Churches offer aid, sanctuary to Central American immigrants. [View all]

[Ink Man]

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-82426846/

Religious groups in the East Bay have also stepped up. Led by Guatemalan-born Pastor Pablo Morataya of the East Oakland church, four congregations this fall declared "sanctuary" — pledging to shield young people and their families even if they are ordered deported.

In the meantime they are helping with sponsorships, legal costs, food and clothing.

"It's a very powerful moment — the importance of the faith communities protecting people even if the government doesn't," said the Rev. Deborah Lee, director of the Interfaith Immigrant Rights Project, a Bay Area arm of Los Angeles-based Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, and organizer of the posada.

Rene recalled the day and a half he spent clinging to a freight train as it hurtled north through Mexico as "terrifying." After three months of detention in Texas and Arizona, he was placed with a cousin in Oakland who could not shelter him.

When Rene showed up on Morataya's church steps one Sunday in July, Maria de Jesus Martinez Luna was teaching Bible study. She and her husband came to the U.S. a quarter-century ago and won asylum after family members were slain during El Salvador's civil war. They have a 16-year-old son of their own. Martinez couldn't turn away.

"I identified with him as if he were my child, arriving this way, in this situation," said Martinez, 47. She called her husband and told him, 'He's alone. We could take him into our house.'"

Rene now sleeps in a twin bed in the family living room. He is learning English with help from Martinez's son and two daughters, ages 12 and 2. <snip>