PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Honduran immigrant has taken refuge in a Philadelphia church to avoid deportation while her supporters work to gain legal status for her.

Angela Navarro has lived in fear of being sent back to her native country for 10 years. Tired of running scared, Navarro sought sanctuary and moved into a spare room at West Kensington Ministry on Nov. 18 with her family.

Nine-year-old Mariana Mendoza had to give up her pink bedroom and bike when her family moved from a two-story rowhouse into the cramped church annex.

But that’s OK with her — as long as her mom is safe.

“Because if she didn’t move, maybe they could deport her,” Mariana said.

Navarro, 28, speaking through an interpreter, said, “The hardest part has been leaving my life behind — leaving my house, my job, the inability to do normal family things, like going out for a walk or going shopping.”

Navarro is one of about a dozen U.S. immigrants who have recently taken shelter in churches, where authorities generally won’t pursue enforcement actions. The cases are unfolding as President Barack Obama seeks to curb deportations starting next year, an effort many Republicans oppose.

Immigration officials issued Navarro’s final deportation order when she was 17. She had been picked up in 2003 while illegally trying to enter the United States to join her parents, who had received permission to live in the U.S. after Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras.

Navarro defied the order and began living in the shadows to stay with her family and then-newborn son. Yet the stress eventually became too much, and on Nov. 18 she moved with her two children and husband, all U.S. citizens, into a renovated multipurpose room at West Kensington Ministry.

The church, led by Adan Mairena, belongs to the nationwide Sanctuary 2014 coalition of about two dozen congregations willing to protect immigrants in danger of being deported.

“It’s a way for us to act out our faith,” Mairena said.

Since last summer, three immigrants in sanctuary have won government reprieves and two have left their churches because they felt safe, coalition spokesman Sidney Traynham said. Four besides Navarro remain in refuge in churches in Denver, Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.

Attorney Patricia Camuzzi Luber recently filed paperwork asking officials to suspend Navarro’s deportation order and review her case in light of her marriage and Obama’s executive actions, which could grant legal status to those who arrived in the U.S. as minors or who have American children.

Because Navarro’s case remains unsettled, she stayed at the church last week while supporters rallied outside Philadelphia’s office for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Her mother made a tearful plea, and Mariana presented officials with a stack of petitions supporting her mom’s request to stay, including a letter from U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, a Democrat who represents part of the city.

ICE officials wouldn’t meet with the group but released a statement saying their agency “remains focused on smart and effective immigration enforcement that prioritizes the removal of convicted criminals and recent border entrants.” Navarro doesn’t fall under either category.

Navarro’s kids continue to attend school, and her husband still works as a truck driver, but Navarro won’t leave the West Kensington property as she continues to organize her campaign with the help of the local New Sanctuary Movement.

Her makeshift bedroom looks more like a glorified closet. A portable wall in the main area separates the kids’ sleeping area from the crowded living room. Meals are prepared in the church’s kitchen. Volunteers built a full bathroom before the family moved in.

Mariana and her older brother Arturo, 11, aren’t thrilled about sharing a room, but she sees the bright side. At their old house, Mariana saw her mom only in the morning because she worked late hours as a restaurant cook.

“I’m happy here,” Mariana said. “Now, every day I can always see her.”

• Society & Culture
• Immigration Issues

By Oliver Ellrodt

DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) – More than 17,000 people took part in Germany’s largest anti-immigrant rally to date on Monday in the eastern city of Dresden, gathering to sing Christmas carols and listen to speakers complain about immigrants and asylum-seekers.

The rally by a fast-growing grass-roots movement calling itself PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, was its 10th and largest so far.

“Germany is not a land of immigration,” PEGIDA leader Lutz Bachmann told the cheering crowd, which waved Germany flags and chanted criticism of media it accuses of biased reporting.

Bachmann started PEGIDA in October with an appeal on social media in Dresden to protest plans to add 14 centers for about 2,000 refugees locally. Demonstrators reject charges they are far-right extremists or neo-Nazis.

