BROWNSVILLE, Texas -- Bishop John Joseph Fitzpatrick testified today that church aid to Salvadoran refugees coming to the United States is in accordance with both the laws of God and man.
Bishop Fitzpatrick of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brownsville was the last defense witnesss to testify in the trial of Stacey Lynn Merkt, a lay religious worker accused of illegally bringing two Salvadorans into the country.
The Sanctuary Movement has maintained that the law is on the side of Ms. Merkt, charged with transporting the Salvadorans around Border Patrol checkpoints, and of other movement members who help refugees enter the U.S. from war-torn El Salvador. About 30 supporters of the movement have sat through the four-day trial.
If convicted, Ms. Merkt, 29, a member of the Bijou House religious community in Colorado Springs, Colo., could receive a 15-year prison sentence for helping transport the Salvadorans.
Defense lawyer Daniel Sheehan, a former priest who heads the Christic Institute in Washington, D.C., has said the Central American policy conducted by the executive branch is on trial along with Ms. Merkt.
He contends the United Nations protocol and congressional acts entitle Salvadorans to political asylum because they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their native country.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Guerra has sought to show that transporting illegal aliens for love, for money, for friendship, for whatever is a criminal act.
Sheehan has argued the district, on a main route from Central America, has not lived up to a 1981 congressional mandate to give Salvadorans special consideration for political asylum.
Ms. Merkt testified Tuesday she was working as a volunteer at the Casa Oscar Romero refugee center, operated by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville, and was with a nun and newspaper reporter when she was arrested. She is the only one of the three Americans to be tried.
Salvadorans Mauricio Valle, 21, and Brenda Sanchez-Galan, 19, both of whom had worked in a Lutheran Church-sponsored medical program in their country, asked Ms. Merkt to take them to San Antonio, Texas, to file applications for political asylum.
Ms. Merkt told federal jurors she agreed because the Valley INS district had been arresting and filing deportation proceedings against all Salvadorans seeking asylum, and they had a better chance for approval in San Antonio.
'I'm certainly a Christian ... and I really do feel I know I have a legal right to help (Salvadorans) escape from oppression,' she said.
Ms. Merkt said the Salvadorans told her of alleged atrocities and killings carried out against friends and family members in El Salvador.
Hal Boldin, the district director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, confirmed he had not granted an application for political asylum to a Salvadoran in the last two years.
