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By John W. Coleman*

3:30 P.M. EST March 24, 2010 | WASHINGTON (UMNS)

Lillian Lucrecia "Luky" Cotto (left) joins church members (from left) Guillermo de Paz, Dulce Urizar, Andrea Martinez and Antonio Martinez during the immigration rally in Washington. A UMNS photo by John Coleman. View in Photo Gallery

Lilian Lucrecia Cotto, a local pastor serving Lehman Memorial United Methodist Church in Hatboro, Pa., experienced a bewildering inner battle between hope and despair during the March 21 national march for immigration reform in the nation’s capital.

While Cotto was participating in the March for America, other members of her small Latino faith community were hiding in their homes, fearing arrest and detention by immigration enforcement officers because they are in the U.S. illegally.

“Luky,” as many know her, came a few days early to attend a United Methodist Board of Church and Society training event for about two dozen immigration-reform advocates from 17 annual conferences.

During the March 18 training session, Cotto learned that about 25 Lehman Church members were dismissed from jobs cutting storm-ravaged tree limbs and branches away from power lines.

Immigration officials had obtained employment records and determined that the Social Security numbers of these skilled temporary workers had expired. They told the company to fire them or risk a raid and arrests.

Church members regarded the warning as a sign of progress in enforcement tactics, but the workers and their families were still fearful they would be arrested, jailed, separated from one another and, most likely, deported.

Hope for future

For Cotto, it was a bad time to be away from her parish. Sunday’s worship attendance dropped from about 40 Latino members typically to only five. But it was a good time to be with other advocates who, like her, try to welcome, embrace and defend undocumented immigrants who fear and face rejection daily.

“I felt happy and privileged to be at the training and the march, but at the same time my heart was hurting for my people,” Cotto said. “I’m afraid many of them will now leave the area, either to return home or move elsewhere.”

Her friend, fellow pastor Hector Burgos, warned her to get used to that response because it’s a pattern he and others have seen too often among transient, undocumented church members.

But Cotto, who like Burgess will complete her seminary degree this year, does not plan to give up easily.

The immigration legal clinic Cotto helped found 10 years ago, named Eirena (meaning “peace” in Greek), cannot do much to defend these families from deportation.

But she is looking into the New Sanctuary Movement. She plans to meet next month with several pastors in Philadelphia who are involved in that growing national effort to provide refuge for immigrant families facing arrest, separation and deportation.

In the meantime, she has broadcast an appeal for help using e-mail, Facebook and the radio program she talks on every Monday at noon.

March inspires

Cotto, who moved to the U.S. from Guatemala 35 years ago, said the training and the march added to her motivation to be a true activist, pushing not only for overall reform but for justice and hospitality for undocumented people.

Hundreds of United Methodists gathered at the march endorsed calls for fair, humane, viable policies and procedures that would allow about 11 million immigrants now in the United States illegally to attain legal status while continuing to work and live with their families, safe from intimidation, arrest and deportation.

A group of nationally prominent faith leaders, including Jim Winkler, chief executive of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, met the day after the rally with senior White House officials to press for action on immigration reform this year.

“As followers of Jesus, we heed the call to welcome the sojourner and advocate on behalf of the vulnerable,” Winkler said. “Faith communities are uniquely situated to hear the cries of the millions of immigrant families who are victims of a broken immigration system and who continue to wait for real change. But we cannot wait any longer.”

Winkler said that militarizing the border and increasing interior enforcement have only brought about greater suffering for our immigrant brothers and sisters. “We need an immigration system that maintains family unity and provides a pathway to citizenship with minimal obstacles,” he said. “We need the president to lead and the Congress to enact just, humane reform legislation this year.”

For her part, Cotto wants to see more leadership from other racial-ethnic groups in the immigration reform struggle in order to broaden its base.

“I was glad to see all kinds of people from around the country at the march,” she said, “but I wanted to see more of them on stage. It’s important to see and hear non-Latinos speaking out on immigration reform. We have to share our stories and be in this movement together because it benefits all of us.”

*Coleman is a freelance writer based in Washington.

News media contact: Rich Peck, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.