The plan was for Nury Chavarria to stay inside the church Sunday night as hundreds of supporters gathered outside to sing and chant their support for her to remain in the U.S.The plan changed. As her plans in general seem to change these days.

Chavarria’s original plan was to remain in the U.S., as she has for 24 years since fleeing Guatemala. She has been raising four kids in Norwalk; though undocumented, she was granted annual stays of deportation. But that plan changed: Newly aggressive federal immigration officials ordered her deported back to Guatemala last Thursday.

She changed that plan, too: Instead of boarding a plane, she took refuge in Fair Haven’s Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal, where federal policy forbids agents from coming to grab her, while her lawyers and now elected officials renew efforts to win permission for her to remain here. Instead of being another one of Donald Trump’s deportees, Chavarria has become a symbol of the resistance to the president’s immigration policies: a hard-working housecleaner and single mom who has never gotten in trouble with the law in more than two decades of raising her family here.

As national television outlets beamed her story to the nation, over 200 people Sunday came to a sloping lot on the East Pearl Street church grounds for a vigil a block uphill from the Quinnipiac River. It was one of those defining New Haven moments, demonstrating the city’s commitment to welcoming immigrants.