Monday’s rally took place in front of Dresden’s famous Semper Opera house in the city’s historic center.

A counter-demonstration of 4,000 people tried to disrupt the PEGIDA rally, which grew from a previous record of 15,000 a week ago and has embarrassed the political establishment with claims that Germany is being overrun by Muslims and other immigrants.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas has called PEGIDA a disgrace for Germany.

PEGIDA’s demands have attracted support from some on the far-right as well as ordinary Germans alarmed by a sharp rise in refugees, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East. The rallies have spread across Germany even though Dresden, with a tiny immigrant community, remains the movement’s hotbed.

Instead of their usual marches through the nighttime streets, the rally remained at the crowd sang Christmas classics as “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night) and “Oh, du froehliche”. The Semper opera turned off its lights to protest the rally.

The number of asylum-seekers in Germany has surged to some 200,000 this year, more than any other western country, due in part to an influx of Syrians.

(Writing by Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

• Politics & Government
• Political Demonstrations
• Germany

By Oliver Ellrodt

DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) – More than 17,000 people took part in Germany’s largest anti-immigrant rally to date on Monday in the eastern city of Dresden, gathering to sing Christmas carols and listen to speakers complain about immigrants and asylum-seekers.

The rally by a fast-growing grass-roots movement calling itself PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, was its 10th and largest so far.

“Germany is not a land of immigration,” PEGIDA leader Lutz Bachmann told the cheering crowd, which waved Germany flags and chanted criticism of media it accuses of biased reporting.

Bachmann started PEGIDA in October with an appeal on social media in Dresden to protest plans to add 14 centers for about 2,000 refugees locally. Demonstrators reject charges they are far-right extremists or neo-Nazis.

Monday’s rally took place in front of Dresden’s famous Semper Opera house in the city’s historic center.

A counter-demonstration of 4,000 people tried to disrupt the PEGIDA rally, which grew from a previous record of 15,000 a week ago and has embarrassed the political establishment with claims that Germany is being overrun by Muslims and other immigrants.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas has called PEGIDA a disgrace for Germany.

PEGIDA’s demands have attracted support from some on the far-right as well as ordinary Germans alarmed by a sharp rise in refugees, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East. The rallies have spread across Germany even though Dresden, with a tiny immigrant community, remains the movement’s hotbed.

Instead of their usual marches through the nighttime streets, the rally remained at the crowd sang Christmas classics as “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night) and “Oh, du froehliche”. The Semper opera turned off its lights to protest the rally.

The number of asylum-seekers in Germany has surged to some 200,000 this year, more than any other western country, due in part to an influx of Syrians.

(Writing by Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

• Politics & Government
• Political Demonstrations
• Germany

By Oliver Ellrodt

DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) – More than 17,000 people took part in Germany’s largest anti-immigrant rally to date on Monday in the eastern city of Dresden, gathering to sing Christmas carols and listen to speakers complain about immigrants and asylum-seekers.

The rally by a fast-growing grass-roots movement calling itself PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, was its 10th and largest so far.

“Germany is not a land of immigration,” PEGIDA leader Lutz Bachmann told the cheering crowd, which waved Germany flags and chanted criticism of media it accuses of biased reporting.

Bachmann started PEGIDA in October with an appeal on social media in Dresden to protest plans to add 14 centers for about 2,000 refugees locally. Demonstrators reject charges they are far-right extremists or neo-Nazis.

Monday’s rally took place in front of Dresden’s famous Semper Opera house in the city’s historic center.

A counter-demonstration of 4,000 people tried to disrupt the PEGIDA rally, which grew from a previous record of 15,000 a week ago and has embarrassed the political establishment with claims that Germany is being overrun by Muslims and other immigrants.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas has called PEGIDA a disgrace for Germany.

PEGIDA’s demands have attracted support from some on the far-right as well as ordinary Germans alarmed by a sharp rise in refugees, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East. The rallies have spread across Germany even though Dresden, with a tiny immigrant community, remains the movement’s hotbed.

