I always find it interesting when a church decides to break the law as a matter or principle.  From the USA Today.

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Five immigration agents rapped on Liliana’s front door one morning in May. "We’ve come for you," she recalls them saying.

Liliana, a 29-year-old factory worker from Mexico who crossed the border illegally in 1998, begged and pleaded. "What about my children?" she asked. "I have a baby. I’m nursing."

The agents softened when they heard Pablito crying, she says, and gave her a reprieve. They ordered her to report to a detention center five days later to be sent back to Mexico.

Instead, Liliana hid at the home of a Catholic deacon and his wife. Last month she emerged from hiding and took up residence at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, which has pledged to protect her from deportation.

St. Luke’s and Liliana are central characters in the New Sanctuary Movement, a small but growing coalition of churches, synagogues and other houses of worship that is challenging the immigration system, despite legal risk, as the nation debates how to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA.

The congregations say the immigration system mistreats immigrants and breaks families apart. They want to end raids of job sites that have led to the arrest of thousands of undocumented workers, and they’re lobbying for policies that would help keep the families of illegal immigrants together and in the USA.

Drawing on the tradition of sanctuary, in which churches declare themselves safe havens for those fleeing violence or prosecution, congregations from New York to San Diego have begun to view supporting illegal immigrants — and occasionally sheltering them from deportation — as a moral and religious duty.

"We don’t accept a broken law that causes separation of families," says Richard Estrada, an associate pastor at Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Los Angeles. "We will protect families, those in danger of being separated. … We’re doing what we think is the right, moral thing to do."

Source and the rest of the story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-07-08-sanctuary_N.htm

Question to ponder…what would traditional family values say about this issue from the perspective an an anglo family?  From a Mexican family?

Found via: http://www.ocularfusion.net/?p=732