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Fearing A Knock On The Door From Immigration Agents, Woman Accepts Sanctuary In Northampton Church

WAMC

   A woman who said she fled persecution in Russia has taken refuge in a western Massachusetts church while she fights deportation.

     Irida Kakhtrinova said she accepted the offer of sanctuary from the Unitarian Society of Northampton because she feared federal immigration agents would knock on her door and take her away.

     "I am here and I will fight. I will fight until I no longer can," Kakhtrinova  said holding back tears during an interview with reporters Tuesday.  "My family, my children, my husband are all I have, and I will fight."

     The mother of American-born children, a 10-year-old son and twin 4-year-old girls, Kakhtrinova has lived in the United States since 2003. 

     Congregation leaders at a news conference Tuesday said she is welcome to live in the  church basement for as long as it takes for her to obtain legal status.

      Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz released a statement of support in which he pledged his administration would not interfere with the church’s act.

    She is the third undocumented immigrant in western Massachusetts to accept an offer of church sanctuary.

      Lucio Perez has been living in a church in Amherst since last October.  Gisella Collazo  took refuge at the South Congregational Church in Springfield at the end of March.

  

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.