Religious leaders say that a bill passed by the West Virginia House of Delegates this week could criminalize faith-based groups that provide assistance to undocumented immigrants.
HB 5031 changes the definition of “human smuggling” in state code to transporting or harboring individuals who are known to be in the country “with actual knowledge” of their illegal status.
The bill would penalize an individual or entity that helped an immigrant who entered “the United States legally but who has fallen ‘out of status’ and is deportable.” Penalties for violating the law, if eventually passed, include a felony conviction, with a prison term of three to 15 years, up to $200,000 in penalties, or both.
Simply put: The bill seems to criminalize providing assistance to immigrants who have come to the U.S. illegally. And some religious leaders are concerned that, if passed into law, it could hinder faith-based entities’ efforts to provide them with basic assistance like food and shelter, no matter their legal status.
“This is a preventative action to protect West Virginians from crime and other issues that we will see in the future,” said Del. Bill Ridenour (R-Jefferson) who is the lead sponsor of the legislation, describing it as a response to what he called “the massive numbers of illegal aliens coming into the country” – a term that is widely seen as stigmatizing.
Ridenour acknowledges that West Virginia doesn’t have a large immigrant population. Two percent or just over 27,000 West Virginia residents were immigrants in 2018, according to a report from the American Immigration Council. In 2020, another report found that about 4,000 individuals were in the state illegally.
House Democrats spoke out against the bill before it was put to a vote. Delegate Joey Garcia (D-Marion), who is also an attorney, said he believes the bill violates the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which, since 1898, has held that children born in the U.S. whose parents are in the country illegally are citizens.
Another potential problem with the legislation, said the Rev. Jenny Williams, Faith Organizer for ACLU-WV, is that terms such as “transporting” and “harboring,” are open to wide interpretation.
“When it comes to transporting,” Williams said, “let’s say that it’s a church ministry and you’re transporting someone to the doctor who is undocumented, or you’re taking a child to a sports practice.” Such actions, she worries, “could make church members vulnerable to be criminalized for living out their faith.”
While such scenarios aren’t common, Mark Phillips, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of West Virginia, said they do happen.
“We have lots of services where we do not ask people about their status,” he said, citing food pantry services and emergency financial assistance as examples. Catholic Charities also offers immigration services, which Phillips said provides immigrants with assistance to maintain their legal status.
“But sometimes we are contacted by someone who indicates they are undocumented,” he said.
Part of Catholic Charities’ work, he noted, is to connect people with resources. And so they might refer an undocumented individual to a local parish for help or provide resources for transportation and housing.
“It would be unlikely that we would say, ‘There’s nothing we can do for you, good luck, hit the road,’” Phillips said.
A history of “loving the stranger”
There is a long tradition of faith-based action in Catholic social teaching when it comes to helping immigrants, which Phillips cites as the inspiration behind the work of Catholic Charities. Those teachings played a key role in the 1960s immigrant farm workers’ unionization movement in California. During Lent in 1966, Cesar Chavez led a 25-day pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento under the banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a star of David and a cross, combining interfaith social teaching with the fight for labor rights.
The Jewish tradition, said Rabbi Victor Urecki, provides clear instructions regarding the treatment of immigrants, whether they are in the country legally or not. “We’re taught not just to love your neighbor as yourself, which appears only once in the Hebrew Bible,” he said, “but to love the stranger in your midst because you are a stranger in a strange land.”
“That commandment,” Urecki said, “appears at least 36 times in the Hebrew Bible.”
Urecki, who leads the B’nai Jacob Synagogue in Charleston, West Virginia, just returned from a trip to Juarez, Mexico – across the Rio Grande river from El Paso, Texas. He was in Juarez with a delegation from T’ruah, a rabbinical human rights organization, and HIAS, a Jewish organization that assists refugees and asylum seekers around the world. While there, Urecki visited with detained asylum seekers and refugee assistance workers.
He also pointed out that the Jewish people know what it is like to flee their homes out of fear of persecution. In the book of Genesis, Abraham and Sarah fled Canaan for Egypt, which they entered without permission because of a severe famine. This history, Urecki said, drew him to the border.
“I felt it was very important for me to go, to see for myself what is actually happening,” he said. What he found, he said, “were desperate people trying to come here legally, seeking asylum.”
Differing opinions on the border crisis
Urecki described the immigrants he met in Mexico and Texas as desperate people – seeking asylum but stuck in government bureaucracy – who are vulnerable to smugglers who exploit them financially.
On that point, bill sponsor Ridenour agrees with Urecki.
“We’re not here to punish [undocumented immigrants], many of whom are victims of these human smuggling networks by the drug cartels,” he said. But, he added, “Some of them aren’t victims, they’re here to economically benefit from being in the country.”
Ridenour also said that the bill isn’t intended to put churches in a bind. “We aren’t going to ask churches or ministries to do an E-Verify check,” he said, referring to a process that is required in some employment settings to check a person’s work status. But, he added, “churches need to abide by the law.”
It’s a tension that faith leaders may soon have to reckon with if HB 5031 makes it through the Senate and onto the Governor’s desk. The legislation is currently in the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee and in order to become law, would need to be approved in the upper chamber by the end of the state’s 60-day legislative session on March 9.
“Our work calls us to welcome the stranger,” said Phillips, “and you are putting us in a situation where we might have to make a difficult choice about what’s legal.”
Laura Harbert Allen is a Report for America corps member covering religion for 100 Days in Appalachia. Click here to help support her reporting through the Ground Truth Project.
