Rev. Lea Matthews can often be seen racing around St. Paul & St. Andrew United Methodist Church trying to help visitors. On a snowy Monday earlier this month it was to offer a jacket to a Nicaraguan immigrant who was clad only in a hoodie.
But not long ago her tasks were even more urgent — and may be again. During the first Trump administration, she once helped set up a room within four hours for a mother of two from Guatemala, before that woman sought sanctuary to avoid deportation.
For 15 months, the Upper West Side church complex was home to that sanctuary seeker, Debora Vasquez Barrios, Matthews said. She had access to a kitchenette, a theater, and a courtyard featuring a basketball hoop, picnic benches, and a grill — a “mini city,” in the associate pastor’s words.
With Donald Trump about to take office, the New York church and others like it are laying the groundwork to once again become self-contained, last-resort sanctuaries for immigrants. They’re also contemplating what it would mean if Trump’s administration goes even further than in his first term: removing the current limits against immigration enforcement at sensitive locations like churches.
“We’re in preparation mode for sure,” Matthews said.
The turn back to this ancient religious tradition of offering sanctuary comes after Trump’s second-term vow to remove as many as 15 or 20 million people from the United States. This marks a significant increase from the 45th president’s first term, during which annual deportations never topped 400,000. Immigrant advocates and experts say the threat is more real to the thousands of new arrivals who are now clustered in New York’s burgeoning shelter system, which some see as a prime target for immigration enforcement.
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“People are actively seeking new forms of shelter,” said Brennan Brink, associate director for migrant outreach at the nonprofit Interfaith Center of New York. The search may include relatives and friends with spare space, said Brink, or turning to faith communities like mosques or churches.
In recent months, religious organizations in New York have been quietly exploring their options for those who may show up on their proverbial doorstep after Inauguration Day. Some work is being done behind the scenes, like the online form being developed by La Iglesia del Pueblo NYC, so that this ministry for new immigrants can offer informed legal help in a crisis.
Some congregations are also digesting what they are actually prepared to do: the Episcopal Diocese of New York, for example, declared itself a sanctuary diocese in November. The designation was an expression of longstanding values, Bishop Matthew Heyd told Documented, as well as a signal of welcome for “folks from all immigration statuses.” Regarding physical shelter, some congregations in the diocese, which covers parts of the city and counties to the north, “may decide to shelter folks who are asylum seekers or immigrants,” Heyd said.
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Some of the preparations harken back to the early, chaotic days of Trump’s first years in office, when hundreds of houses of worship around the country joined a rejuvenated sanctuary movement, with dozens publicly housing people facing deportation.
Such actions relied on the federal government’s traditional reluctance to barge into churches for immigration arrests barring extenuating circumstances: the current Department of Homeland Security guidelines declare that, “To the fullest extent possible, we should not take an enforcement action in or near” so-called ‘protected areas’ like houses of worship, schools, or hospitals.”
Advisers to Trump, however, have pushed against this hesitation. Project 2025, the influential right-wing blueprint, specifically suggests that rules for sensitive zones be jettisoned and replaced by the good judgement of agents to avoid “inappropriate situations.” Trump’s incoming administration appears to be on board with this shift, according to reporting by NBC News in December.
The possibility that agents might operate in or near churches is serious to the New York religious and advocacy community, says Brink of the Interfaith Center, noting that it’s “a primary concern” he is hearing.
Sanctuary is not easy under any circumstance, for the seeker or the provider. Immigrants who go into a religious complex for an extended period of time are often stuck in cramped spaces and have to battle cabin fever: not all institutions have the community center-feel and footprint of Rev. Matthews’ St. Paul & St. Andrew, which has hosted multiple immigrants for various reasons since the Guatemalan mother of two arrived more than five years ago.
There’s another reason the practice can be challenging, says Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz, a noted sanctuary leader now affiliated with a Lutheran church in Brooklyn: “Past experience has taught us that being physically in a church requires of us a great deal of human power.”
Sheltering a family of three full time, for example, could require about a hundred volunteers to do tasks like care for kids, or take them to school or the doctor, says Ruiz.
Many churches don’t have that capacity, clergy members say, or they see their advocacy efforts better spent in other directions like know-your-rights training about ICE encounters, or having volunteers accompany vulnerable immigrants out in the community.
Also Read: What Is a Sanctuary City and What Does That Mean for NYC Under Trump?
Some religious leaders are also pushing for help from state and city officials. In a Jan. 10 meeting with Mayor Eric Adams, a coalition organized by the Interfaith Center asked if the NYPD or the mayor would interrupt ICE if agents tried to pick people up as they gathered to receive essential resources from houses of worship.
“He responded emphatically that the NYPD will not assist but will not interfere with ICE and their tasks,” said Rev. Matthews, who was part of the meeting. She told Documented it was “upsetting and clarifying,” particularly when the group was told the same when asked specifically if the NYPD would stop ICE from coming into houses of worship.
City Hall did not respond to a Documented request for commitments made during the meeting.
For now, religious groups are watching and waiting to see what Trump’s first immigration actions will actually be.
J. Kevin Appleby, a senior fellow at the Catholic-based think tank Center for Migration Studies, predicted there may be scenarios where federal agents “would certainly put vehicles near churches to intimidate people or to send a signal.”
“Whether they’re going to enter the church during a mass or during a similar ceremony remains to be seen,” Appleby said. “I wouldn’t put it past them to do that.”
Some faith leaders are reading the tea leaves from Trump’s early personnel appointments, which include many immigration hardliners. “The people he’s placed in these positions of power have had four years to think about how to do it more cruelly,” said Rev. Paul A. Fleck, executive director of Immigration Law & Justice New York, a legal services ministry of the United Methodist Church.
Despite the preparations, sanctuary practitioners do not appear eager to use what many see as a worst-case tool. The Guatemalan mother in St. Paul & St. Andrew only received a stay of deportation when President Joe Biden took office. Hunkering down for years and waiting for your legal battle to prevail or for the administration to change is “not ideal,” said Rev. Matthews.
Even worse would be seeking a sanctuary that ends up being breached. In a sign of the fears that Trump could disregard the protection of church spaces, Ruiz, the sanctuary veteran, said he and others are considering another risky leap: how to house people in private locations.
“We are asking people to host families,” he said.