By Sophie Frank ’26
Staff Writer
On Monday, Nov. 7, 2022, the Weissman Center for Leadership hosted a screening and discussion of the documentary “Stop Time.” The film shares the story of Lucio Pérez, a migrant who faced deportation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and took sanctuary in First Congregational Church in Amherst, Massachusetts.
The film was made by Kate Way and Jason Kotoch, both local filmmakers, community members and academics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Way is a lecturer in the UMass College of Education, as well as a photographer. Kotoch is a graduate student studying art and a media organizer for the Pioneer Valley Workers Center. They operated as a two-person team while struggling financially as solo filmmakers. Both filmmakers frequently questioned their position as filmmakers and community members. During the discussion, Kotoch shared his reckoning with his own blind spots and privilege, while Way said that she “felt an enormous amount of responsibility to tell this story well and do justice for Lucio.”
“Both filmmakers frequently questioned their position as filmmakers and community members. During the discussion, Kotoch shared his reckoning with his own blind spots and privilege.”
Pérez, as the film shows, is married with four children. His legal troubles began during an innocuous road trip, when Pérez and his wife went inside a Dunkin’ to pick up drinks, leaving the kids in the car for a few minutes. When they returned, Pérez was detained by police on charges of child abandonment, as reported by The Boston Globe. For years after, Pérez faced legal battles and the threat of deportation by ICE. The pressure built when former President Donald Trump was elected and signed a bill during his first week in office that prioritized issuing deportation orders for “all who entered the country without authorization,” The Boston Globe reported. In August 2017, Pérez was given such an order, and was to be forced to leave the country by October of that year, bringing him closer than ever to being forced to leave the country.
First Congregational Church responded to widespread immigration reform and anti-immigration rhetoric during the 2016 election by becoming an “immigrant-welcoming congregation,” The Boston Globe reported. This means, in part, that they could offer sanctuary to immigrants facing deportation. When the church heard about Pérez’s case from the Pioneer Valley Workers Center, which organized to protest Pérez’s deportation, they held an emergency meeting and offered him sanctuary. He moved into the church on Oct. 18, 2017, according to the source.
For Pérez’s situation, sanctuary meant staying on church grounds and having at least one church volunteer in the church with him at all times. The church helped him see his family by organizing rides to and from their house in Springfield, Massachusetts, and rallied in support of him as his legal battles dragged on. He spent nearly four years living at the church before his stay of deportation was granted under the Biden administration.
A stay of deportation is defined by legal scholars as “an order directly from the Department of Homeland Security to refrain from removing an immigrant from the United States,” according to the Simone Bertollini Attorney at Law website. Immigrants may apply for a stay, which, if granted, allows them to remain in the country while they argue their case for permanent residency or citizenship, according to the source. In 2021, Pérez was granted “a temporary stay in his deportation while he argued to have his immigration case reconsidered … because [he] didn’t receive proper notice of the court proceedings” when he was first threatened with deportation, as reported by MassLive. His case is legally defensible because “the Supreme Court ruled in Niz-Chavez vs. Garland that the federal government must provide all required information to immigrants facing deportation in a single notice.” Because Pérez is able to prove his deportation was handled unfairly from the beginning, he is now able to reappear in court and argue his case again.
The kind of religious sanctuary that Pérez found in the church cannot be easily intervened with by the federal government, according to the American Immigration Council. ICE could have entered the church at any point during Pérez’s sanctuary and arrested him, but law enforcement agencies generally do not violate religious spaces in that manner. In a CNN article, a page from the ICE website is displayed that says they “generally avoid arrests at ‘sensitive locations,’” including churches. Staying in the church gave Pérez some security as he continued to fight the immigration system. It also created a community who came together around him and his family.
“Stop Time” strikes a difficult balance between focusing on the injustice and heaviness of the subject matter and highlighting the efforts of a small community. Much of the film contends with the turmoil that people dealing with the American immigration system experience. Many church members shown in the film and at the Pioneer Valley Workers Center had done activist work to oppose ICE and anti-immigration efforts before meeting Pérez, and this film is a continuation of those activist efforts, showing the real people that these systems affect. “We wanted audiences to viscerally feel” these shockwaves of anger, frustration and anxiety, Way said. Kotoch reiterated that sentiment, stating, “As people with privilege [it] is okay to be uncomfortable — learn to sit with [these feelings.]”
In 2018, when Mount Holyoke Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies David Hernández and his “History of Deportation” class visited Pérez at the church and wrote a joint blog post for Immprint about the experience, students recounted “feelings of empathy, helplessness, gut-wrenching heartache for his personal turmoil and anger over the complicated legal process.”
Though the story is one of government institutions and legal fights, it is also a powerful portrayal of humanity and community. Both filmmakers worked closely with Pérez to make sure his story was portrayed in an accurate way, with Kotoch describing their relationship as “one of solidarity [that] we organized together.” Way described getting to know him and the church community without a camera in her hand, recounting nights where she and Kotoch ate dinner with Pérez and his family at the church. Way said she approached the project as a “storyteller and a community member.” The church members were eager to contribute what they could, from driving Pérez’s family to the church to staying with him around the clock, and when Pérez’s stay was finally granted, they cried and hugged each other. Throughout the film, church members had nothing but praise for Pérez, whom the film shows to be a kind man who cares deeply for his family.
“Way described getting to know him and the church community without a camera in her hand, recounting nights where she and Kotoch ate dinner with Pérez and his family at the church.”
Kotoch and Way ended the screening by encouraging young people to vote. In particular, they mentioned a Massachusetts law that was on the ballot. During the 2022 midterm elections that took place last week, voters had the option to repeal a law allowing “immigrants who are in the country illegally to obtain state driver’s licenses,” according to GBH News. Since the screening, Massachusetts voted to keep the law. Axios reported that “the … law will extend driving privileges to an estimated 45,000-85,000 people over the next three years.”
In 2018, Hernández wrote, “Perhaps the issue of sanctuary will move the needle some,” mentioning the way some Trump-era policies exposed people to the struggles of the immigration system, Immprint reported. American politics have changed since then, but Hernández’s insights remain relevant. One of the students who contributed to the blog post, Shebati Sengupta ’19, wrote that Pérez’s experience “really reflects the possibilities present in community activism,” Immprint reported. The story is one of coming together to protest injustice — a story told with passion and love.