In the middle of a civil struggle, married couple Ernesto and Linda Fuentes fled their house nation of El Salvador and headed for Philadelphia, by means of Mexico, in November 1983.
Ernesto was once an activist who disbursed meals and drugs in Salvadoran refugee camps. Linda was once a union organizer for banks and clothes factories.
The Salvadoran govt seen activists, particularly suspected guerrilla opponents and union leaders, as threats to its regime. It positioned activists’ names on “death squad hit lists.” The couple determined to go away after receiving threatening letters and get in touch with calls.
With false paperwork and the assistance of a humanitarian church workforce, they arrived on the Tabernacle United Church in West Philadelphia on Might 12, 1984. The congregation declared itself a public sanctuary for undocumented refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala. An estimated 500,000 undocumented Salvadorans lived within the U.S. round that point.
The Fuenteses used the pastor’s workplace as their bed room. Church participants had been steered to stay the doorways locked and no longer admit strangers, together with the Immigration and Naturalization Provider.
As a historian of race and policing in Philadelphia after the Civil Rights Motion, and the daughter of an immigrant, I’ve been exploring Philly’s historical past of sanctuary and the way non secular congregations, activists and town officers have supported native refugees over the last 40 years.
Accompanied by way of elected officers, clergy and group activists, the 4 undocumented youngsters of Carmela Apolonio Hernández step out of sanctuary on the Church of the Suggest in North Philadelphia in 2018.
Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto by means of Getty Photographs
A ‘welcoming city’ for immigrants
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker has emphasised since Might 2025 that Philadelphia is a licensed “welcoming city.” She particularly does no longer name Philadelphia a “sanctuary city.”
Welcoming towns have immigrant-friendly tasks that make training, housing, employees’ rights, prison assist and language services and products obtainable to immigrants and refugees with out the usage of the time period “sanctuary city” of their regulations and insurance policies.
The presumed objective of this phraseology is to stay Philadelphia off the Trump management’s radar and give protection to its US$2.2 billion in federal investment for well being and human services and products.
Then again, Philly was once, at quite a lot of issues, an reliable sanctuary town.
In 2014, then-Mayor Michael Nutter signed an govt order detailing that native police weren’t required to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement until the case concerned a warrant or violent felon.
Nutter later rescinded Philadelphia’s sanctuary town standing as a way to dissuade congressional Republicans from passing a Space invoice that will deny sanctuary towns federal cash earmarked for legislation enforcement and recidivism aid. Then again, the following mayor, Jim Kenney, reinstated the order on Jan. 4, 2016.
During 2017, President Donald Trump and Legal professional Normal Jeff Periods used govt orders, speeches and the immigration raid Operation Secure Town to drive Philadelphia officers to help ICE or lose federal grants.
In 2018, Philadelphia gained a lawsuit towards the Trump management that denied ICE get right of entry to to police databases to seek out undocumented immigrants and prohibited town staff from aiding ICE.
Protesters camped out of doors Philadelphia Town Corridor march in July 2018 after Mayor Jim Kenney introduced that Philadelphia would forestall giving ICE get right of entry to to a real-time arrest database. Kenney accused the company of misusing the ideas to focus on individuals who had been within the nation illegally however had been in a different way no longer accused of any crimes.
AP Photograph/Jacqueline Larma
Roots of sanctuary towns
The sanctuary motion began again within the Nineteen Sixties. However it wasn’t immigrants who had been searching for sanctuary. It was once American citizens.
Round 1968, drafted resisters who had been adversarial to combating within the Vietnam Conflict sought shelter in church buildings within the U.S. Northeast. Probably the most earliest circumstances concerned Robert Talmanson, who gained sanctuary in Boston’s Arlington Side road Unitarian Church. He was once later arrested by way of U.S. marshals and native police and incarcerated in Virginia for 3 years.
In November 1971, Berkeley, California, changed into the primary sanctuary town within the nation when 12 native church buildings impressed the Town Council to move a answer providing sanctuary to draft resisters. It additionally banned town staff from “assisting in the investigation or arrest of any sanctuary seeker.”
Within the 20 years that adopted, a number of Quaker, Presbyterian, Catholic and Jewish congregations throughout The us and Canada used their properties of worship as sanctuaries for Central American refugees who had been fleeing civil struggle, govt repression and genocide.
Philly joins nationwide motion
Frustration and outcry over the USA’ low acceptance charges of Central American asylum-seekers sparked Philadelphia’s sanctuary motion.
