Alexander was four months old when I met him in 2003 before the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride. A U.S. citizen born to a Jamaican mother, Maria, he was the youngest rider on the 13-day bus trip through cities and towns throughout the U.S. on the way to Washington, D.C., and New York City.

I did not know Maria’s legal status, but like any non-citizen she could fear deportation. Still, she had the courage to come on the bus with her baby and share her story.

Some had doubts that bringing a baby on such a strenuous trip would be a good idea. But Alexander’s good-natured smile and his ability to sleep through singing in more than a dozen languages won us all over. His presence also became our most telling testimony: Wouldn’t his future be enhanced by a reasonable policy allowing Maria a pathway to citizenship? So that, instead of working as a $96 per week nanny in the Southeastern U.S., she could achieve her dream of becoming a public speaker in the Pacific Northwest? Also, wouldn’t deporting Maria without her baby be a most inhumane outcome of a tragically broken immigration system?

Four years later, immigration enforcement authorities have stepped up workplace raids sevenfold. Those caught in the raids — nearly 1,000 of them are sitting in a privately run Tacoma facility — suffer lengthy detentions without due process and eventual deportation. Four thousand people died trying to cross into the United States from the south over the last 10 years. In the absence of immgration reform, national policy is limited to building 700-mile border fences and new, privately run prisons.

Many immigrants in Washington state live in fear and still are not able to participate fully in community life — though as hotel and construction workers, day laborers and farm workers, janitors, computer programmers, and nonprofit service administrators, they contribute to our economy and in so doing make the U.S. strong.

At the initiative of the Comite Pro-Amnistia General y Justicia Social (Committee for a General Amnesty and Social Justice), faith communities are joining community organizations, labor unions, and immigrant rights advocates in announcing a new Sanctuary Movement as a humanitarian effort to alleviate suffering among immigrant families at risk of separation because of deportation and as a declaration of solidarity with people from all over the world who migrate here.

The new Sanctuary Movement aims to broaden the call for a just, comprehensive immigration reform that respects their human dignity and affirms the basic rights of all people. It’s inspired by the 1980s Sanctuary Movement of congregations hosting El Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing violence and government-sponsored and U.S.-backed repression. This new effort is intended to involve congregations providing an intensive level of family support — legal, spiritual, and material — that highlights a broken immigration system and galvanizes advocacy and organizing for policies that humanize rather than criminalize immigrants.

The new Sanctuary Movement is rooted in the fundamental tenets of compassion, faith and human dignity. A sanctuary is a sacred space of worship that also guarantees compassion, protection, and the love of God. The concept of churches, mosques, and synagogues opening their doors to those who are new to the country or in need is not new. What is distinct about this effort is the urgency to give public voice to the hopes and dreams of immigrant families who represent the experience of millions of vulnerable people seeking refuge in this country. Congregations locally are now considering their role, including that of legal hospitality, as part of the new Sanctuary Movement. Community organizations and labor unions are applying the concept of sanctuary to short-term policy objectives, such as calling for a moratorium on workplace raids and passing ordinances in municipal jurisdictions that ensure that immigrant communities can contact local authorities without fear.

The issue of immigration is complex. In the beautiful film Life and Debt, Jamaicans subjected to the results of trade liberalization and international finance were moved out of subsistence farming and into dire poverty while tourists luxuriated oceanside. No wonder people like Maria would come to the United States to survive and sustain herself.

At this time, families from countries such as Haiti, China, and Guatemala are being welcomed into churches in New York City and Los Angeles. They will speak to the experience of what a more just immigration system might do for millions like them. They’ll underscore the danger of separating some 3.1 million minors, citizens all, from their non-citizen parents. These families are the prophets of a future that their children, like Alexander, might enjoy, giving new meaning to the Statue of Liberty as a beacon of freedom and justice for all.

Michael Ramos is Director of Social Justice Ministries for the Church Council of Greater Seattle.