caused the deportations of the 35 Indonesian immigrants, Rev. Kaper-Dale and the Reformed Church decided to do “whatever we could do to protect people from the very government that they had been faithful to by turning themselves in.”
This 2006 moment of sanctuary behavior at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, New Jersey, is significant in sanctuary history because it demonstrates the existence of sanctuary organization post-Sanctuary Movement and pre-NSM. The case of the Reformed Church raises the questions of how many other faith communities engaged with sanctuary type practices or behaviors pre-NSM? How did this involvement influence faith communities’ decision to join the NSM, just like the Reformed Church did in 2012?