Three immi­grants liv­ing in the coun­try with­out autho­riza­tion who had pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en sanc­tu­ary in Col­orado church­es to avoid depor­ta­tion got some good news last week: The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would block any depor­ta­tion pro­ceed­ings against them for a year.

Jeanette Vizguer­ra (Den­ver), Arturo Her­nan­dez Gar­cia (Den­ver) and San­dra Lopez (Car­bon­dale) heard from U.S. Con­gress­man Joe Neguse’s office that a request he made in Jan­u­ary to Pres­i­dent Joe Biden on their behalf and that of two oth­ers had been grant­ed. The let­ter was also signed by the oth­er Democ­rats in Colorado’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion, Sen. Michael Ben­net, Sen. John Hick­en­loop­er, Rep. Diana DeGette, Rep. Ed Perl­mut­ter and Rep. Jason Crow.

Ingrid Encal­a­da Latorre in Boul­der and Rosa Sabido in Man­cos were grant­ed stays of removal ear­li­er, but on Dec. 20, Neguse and Perl­mut­ter sent a let­ter to the Den­ver Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment Field Office reit­er­at­ing the ask for Vizguer­ra, Gar­cia and Lopez.

“San­dra, Jeanette, and Arturo have lived in Col­orado for decades, enrich­ing the econ­o­my and adding val­ue to the com­mu­ni­ty,” the let­ter stat­ed. “They should not have been pri­or­i­ties for depor­ta­tion, and we ask that you use your author­i­ty to grant them each a stay of removal. Doing so would help keep fam­i­lies togeth­er and pro­vide them with sta­bil­i­ty and hope.”

ICE offi­cials have pre­vi­ous­ly said they make arrests based on a case-by-case basis and fol­low direc­tives from the fed­er­al government.

Not all five immi­grants were liv­ing in church­es at the time of the request, but sev­er­al had pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en refuge in them. Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment gen­er­al­ly avoids send­ing offi­cers inside “sen­si­tive loca­tions” or “pro­tect­ed areas” like hous­es of wor­ship to detain immi­grants liv­ing in the coun­try with­out documentation.

In the let­ter to ICE, the con­gress­men not­ed that Lopez left sanc­tu­ary after ICE informed her she wasn’t a pri­or­i­ty for depor­ta­tion, but in 2010, when one of her chil­dren called 911 about an argu­ment between Lopez and her hus­band, she was report­ed to ICE (before Col­orado made that type of report­ing between ICE and police ille­gal). She was arrest­ed on domes­tic vio­lence charges — which were dropped — but she was still placed in removal proceedings.

Gar­cia was in sanc­tu­ary for nine months until he was informed by ICE in 2015 that he wasn’t a pri­or­i­ty for enforce­ment, accord­ing to the let­ter, but then he was detained in 2017 before Ben­net and Per­mut­ter intro­duced pri­vate bills to get him a two-year depor­ta­tion stay.

And Vizguer­ra, who lived in sanc­tu­ary until this lat­est stay was grant­ed, had fled Mex­i­co City because of vio­lence in 1997 and then bought a fake Social Secu­ri­ty card to get a job for her fam­i­ly, the let­ter stat­ed. She nev­er used it, the con­gress­men wrote, but offi­cers found it dur­ing a traf­fic stop, and she plead­ed guilty to a mis­de­meanor in 2009. In 2013, she was con­vict­ed for ille­gal entry after she went back to Mex­i­co for her mom’s funer­al. She spends much of her time advo­cat­ing for immi­grants and was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influ­en­tial peo­ple in 2017.

Encal­a­da Latorre was also pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed for using some­one else’s Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber but was grant­ed a par­don by Gov. Jared Polis in 2019. She now works to edu­cate oth­ers on how to get employ­ment with­out using fake documents.

At a news con­fer­ence Wednes­day after­noon, Vizguer­ra said she’s grate­ful for the stay, even though it’s only temporary.

“This is a year that we can keep fight­ing for our fam­i­lies, keep fight­ing for our com­mu­ni­ties,” she said, through a trans­la­tor. “We the peo­ple who are immi­grants have sus­tained this coun­try, many of us on the front­lines of jobs dur­ing this pan­dem­ic. … We deserve to be rec­og­nized and we deserve a path­way to citizenship.”

Lopez also spoke at the con­fer­ence, thank­ing sup­port­ers, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and even the local ICE office because of the dif­fer­ent poli­cies it’s enforc­ing under the new administration.

Although immi­grants liv­ing in sanc­tu­ary were able to get tem­po­rary stays for removal under for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, immi­gra­tion attor­neys say it was next to impos­si­ble under Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump. Con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives turned instead to fil­ing pri­vate bills for those in sanc­tu­ary — some­thing Col­orado rep­re­sen­ta­tives had done under pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions and which Neguse did most recent­ly for Encal­a­da Latorre and Sabido.

“It’s like a Christ­mas gift, a New Year’s gift, a gift that fell from the sky, for one year,” Lopez said.