Rosa Robles Loreto looked around the quiet courtyard at Southside Presbyterian Church Friday morning and pointed to a room with a white stenciled sign wedged inside the door. Hundreds of the signs, with the message “We Stand With Rosa,” were ubiquitously seen around parts of Tucson last year and a few still remain.
“When I see them, I get emotional,” said Robles Loreto in Spanish. “I am still appreciative of the wide support I received.”
Friday was a special day for Robles Loreto. It was a year to the day when family, friends and supporters filled the courtyard to welcome her from her 15-month-long sanctuary at this activist church. Robles Loreto, married and mother of two boys, had sought refuge at the south side church on Aug. 8, 2014, after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had issued a deportation order against her stemming from a traffic stop for an improper lane change.
Making a difficult family decision, she entered the church, which had reignited a national sanctuary movement to protect immigrant families from being separated. Her family would be separated, though her boys were able to visit and spend time with her. Robles Loreto was able remain in Tucson and became a national symbol of resistance to deportation efforts.
“It passed by very fast. It feels like yesterday when I was freed,” said Robles Loreto, who left sanctuary after her attorney, Margo Cowan, a longtime civil-rights activist, reached a confidential agreement with ICE not to deport Robles Loreto, who has lived in Tucson since 1999.
“But when I come to church on Sundays, I remember the despair that I felt during the 15 months that I lived here,” she said.
In the past 12 months, Robles Loreto has returned to a tranquil life. She attends to her home, family and work. But that peacefulness now is threatened with the election of a new president who promised to deal harshly with undocumented people. She has applied for legal residency.
She works 40 hours a week at a tortilleria, the night shift, getting home in the morning to see her sons, Gerardo, 13, and Emiliano, 10, off to school. On the weekends the boys and their father, Gerardo Grijalva Noriega, are busy with baseball practices and games. The boys and their father are fans of the New York Yankee and the Naranjeros of Hermosillo, Sonora, the state where Rosa Loreto and her husband are from.
“Our life is work and baseball. Nothing else,” she said. However, during the recent World Series, it was a divided house. Her husband rooted for the Cleveland Indians and their sons cheered for the Chicago Cubs, the eventual champs.
“There was so much noise and jumping around the house,” Robles Loreto said.
A year ago the family wasn’t able to enjoy watching baseball games or doing anything as a family. Sunday the family will be at a baseball tournament in which Emiliano’s team, the Warriors, will play for a championship. She said the boys often happily note they can now do activities that they were not able to do while she was at Southside.
Despite the fact that her deportation case is closed, Donald Trump’s ascendancy is deeply troubling to her. He has promised to end President Obama’s executive order that gave undocumented young people temporary reprieve from deportation and a work permit. Her eldest son was hoping to apply.
Now the family is not so sure. Fearful uncertainty has re-entered their lives.
Robles Loreto keeps in touch with other immigrants who were in sanctuary. They talk, they strategize, they offer each other emotional support.
Robles Loreto hopes Trump tones down his rhetoric and demonstrates humanity toward immigrants. She said she remains positive and draws emotional strength from her faith in God.
In the past year since she emerged into the light of freedom, Robles Loreto is at peace when she is home or in church with her family.
But with the impending change in the national political landscape, she said, “The reality will be different when I step outside.”