In January 1984, participants of Tabernacle United Church, the place the Fuentes couple would quickly take shelter, voted to enroll in the nationwide sanctuary community. Because the Rev. James MacDonald defined on the time, the congregation selected to “violate a human law in order to respond in obedience to God’s law.”
Via Might, the First United Methodist Church of Germantown additionally changed into a sanctuary church. A couple of months later, the church sheltered a tender Guatemalan couple, Joel and Gabriela, and their 3-year-old daughter, Lucy. Joel, an activist who labored with unions and pupil teams, have been tortured by way of Guatemala Town police.
On Jan. 14, 1985, INS staged national raids of sanctuaries and arrested 60 undocumented immigrants and 16 sanctuary employees – together with pastors, nuns and monks – for violating immigration regulations. Joel and his circle of relatives had been amongst the ones seized. They had been launched when church participants bailed them out as they awaited deportation hearings.
A brand new pathway to citizenship
Via the mid-’80s, 42,000 other people from 2,000 non secular establishments in 60 towns national had joined the sanctuary motion.
On Nov. 6, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed into legislation the Immigration Reform and Keep an eye on Act. It granted undocumented immigrants who arrived within the U.S. ahead of 1982 365 days to use for amnesty. If eligible, they’d start a five-year pathway to citizenship.
Roughly 3 million other people effectively changed into naturalized electorate throughout the amnesty program.
Within the Philadelphia house, no less than 5,000 to 7,000 other people had been undocumented in 1986. Advocates on the nonprofit Nationalities Provider Heart and American Pals Provider Committee famous that many immigrants sought after to use for amnesty however feared this system was once a trick.
A decade later, immigration enforcement were given more difficult.
Native police help ICE
In 1996, Congress handed Phase 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. This granted native police the suitable to help immigration officers in arresting and detaining unauthorized immigrants.
As of April 2026, over 1,600 legislation enforcement companies in 39 states and two U.S. territories have a 287(g) settlement with ICE. This system gives native police loose coaching in ICE procedures along side investment for apparatus, cars and time beyond regulation pay.
Whilst the Philadelphia Police Division hasn’t ever signed a Phase 287(g) settlement, about 68 Pennsylvania companies have, together with in neighboring Delaware County.
However those agreements aren’t all the time long-lasting. Between January and March 2026, two departments in Dollars and Chester counties rescinded their agreements with ICE to make citizens really feel protected after American-born protesters Renée Excellent and Alex Pretti had been killed right through ICE operations in Minneapolis.
After a 16-month detention, Javier Flores, a father of 3, went into sanctuary at Arch Side road United Methodist Church in Philadelphia in 2016. He spent just about a 12 months in sanctuary ahead of his visa request was once licensed and ICE waived his earlier removing orders.
Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto by means of Getty Photographs
Neighborhood activism continues
Consistent with Pew Charitable Trusts, just about 16% of Philadelphia’s 1.6 million citizens are immigrants, in large part from Asia and the Caribbean.
The precise selection of undocumented immigrants in Philadelphia is unknown. Then again, the Migration Coverage Institute estimates that 250,000 immigrants in Pennsylvania – 1.5% of the state’s general inhabitants – are undocumented.
Since January 2025, ICE crackdowns in sanctuary towns corresponding to Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and New York have resulted within the selection of other people held in ICE detention leaping from 40,000 to 73,000 other people in January 2026.
Voters and advocacy teams have stepped up to offer protection to immigrants from ICE. The Birthday celebration for Socialism and Liberation and the AR-12-toting participants of the Black Lion Birthday celebration for World Team spirit participated in protests in Philadelphia. Public college scholars from Northeast and Edison prime faculties have led anti-ICE walkouts.
On Jan. 29, 2026, Town Council participants Kendra Brooks and Rue Landau presented an “ICE Out” package deal. The expenses intention to codify the suitable of police not to percentage immigration, citizenship and private information with ICE, or detain and surrender arrested people to the federal company.
The regulation additionally proposes a ban on ICE brokers who put on mask or cover their badges, use unmarked vehicles and town cars, or use municipal areas as staging spaces for enforcement and raids. And it will restrict town staff from giving ICE get right of entry to to libraries, shelters, well being facilities and game facilities and not using a judicial warrant.
Neighborhood activists have lengthy used civil disobedience and humanitarian assist to offer protection to undocumented immigrants who’re looking for a recent get started within the U.S.
An interfaith community impressed Philadelphia to change into a sanctuary town. These days, church buildings corresponding to Heart Town’s Arch Side road United Methodist Church and North Philly’s Church of the Suggest, along side different congregations, uphold this custom whilst a multicultural group around the town continues that combat.
