At least 20 people were arrested on Nov. 23 in North Carolina when they tried to block U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials from arresting undocumented immigrant Samuel Oliver-Bruno, a Mexican national, who had been living in a church for the past 11 months.
The 47-year-old had been staying at the basement of Citywell United Methodist Church in Durham since late 2017 to evade ICE officers, who generally do not make arrests at churches, hospitals or schools, owing to an internal policy introduced in 2011 (pdf).
These churches are referred to as “sanctuary churches” and are part of a growing faith-based movement in the country, according to The News Observer.
Oliver-Bruno was detained during a scheduled appointment with ICE officials on Nov. 23 at a Raleigh-area U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) office in Morrisville.
An immigration rights advocacy group in North Carolina, Alerta Migratoria, said Oliver-Bruno had filed an application with USCIS seeking to delay his deportation to Mexico.
As part of the application, USCIS asked Oliver-Bruno to present in person to provide his fingerprints, which are needed for the application.
“To comply with this request, Samuel will have to leave sanctuary and risk getting detained,” the statement said.
Samuel Oliver-Bruno (left) speaking now, in Spanish. He thanks the church and community for their support. Says he will fight deportation because his family needs him here. #WRAL pic.twitter.com/JgPucB7veo
— Sarah Krueger (@WRALSarah) December 13, 2017
Oliver-Bruno was accompanied by his son, 19-year-old Daniel Oliver-Perez, and Pastor Cleve May from CityWell Church, as well as other members of the clergy.
May said that once Oliver-Bruno had finished filling in paperwork, he waited in a line with his son, and that’s when ICE officials detained him, WRAL reported.
“The next thing we know, several men jumped him, and Daniel clung to his father, and they were choking Daniel and trying to pull him off,” May told WRAL.
“All of us who were in there ran back to where that interaction was happening. We all stood in the way of the doorway. We were all pushed roughly and repeatedly but continued to get in the way.”
Immigration officials eventually put Oliver-Bruno in a van.
Several dozen people gathered at the immigration office and formed a human wall around the van to block officials from driving Oliver-Bruno away.
Samuel Oliver-Bruno is in this van, in ICE custody. Bruno has been living in sanctuary in #Durham church for 11 months. Today, he left for ICE appointment, as he seeks deferred deportation. At that appointment, he was arrested. Church members, clergy, blocking van. @WRAL #WRAL pic.twitter.com/fsgvI1V50U
— Sarah Krueger (@WRALSarah) November 23, 2018
“This was a bait-and-switch,” May told WRAL. “A legal process was put into place that was used as the bait to pull Samuel out of sanctuary.”
The demonstration persisted for more than two hours as the protesters sang worship songs and prayed. They said they would be willing to protect him even if it meant getting arrested, WRAL reported.
The Morrisville Police Department said they were called to the scene around 9:15 a.m. when the protesters continued to ignore orders to disperse. They arrested a total of 27 protesters for failing to disperse and for resisting officers, according to The News Observer.
The police department said they “did not have prior knowledge of plans to arrest Mr. Oliver-Bruno,” The News Observer reported.
Samuel Oliver-Bruno’s son, Daniel Oliver-Perez, 19, was arrested. Here’s his mug shot. He faces charges of assault of a government official. I’m told he was trying to keep officers from taking his dad away. Oliver-Bruno, who is undocumented, will go to a detention center. #ABC11 pic.twitter.com/z7UgB21Yoa
— Gloria Rodriguez (@GloriaABC11) November 23, 2018
Oliver-Bruno’s son, Daniel, was later arrested and charged with assaulting a government officer, according to WRAL. Daniel is a U.S. citizen.
ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said that Oliver-Bruno had used fraudulent identity documents to enter the United States, and was first arrested in May 2014 by border patrol in El Paso, Texas.
According to a statement released by ICE and sighted by CBS17, Oliver Bruno was first arrested by border patrol in El Paso, Texas, in May 2014 when they found he had tried to use fraudulent identity documents to enter the country. The U.S. government then released Oliver-Bruno on parole as he was awaiting federal criminal prosecution, effectively allowing him into the country. In that same month, Oliver-Bruno was convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.
According to reports, Oliver-Bruno had at the time wanted to enter the United States to be with his sick wife who he said was having open heart surgery. His wife also has lupus and is financially dependent on Oliver-Bruno for her medical treatments.
The wife had followed her husband into the United States on a work permit in 1996. It is unclear when Oliver-Bruno returned to Mexico before his illegal entry in 2014.
When Oliver-Bruno was released from federal criminal custody in June 2014, he came into the custody of ICE and was subject to being deported at that time, Cox told The News Observer.
“However, due to a variety of appeals and acts of discretion he was not removed,” Cox told The News Observer.
Following extensive appeals, the court concluded that Oliver-Bruno had “no legal basis” to remain in the United States, Cox told WRAL.
Oliver-Bruno said he was granted a temporary delay from being deported to Mexico every year until his request was denied in November 2017, according to CBS17. This was when Bruno decided to seek sanctuary in a church to buy himself more time.
Cox told The News Observer: “Mr. Oliver-Bruno is a convicted criminal who has received all appropriate legal process under federal law, has no outstanding appeals, and has no legal basis to remain in the U.S.”
Oliver-Bruno is one of six known immigrants in North Carolina who has been staying on church properties to buy time to defer deportation, according to The News Observer.
Alerta Migratoria has been advocating for the six immigrants and has been trying to obtain support from Congress members.
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