Hello and welcome to This Day, a history podcast from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, March 24, 1982, a church in Tucson, Arizona, declared itself a public sanctuary, in particular to immigrants from Central America.

This was the idea of the minister, John Fife, who got the support of his congregation,

and soon there were banners hung that read in Spanish and in English,

this is a sanctuary for the oppressed of Central America,

and immigration do not profane the sanctuary of God.

Over the next few years, the idea of church sanctuaries, often in defiance of immigration

enforcement, would grow and spread with synagogues and churches and other groups around

the country adopting the movement. Shout out to listener Ruth, who suggested that we do this.

It is a super fascinating and

truly moving piece of very relevant recent history. And look, I want to shout out the Quakers,

my people, they play a big part in this as well. So I'm eager to do it. But here, as always,

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. Hello there. Hello, Jody.

Hey there. More than just oats.

More than just. Yeah. Oats and righteous justice. That's what we do. That's right. So let me lay a little bit

of the background, the kind of geopolitical background for this. And then we'll talk about this church in

Tucson and of course this larger idea of churches as immigration sanctuaries. But, you know, I think there's kind of

two things going on in the early 80s that are worth pointing out. One of them are sort of things

happening in Central America. And one is then the reaction to that, the political and legal reaction

to that in this country.

So obviously during the 80s, we have lots of civil wars and dictatorships, many of them

supported by the United States, happening in countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala.

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