Instead of their usual marches through the nighttime streets, the rally remained at the crowd sang Christmas classics as “Stille Nacht” (Silent Night) and “Oh, du froehliche”. The Semper opera turned off its lights to protest the rally.

The number of asylum-seekers in Germany has surged to some 200,000 this year, more than any other western country, due in part to an influx of Syrians.

(Writing by Erik Kirschbaum; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

• Politics & Government
• Political Demonstrations
• Germany

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – The American Civil Liberties Union and others have filed a lawsuit on behalf of Central American immigrants seeking to halt the Obama administration from placing immigrant women with children seeking asylum in detention centers.

The lawsuit, filed this week at a federal court in Washington D.C., comes as the United States opens what is billed as the largest family detention facility in the country for immigrant families, located in the southern Texas town of Dilley.

“Immigration detention is not designed to serve the goal of general deterrence, which is properly the function of the criminal justice system,” the lawsuit said.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in Dilley on Monday that the new facility, to hold up to 2,400 people, will help send the message to desperate people in Central America not to make the journey.

“It will now be more likely that you will be apprehended, it will now be more likely that you will be detained and sent back,” he said.

The facility, known as the South Texas Family Residential Center, has a school recreation area and cottages where the families. Most of the people housed there arrived with the surge of Central American refugees entering the country this past summer and will there live while their applications to remain in the United States are considered by immigration courts.

Catholic Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio, whose archdiocese includes Dilley, Texas, and is a powerful voice for immigrant rights, said the U.S. detention facility policy is “inhumane.”

“Prison is prison, no matter how you dress it up,” the archbishop, an immigrant from Mexico, told reporters on Friday.

(Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Dan Grebler)

• Immigration Issues
• Politics & Government
• American Civil Liberties Union

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Immigrant advocates filed a lawsuit Wednesday over concerns that federal immigration agents could use state driver’s license databases to track down people for deportation.

The National Immigration Law Center sued the Department of Homeland Security demanding documents detailing how federal immigration agents access and use driver’s license data.

The lawsuit comes after immigrant advocates in Maryland received reports that federal agents earlier this year arrested several immigrants with prior deportation orders after apparently identifying them with help from a driver’s license photo and vehicle information.

It also comes about two weeks before California starts issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants in the country illegally. More than 1 million people are expected to apply over the next three years.

“We need to at least know what the current policy is,” said Melissa Keaney, an attorney at the Los Angeles-based advocacy organization. “We don’t want to cause unnecessary panic, but we don’t want to cause a repeat of what happened in Maryland.”

The lawsuit aims to compel Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release records under the Freedom of Information Act that were requested in April.

ICE declined to comment on the suit. The agency does not use driver databases to identify immigration enforcement targets but “like other law enforcement agencies, ICE may use DMV data in support of ongoing criminal investigations or to aid in locating individuals who pose a national security risk or public safety threat,” said Gillian Christensen, an agency spokeswoman.

Ten states have approved driver’s licenses for immigrants in the country illegally, many of them with a distinct marker so the documents can be distinguished from those carried by U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Meanwhile, a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday has moved thousands of young immigrants a step closer to obtaining driver’s licenses in Arizona.

In California, advocates have long raised concerns about privacy protections for immigrants applying for the new licenses, fearing the information could be used by law enforcement agencies that have access to driver data for investigative purposes.

The Center argues more information is needed about how immigration enforcement agents use driver data to dispel any concerns that might discourage immigrants from applying for driver’s licenses.

A message was left for California’s Department of Motor Vehicles seeking comment.

After the Maryland arrests, state officials there told immigrant advocates that federal immigration officials can query the database by name but can’t execute a bulk download, said Elizabeth Alex, lead organizer for CASA de Maryland.

Alex said she was surprised to learn of the arrests after Maryland resumed issuing driver’s licenses to immigrants in the country illegally.

“We started getting a lot of questions from people saying, ‘Is it safe?”’, she said, adding that the group has been encouraging immigrants with a deportation record to seek legal advice before applying for a license.

• Immigration Issues
• Politics & Government
• Department of Homeland Security
• driver’s license