We were recently informed that the Department of Homeland Security had the intention of entering our church to arrest an undocumented mother, Flor Crisostomo, who has sought sanctuary there, the same way Elvira Arellano did earlier.

At the beginning of last week, immigration agents entered grade schools in Oakland, California. Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums assigned police officers to be in the schools to prevent immigration agents from entering and harassing the pupils in the future.

Is this the sort of America we want? A nation with a government that uses violent force to enter churches and schools to pursue mothers and children, in the name of a broken law which Congress is even now trying to repair?

Last week, 14 million members of the Methodist Church resolved in their General Conference to support the right of churches locally to offer sanctuary to undocumented people. We would remind you that this is the church to which George W. Bush belongs. Is it not perfectly clear that our immigration laws are broken, and that millions of people are waiting while the political and legislative process finds some way to resolve this crisis?

As millions of working families, many of them with children born citizens of the United States, wait for the politicians in Washington to come to an agreement, should this government not put a stop to these cruel and malicious raids, deportations, and family separations?

Flor Crisostomo, like Elvira Arellano before her, is not hiding. She could simply have disappeared and continued her life among 12 million other people. But instead, she courageously chose to bear witness to the current prosecution of families without papers.

Upon taking sanctuary, Flor announced to the world – and to the Department of Homeland Security – that she and 12 million other people who have been welcomed to this country's economy will not self deport themselves, not even motivated by the terror sown by some thousands of raids and deportations. “We are not going to deport ourselves,” she said, “because we have to feed our children, the ones who are U.S. citizens and the ones in Mexico and Haiti.”

In Mexico as in Haiti, the policies of the United States have destroyed the agricultural economy for millions of people, making them dependent on food exports from the United States and then raising the prices of corn and rice to levels above what families can afford to pay.

We are in the midst of a national debate in the presidential elections. Two of the three candidates are in favor of a comprehensive immigration reform and the renegotiation of commercial policies like the Free Trade Agreement. The third was a co-sponsor of an immigration reform bill in the U.S. Senate. Flor Crisostomo, led by her faith, has made a great sacrifice in order to emphasize the human reality of the cruel labor system lived by the undocumented, and to appeal to the North American public. She is part of the best tradition of giving faithful and peaceful witness.

Jesus said, “They have eyes but do not see.” Flor Crisostomo is in sanctuary so that America will open its eyes. If this government sets foot on consecrated ground to take her from the Communion of her Church, it is choosing to be blind.