María Chavalan Sut, a 44-year-old woman who has been living in the Richmond area, says she is fleeing persecution in Guatemala. (Photo by Carlos Bernate)
Attorney Alina Kilpatrick is driving west at a steady 72 mph, heading toward Charlottesville for a 2:30 p.m. news conference announcing her second undocumented client from Central America’s Northern Triangle seeking sanctuary in a Virginia church to avoid deportation. The first, Abbie Arevalo Herrera, has been living since June at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Richmond.
Using a Bluetooth speaker, Kilpatrick talks to a media consultant about a potential national television appearance with her client at 8 p.m. On the dashboard screen of her silver Toyota Prius, the song “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult is on pause.
Meanwhile, immigrant rights consultant Lana Heath de Martinez is heading in the same direction to help prepare a space at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, where María Chavalan Sut, a 44-year-old woman who was living in the Richmond area with her domestic partner, arrived the evening of Sept. 30 with a car full of her belongings in trash bags.
A few nights before, Chavalan had a dream, says photographer Carlos Bernate, who was present when she arrived at the church. In her dream, she approached a yellow house. It was a warm environment — a safe place. When she went inside the yellow house, it was filled with everything she would need.
When she arrived at the Methodist church, she saw a brick facade bathed in yellow from exterior lights and went inside, walking down a long hallway to the stairs that led to her room, complete with beds, food and toiletries.
“She was overwhelmed,” Bernate says. “The whole Charlottesville community was expecting her there in a circle and she just started crying."
Martinez, who made the connection with the church, says, “I’m so thrilled that Wesley Memorial UMC has stepped up to the plate at this most critical moment and opened their doors to expand their community.”
The decision came quickly. Martinez says she found out on a Friday night that there was a sanctuary request. She initially reached out to another church that denied the request.
“And on Saturday, within an hour, I had three other Charlottesville congregations inviting me to meet with them so they could learn more information and make decisions for their congregations,” Martinez says.
Wesley Memorial "has quickly prioritized adapting to María as part of their community through such tangible things as purchasing interpretation equipment and paying local interpreters and more abstract things like understanding that the church is now María’s home and hosting ally trainings," Martinez says.
Two other churches, Westminster Presbyterian Church and First United Methodist Church in Charlottesville, agreed to assist Wesley Memorial while Chavalan fights a deportation order that came while she has an appeal pending in an Arlington immigration court.
“I have lived all of my life with violence. My children are the reason I am fighting,” Chavalan says in a statement. “I want them to live without all of the suffering I have experienced. Living in the church — this is the first time I can breathe; the first time I can sleep; the first time I have not felt afraid.”
Chavalan, who has four children, is from the indigenous Kaqchikel community in Guatemala. As a child, she witnessed the violence of the long-running Guatemalan civil war and genocide when her village was burned as part of an ethnic attack on the Kaqchikel people. Two of her relatives were killed, according to information released by Wesley Memorial.
Later, in an attempt to keep her native language alive, Chavalan worked at a publishing company in Guatemala City where she printed materials in her native Kaqchikel language. Despite her hardships early on, she became an educator, teaching math to teens who couldn’t pursue an education as children. In 2014, a powerful group in Guatemala threatened her with severe consequences if she did not sell her land, and when she refused, they set fire to her home, according to the released information.
She eventually fled and entered the United States at the Texas border after a four-month journey. She passed a “credible fear” screening and was given a notice to appear in court, where she could make her argument for asylum. As in Arevalo's case, the notice didn’t include a place and time, which she was supposed to receive later but did not because she didn't understand that she needed to supply the court with her address, says Kilpatrick, who is assisting Richmond lawyer Sacha Shaygan with the case.
Chavalan then was ordered “in absentia” to be removed from the United States. She is appealing this order, based on a June U.S. Supreme Court decision stating notices such as the one she received are invalid.
She sought sanctuary at the church after U.S. immigration officials told her she needed to buy a plane ticket to Guatemala by Sept. 25.
“Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church is proud to offer sanctuary to María, and we consider her a member of our faith community,” says the Rev. Isaac Collins of Wesley Memorial UMC. “Offering sanctuary to her is not a political act; it is an act of faith … We are here and will be here for María until she is free.”
