=SanctuaryFollow

Arellano, who you may or may not recall, had been holed up in the Adalberto Methodist Church for over a year evading Federal authorities by claiming sanctuary within the church walls. Last week I read an opinion piece asking that authorities not arrest Arellano. Not because she wasn't a criminal but because to arrest her a year later upon leaving the church would be lending validity to the unconstitutional idea of "sanctuary" and setting a dangerous precedent. To arrest her now would be a tacit admission that they had to wait for her to come out first.

How should the government have handled it? Should they have simply stormed the church and pulled her out? Attempted to press criminal charges against the church sheltering her? Were they right to wait as long as they did for a peaceful resolution? Her crimes were illegal entry and she was convicted of using a false Social Security card if that makes any difference in your answer.

I think police officers should have entered the church as peacefully as possible and placed her under arrest as soon as her whereabouts were known.

I happen to agree that this lends validity to the idea of church as sanctuary which, while it has a certain romantic appeal, is problematic on so many levels I'm not going to bother enumerating all of them.

If you think this was handled well, you're not seeing the ramifications of validating the idea of sanctuary. The right way to handle this situation would have been to enter the church when her location was discovered. There's no reason to "storm" the church; it's not as if she was accused of some violent crime.

By allowing her refuge for a year precedent is set, maybe not legal precedent, but the seed has been planted in the minds of folks looking to evade the law. The only justifiable course of action at this point is the elimination of all churches in this country, because the potential for fugitives to claim sactuary is too great to allow their continued existence.

Sanctuary hasn't been a valid legal concept since the late 1500s or so. However, legal or not, any time someone can evade arrest for a year by staying in a church and the government lends credence to that by not arresting them until they leave the church, I think it obviously implies that the church is a safe place to be when the feds want you. There really wasn't risk of a non-peaceful resolution -- this wasn't a case of her being holed up in a bunker with sixteen hostages and a box of grenades. It was sheer unwillingness on the part of the government to go into a church which led to her additional year of 'freedom'.

Certainly if she had been in a warehouse or an apartment building, the authorities would not have waited a year for her to come out.

Under a different administration the fact that she holed up in a church would not have been a factor.

Having said that, this still beats the living **** out of Ruby Ridge.