Wisconsin faith leaders say churches should remain sanctuaries for immigrants

On President Donald Trump’s first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a policy that restricted Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from raiding “protected areas” like schools, hospitals and churches.

Bishop Anne Edison-Albright said this had an immediate impact on congregations she oversees in the East Central Synod of Wisconsin.

“The day after the news broke, we had congregations getting in touch with us because … of the way that it was impacting people in their communities, people in their congregations who were no longer feeling safe to be able to come and receive services,” Edison-Albright told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

“It’s not just a Sunday morning thing. Our congregations are centers for civic life,” she added. “Our congregations are warming centers. They are places where Alcoholics Anonymous and [Narcotics Anonymous] meet. These are places where basic human life things happen, and it’s inhumane for them to not be safe spaces for everyone.”

Edison-Albright and fellow faith leaders from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America believe that welcoming immigrants in their houses of worship is vital to their ministry work. After the policy change was announced, six bishops from the denomination released a joint statement calling upon elected officials to reinstate “protected areas” and restore funding for refugee resettlement programs. 

And the Wisconsin Council of Churches, a network of faith-based organizations including Edison-Albright’s church, joined more than two dozen other Christian and Jewish religious groups in a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing that the policy change infringes on their religious freedom and ability to carry out their ministry work.

Sergio González is assistant professor of history at Marquette University and the author of several books on the history of immigrant communities in Wisconsin. He said this isn’t the first time religious groups in Wisconsin have offered sanctuary to immigrants in need regardless of the risks. 

“In the 1980s, when churches and synagogues declared themselves sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants here in the United States, they didn’t have the protection of this [policy],” he said. “They understood in their bones that a sacred space should remain separate from these secular spaces, and specifically from police enforcement.”

Edison-Albright and González recently joined “Wisconsin Today” to talk about the history of the sanctuary movement in Wisconsin and how churches are responding to this policy change.

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Rob Ferrett: Sergio, you’ve been following this story of how immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere interact with faith communities here in Wisconsin through much of your career. What do you see in this policy change, going back to the 2011 memo establishing churches as “sensitive locations”?

Sergio González: There has been a long history of churches interacting with the state and trying to figure out what relationship they are going to have as it pertains to undocumented immigration and, more importantly, what protections they can offer undocumented immigrants.

For us, I think the most important touchstone we should be looking at is the 1980s, when churches and synagogues here in Wisconsin were having the same debates in the midst of the sanctuary movement.

Wisconsin was one of the most important locations in the sanctuary movement. Milwaukee had the first Black, Latino and Jewish houses of worship that opened up their houses as places of safe harbor for Central Americans. What’s going to happen over the next few years is really just another part of that larger story.

RF: Can you compare what’s happening in 2025 to the sanctuary movement of the 1980s? What similarities do you see? What are some of the differences? 

SG: Churches and synagogues in the 1980s didn’t wait for the benediction of the federal government to do the work they felt was necessary, which is to open their places as locations of safe harbor for undocumented immigrants who had been denied asylum in the United States.

While today we’re having these hypothetical conversations of “What happens when ICE knocks on the door?,” this happened in the 1980s. The federal government, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Naturalization Service, was sending agents secretively into church spaces, into Bible studies, into the pews, where they were observing what was happening in the sanctuary movement.

They used all this information to eventually bring people to trial. So the very church leaders who were doing this work of mercy, doing this everyday labor of fellowship were eventually found guilty of breaking the law.

But that did not stop churches and synagogues from doing the work. 

RF: Is that something you see faith leaders being willing to do in 2025, Bishop Anne — to run that risk of potentially being charged for not cooperating with ICE?

Anne Edison-Albright: Yes, absolutely. Sanctuary has been an essential part of what it means to be a faith community for a very, very long time, and this is core to who we are as people of faith.

So, we’re going to keep being ourselves. We are going to keep doing the ministry, and that might get us in trouble. We’re going to do our best not to make vulnerable people more vulnerable by what we do, so we want to be smart about it. But yes, this is really, really important to us.

RF: Bishop Anne, can you talk about some of the faith tenets that you see in Christianity that moves you as a leader to do this work?

AEA: It shows up in scripture more than just about anything else. I mean, you’re talking about what Christians consider the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, and the New Testament.

This idea of, “You were once a stranger in Egypt, so welcome the stranger and care for the alien, the orphan and the widow.” It comes up a lot. It’s very central to who we are.

It’s something that we have in common with people of the Jewish faith, with Muslims. It’s very basic to us and to our understanding of radical hospitality and care for people.

RF: Sergio, was interfaith cooperation a big part of the sanctuary movement in the 1980s?

SG: It’s central to the way we understand sanctuary. I think it’s one of the most powerful tenets. And it’s not just interfaith: it’s interracial, it’s inter-ethnic. It crosses borders. It’s this understanding that faith doesn’t recognize the boundaries that we set up, whether they be national boundaries, political boundaries.

The power of sanctuary in the 1980s and its more recent iteration is for people to come together under this shared idea that we have a moral obligation to welcome the stranger, to welcome the least of us, to welcome the people who have been pushed to the margins of society and to consider two important things: One, why have they been pushed to the margins to begin with? And two, what is our job as people of faith to do something to help them? 

RF: Bishop Anne, many denominations are getting involved in sanctuary and getting involved in lawsuits against this change in policy, and many denominations are not. What would you say to your colleagues in faith organizations who have not embraced this concept?

AEA: I would probably speak to the people of those denominations and ask them to have conversations with their pastor, with their priest, with their faith leader and talk about, “What does it mean to me?” 

If we put aside the fear that’s been pushed in the media against immigrants, a lot of us have experience with welcoming neighbors, with helping with refugee resettlement. That’s a big thing in Wisconsin, and that’s been incredibly meaningful and positive for so many people in Wisconsin.

So if people in congregations can have conversations about that: How is it that we live out our faith? How do we care for our neighbors right now? And how do we make sure that all of our neighbors have access to the resources of our congregations that are so vital for life?