• Claims to be reviving the Marxist Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s
• Headed by radical activist Kim Bobo, former longtime trainer for the Midwest Academy
• Connected to Faith in Public Life, which was co-founded by Jim Wallis

Founded in 2007, the New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) advertises itself as “a national newsletter and blog that links different religious groups and congregations,” but it is, more properly, a radical inter-faith association which operates in 20 cities and 16 states and offers sanctuary to illegal immigrants facing deportation. NSM considers itself to be the revival of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, a socialist coalition of some 500 active denominations and 1,000 other ideologically-affiliated churches, which dissolved after the fall of the Soviet Union. That movement smuggled Central Americans into the U.S. and then protected them from federal law. Many of the “refugees” whom the movement aided were Marxist activists who were supposedly fleeing “right-wing” oppression.

Besides ideology, there are other material ties between the 1980s movement and the current one. Jim Wallis and his Sojourners ministry supported the first movement and, in 2006, Wallis co-founded Faith in Public Life, which was instrumental in the founding of NSM.

The connections between the NSM and Faith in Public Life are much more extensive than either organization publicly admits. Faith in Public Life is closely allied with Interfaith Workers Justice (IWJ), which is the controlling organization of the NSM and is associated with ACORN. IWJ’s radical ideology is most clearly discernable in the activities of its founding member, Kim Bobo, a longtime trainer for the Midwest Academy and co-author of its training manual for activists. Other co-founders of the IWJ include open-borders advocate Rev. James Lawson and Rev. Joseph Lowery, who delivered the benediction at Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration. IWJ endorses a host of radical causes, focusing particularly on an open-borders agenda that includes:

• placing an immediate moratorium on community and worksite raids by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

• decriminalizing the violation of immigration laws

• affording undocumented workers the same rights and privileges as legal immigrants

• spreading the idea that America's immigration problem is caused by unjust U.S. foreign policies

NSM’s other coordinating organizations include the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) – IWJ's California arm, a member of Faith in Public Life, and a front group for ACORN – and the New Sanctuary Coalition of New York City, also known as Asociación Tepayac, founded and directed by Father Juan Carlos Ruiz. Like its affiliates, the New York Sanctuary Coalition “seeks to give non-citizen, undocumented workers voting privileges, opposes any enforcement of federal, civil immigration laws by state and local police, opposes any registration or deportation of undocumented workers, and seeks free access to higher education for undocumented workers.”

In 2007, the year of its founding, NSM gained prominence by using the Elvira Arellaño deportation case as a rallying and recruiting platform for “social justice.” In 1997, Arellaño had illegally entered the United States, but was caught and deported by authorities. Within days, she re-crossed the border to live in Oregon for three years where she gave birth to a son in 1999. In 2000, she moved to Chicago and, in 2002, was arrested for Social Security Fraud. Instead of reporting to immigration authorities on August 15, 2006 as she was ordered, Arellaño sought sanctuary in two NSM churches in Chicago. She was finally arrested on August 19, 2007 and was immediately deported to Mexico. NSM depicted Arellaño’s deportation as a miscarriage of justice, minimizing her identity fraud and her politically-motivated choice to leave her son in America as repercussions of America’s “broken” immigration laws. Father Ruiz used the occasion to demand “a stop on deportations until the law is fixed.” “It is a crime of justice,” he declared; “It is an offense, an insult to God, to somehow treat our brothers and sisters who are immigrants, as criminal. So we cry out, demanding a moratorium from all deportations, and all raids.”

Within months of Arellaño deportation, NSM claimed to have thwarted the Department of Homeland Security’s attempts “to silence Elvira” by adding 24 additional church branches to its coalition. NSM has since provided sanctuary for a number of other illegal immigrants facing deportation, using them in its effort to push for radical immigration reform. As Rev. Gil Martinez, a member of NSM, asserted, “the law of God that says that […] there are no borders, [and that] is the law we are required to follow.”