COMMENTARY: Remembering Rosa’s Courage, and What We Lose if an Undocumented Neighbor is Deported

Told to "self deport," one woman stood for her family, and taught us all what we lose by pushing out people who are at the core of our communities.

By Eric Bonds
COMMENTATOR

Photo by Miko Guziuk on Unsplash

To be an undocumented immigrant in this nation requires tremendous bravery. It means suffering hardships and undertaking great risks. But among this brave group, Rosa Gutierrez Lopez’s courage is particularly exceptional.

During the first Trump Administration, Rosa was a Fredericksburg resident, working at a restaurant and raising her three U.S. born children. She had come to the United States in 2005, seeking asylum from violence that she faced in El Salvador.

But during one of her routine check-ins with officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2018, she was directed to “self deport.” Rosa was told that, if she did not do so, she would be forcibly removed from the country and would lose future opportunities for legal residence in the United States.

Rosa purchased a ticket to El Salvador and made plans to leave the country. But as she arrived at the airport, Rosa could not bear the prospect of being separated from her children. Instead, she took the extraordinary step of seeking sanctuary within a church, whose properties have historically been off limits to officials making deportation arrests.

The closest church that would offer her long-term sanctuary was the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bethesda, Maryland. Many Fredericksburg residents donated money and resources and helped ferry Rosa’s children back and forth between the two communities.

Rosa ended up living at Cedar Lane church for more than a year and a half. Thankfully, she was eventually given a stay of removal. Her story exemplifies what we stand to lose if a community member is deported, along with the need to resist paying those unacceptable costs.

For one, when Rosa was told to “self deport,” her family lost its main source of income. Millions of U.S. children have an undocumented parent, including thousands of children in our region. If the U.S. government acts to deport one of these parents, it frequently devastates that family’s finances, significantly increasing the likelihood that this family will live in poverty and experience food and housing insecurity.

The costs of deportation are not just financial, when the U.S. government deports a parent, it splits apart a family and traumatizes children, causing significant and lasting psychological harm.

Deportation results in costs to the whole community as well. The majority of undocumented immigrants are long-term residents, having lived in the United States for ten years or longer. During this time, each has become an interconnected thread in the social fabric of the communities in which they live. They are neighbors, friends, students, and employees. Consequently, a deportation creates a frayed, empty place in its aftermath.

Finally, the cost that Rosa might have paid, had she been deported, was her own life. Rosa came to the United States for a reason, because gang violence had targeted her family and the government was powerless to protect her. If the U.S. government deported her to El Salvador in 2018, she would have again faced these same life-threatening conditions.

Rosa knew that these costs were too high to pay and so took creative and bold action to remain in this country with her family. At the Cedar Lane church, more than 200 volunteers took turns keeping vigil and helping coordinate Rosa’s stay.

This time around, resistance to unjust immigration policies will be different. Unlike during Trump’s first presidency, the new administration has declared that churches are no longer off limits to deportation arrests. Even at best, the Sanctuary Movement could never meet the needs of all our undocumented neighbors put at risk.

By remembering what Rosa and her family would have lost if she was deported—and what every immigrant or mixed-status family in our community stands to lose—we can understand why this resistance must exist. By remembering Rosa’s courage, and that of the Ceder Lane Unitarian Universalists, we can find inspiration to summon our own.

I imagine that, after almost two years of her stay, members of this congregation must have felt so proud to see Rosa walk out of their sanctuary in the loving embrace of her family, into freedom. Let’s look for opportunities here in Fredericksburg so that, after these years have passed, we can feel the same.

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