Operation Sojourner
Jesús Cruz, “looking like a loving grandfather,” appeared “one warm day in May” “at the door of an old Catholic church in Nogales, Sonora, with a truckload of oranges, grapefruits, and tangerines to give to the needy.” So begins Sanctuary Movement activist Rachel Obryn’s account of one of the informants the FBI would use to infiltrate the Sanctuary Movement as part of Operation Sojourner, a ten-month surveillance of the movement that had undercover agents attending and recording worship services and meetings. Cruz began to attend Bible study at Alzona Lutheran Church in Phoenix, saying he was “a volunteer with the Sanctuary Movement.”1
The New York Times described Cruz “as about 60 years old” and “posting as a sympathetic volunteer in the sanctuary movement,” while being paid to spy on the congregations he infiltrated. The Times article states that he and Salmon Graham Delgado, another of the five infiltrators employed by the FBI in Operation Sojourner, were recruited by the Immigration and Naturalization Service after being caught smuggling undocumented people into the United States in 1980. Defense attorneys for Sanctuary workers would later allege that Graham also provided prostitutes to FBI field workers.2
In total, Cruz was paid $18,000 for his work in Operation Sojourner. 3
Phoenix-based INS investigator James Rayburn gained approval for Operation Sojourner in early 1984. His goal was “not simply to break up an immigrant-smuggling ring, but to determine the ‘true purpose’ of the movement (Rayburn suspected drug smuggling), to ascertain whether it constituted a threat to U.S. sovereignty, and to ‘neutralize’ the positive media publicity” the Sanctuary Movement had received.4
In addition to the spies placed within religious congregations, Operation Sojourner served search warrants on churches, the Chicago Religious Task Force offices, and the homes of individual Sanctuary Movement workers, including a nun's apartment.5
In a limited podcast series titled “Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State,” Dr. Lloyd Daniel Barba said, “Spies in the pews, covert recordings of Bible study sessions, and even church break-ins. These were the methods the federal government deployed in preparation for what would become one of the most dramatic trials in the history of the U.S. … these actions threatened the very fundamental freedoms Americans held so dearly.”6
Three nuns, two priests, a minister, and ten lay volunteers would be arrested, along with 58 Central Americans associated with the movement. An additional 43 unindicted co-conspirators were subpoenaed to testify.7
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, their attorneys, along with others, filed "Numerous motions to dismiss the indictments, citing international law and the right to religious freedom” and “a motion to suppress all the government’s evidence because it was obtained by the infiltration of churches by agents.” The judge denied all the motions. 8
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1. Rachel Ovryn, “Targeting the Sanctuary Movement,” CovertAction Information Bulletin no. 24 (1985): 15.
2. Wayne King, “Informers are assailed in refugee-harboring case,” The New York Times, August 4, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/04/us/informers-are-assailed-in-refugee-harboring-case.html.
3. Kristina M. Campbell, "Operation Sojourner: The Government Infiltration of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s and its Legacy in the Modern Central American Refugee Crisis," University of St. Thomas Law Journal 13, no. 3 (2017): 481.
4. Christian Smith, Resisting Reagan: The U.S. Central America Peace Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 297.
5. Christian Smith.
6. Lloyd Barba and Sergio Gonzalez, “Spies in the Pews,” in Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State, October 17, 2024, podcast, 1:01:14, https://open.spotify.com/episode/4WStnxTR1BBjTjioZqr3Nv?si=srszUi3mSg2cUls_PV2Gtw.
7. “United States v. Maria del Scorro Pardo de Aguilar (1985),” Center for Constitutional Rights, October 9, 2007, https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/united-states-v-maria-del-scorro-pardo-de-aguilar-1985.
8. “United States v. Maria del Scorro Pardo de Aguilar (1985)."