Ingrid Encalada Latorre on Thursday stood in the rain outside the Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder. It’s been her home for several months after she took sanctuary to avoid being deported.
“I pleaded guilty to a felony in 2010, as you all know, without knowing the immigration consequences of the plea,” she said. “That is what is continuing to jeopardize my future with my family in this country.”
The crime to which she referred involved using false documents so she could work. But when she took a plea, she didn’t know it could mean being sent back to her native Peru, the country she left as a child.
Encalada Latorre has exhausted all legal options to stay in the United States, so she has no recourse left but to take sanctuary in the church with her two young children, both American citizens.
She wants to change what she sees as “double jeopardy” when it comes to immigration laws.
“The laws we have in this country punish immigrants,” she said. “They punish us for working and then they punish us again with deportation.”
Encalada Latorre joined a small group outside of the church to make the “Jericho Walk,” seven laps around the parking lot while holding two large banners bearing the words “Keep Families Together.”
Inspired by the Battle of Jericho in the Old Testament, the walk coincided with a national effort to show solidarity with 40 people in 15 states resisting deportation orders by taking sanctuary in churches and temples.
The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization deeply involved in the Colorado sanctuary movement, made available on its website a “people’s resolution” stating that ICE is focusing its “extensive resources on the State of Colorado with the second-highest deportation rate in the country.”
Demonstrators on Thursday were asking citizens and non-citizens to support the resolution, which calls upon state and federal officials to create a path toward legal residency for people such as Encalada Latorre, and to repeal immigration laws they view as unjust.
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