27 church members arrested after surrounding ICE van for 3 hours in attempt to protect Mexican immigrant

More than two dozen members of the congregation at CityWell United Methodist Church in Durham, N.C., were detained on Friday after protesting the arrest of a Mexican immigrant they had accompanied to an appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in nearby Morrisville. At one point during the three-hour standoff, the group even surrounded an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) van that officers were using to transport the man.

The man, 47-year-old Samuel Oliver-Bruno, had shown up for an 8:45 a.m. appointment at the USCIS to get a scheduled biometrics scan that would allow him to stay in the country as part of a petition for deferred action, according to USA Today. For the past 11 months, Oliver-Bruno had been living in a Sunday school classroom in the basement of the CityWell church, which had granted him sanctuary while he petitioned for his deportation to Mexico to be delayed. When he received the notice of his appointment at the federal office, he made the difficult decision to leave his refuge, as he believed it was “his only option to remain active in the immigration process,” according to a statement by CityWell.

The concerned congregation decided to accompany him on the 15-mile trek to the USCIS. “We don’t really believe that sanctuary is just a building,” CityWell’s pastor Cleve May told the Washington Post. When the group arrived, the church members remained outside the USCIS, praying in the parking lot as Oliver-Bruno entered the building with his attorney, pastor and 19-year-old son, Daniel Oliver-Perez, a U.S.-born citizen.

Moments later, the appointment took a turn when plainclothes ICE officers tackled Oliver-Bruno in the waiting room and began dragging him toward the door as Oliver-Perez refused to let go of his father, according to the Washington Post. A church member alerted the congregation, and the group quickly mobilized to try to physically block the ICE officers from arresting the man. In a passionate public demonstration, the church members surrounded the government van, refusing to move while singing “Amazing Grace” in unison.

During the conflict, Oliver-Perez was arrested for trying to protect his father, and the teen now faces charges of assaulting a government official, according to USA Today. In the meantime, local officers from the Morrisville Police Department were called in to deescalate the situation; two hours later they began arresting the church members for civil disobedience, eventually detaining all 27 of them.

“The crowd, although peaceful, refused to allow the passage of the ICE vehicle,” the police department said in a Facebook post, confirming that it did not participate in the active arrest of Oliver-Bruno, who was eventually detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, according to ICE records.

USCIS spokesman Michael Bars defended the arrest in a statement, saying, “As a matter of policy, USCIS is unable to comment on specific cases related to pending litigation. Importantly, however, the agency does not schedule an appointment at our Application Support Centers for an applicant who does not have a pending immigration benefit application or other request. USCIS is committed to adjudicating all petitions, applications and requests fairly, efficiently, and effectively on a case-by-case basis to determine if they meet all standards required under applicable law, policies, and regulations.”

Democratic Reps. David E. Price and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina also weighed in on the situation, saying in a statement, “We are extremely alarmed by Samuel Oliver-Bruno’s abrupt arrest this morning by ICE agents at the USCIS office in Morrisville, N.C. … At best, Mr. Oliver-Bruno was presented with a catch-22 dilemma; at worst, he was entrapped. It’s clear that while Mr. Oliver-Bruno was attempting to follow the law in pursuit of his legal petition, ICE coordinated with USCIS to target him upon his leaving the City Well United Methodist Church.”

The congressmen also called Oliver-Bruno and his family “productive and upstanding members of the community for many years, with no serious criminal records and deep ties in the faith community.”

Oliver-Bruno had initially decided to leave Mexico to live and work in Greenville, N.C., in 1994. There he met his wife, Julia Perez Pacheco, who gave birth to their son in 1999. The family moved back to Mexico in 2011 to help take care of Oliver-Bruno’s parents. But two years later Perez Pacheco, who has the autoimmune disease lupus, was in need of open-heart surgery. So she decided to return to Greenville, where doctors and surgeons were better equipped to treat the disease.

A few months later, Oliver-Bruno tried to join his family in the U.S. — Price and Butterfield noted that both Perez Pacheco and the couple’s son relied on Oliver-Bruno for financial and emotional support — but he was detained at the border, according to USA Today. “He said he was later released on a stay of removal, which he said he was granted every year until November 2017,” the publication reported. That’s when Oliver-Bruno retreated to CityWell church, said the Charlotte, N.C., News & Observer, to avoid deportation.

“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.,” said ICE spokesperson Bryan Cox in an email to the News & Observer.

Cox also said: “Given he had completed his federal sentence, he had been released from federal criminal custody in June 2014, he came into this agency’s custody at that time and was subject to removal at that time. However, due to a variety of appeals and acts of discretion he was not removed.”

But the congregation is taking a stand about the nature of Oliver-Bruno’s arrest. “Of great concern is that Samuel’s arrest was a major departure from ICE policy to avoid enforcement actions in sensitive locations,” CityWell said in a statement. On its website, ICE confirms the policy is still in effect, but says, “Determinations regarding the manner and location of arrests are made on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration all aspects of the situation, including the target’s criminal history, safety considerations, the viability of the leads on the individual’s whereabouts, and the nature of the prospective arrest location.”

On Monday, Rep. Price tweeted that he and Butterfield had received confirmation from ICE that Oliver-Bruno would not be deported until his deferment claim was heard. But by Monday evening, he had provided an update that Oliver-Bruno’s petition for deferred deportation has been denied. He called the treatment of Oliver-Bruno “a miscarriage of justice.”

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