Biography
Stacey Lynn Merkt was a lay Methodist volunteer at Casa Óscar Romero, a Catholic refugee shelter in San Benito, Texas, and the first member of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement convicted of an immigration crime for helping Central Americans fleeing the wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. On February 17, 1984 she was stopped while driving undocumented Salvadorans — together with a Catholic sister and a newspaper reporter — and charged with felony alien transportation; convicted that year, she received a 90-day suspended sentence and two years' probation from U.S. District Judge Filemón Vela. On February 21, 1985 she was convicted again, alongside shelter director Jack Elder, of conspiring to transport Salvadoran refugees from Brownsville to a Harlingen bus station, and Vela sentenced her to 179 days in prison. Pregnant during the prosecution and supported by churches across the country, Merkt became a national symbol of the movement; after her appeals failed she entered prison in January 1987.
