Sanctuary towns in america, which restrict native cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, have drawn the ire of President Donald Trump all through either one of his administrations.
Border czar Tom Homan mentioned in July 2025 that the Trump management would goal sanctuary towns around the nation and “flood the zone” with brokers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to pursue deportation targets.
I’m a historian of migration. I’ve discovered that the idea that of sanctuary takes many bureaucracy, from gestures of kindness and advocacy to extra formal approaches similar to church buildings protective migrants liable to arrest and deportation.
Within the U.S., sanctuary town insurance policies have traditionally been designed to fortify undocumented immigrants and refugees, particularly the ones dealing with deportation. Ordinances in line with those insurance policies are continuously utilized by native government to sign the will for substantive immigration reform.
New public sanctuary insurance policies
Nowadays’s sanctuary practices, and the federal focused on of sanctuary towns, are in large part the results of the best way sanctuary took form around the U.S. within the Eighties.
All over this era, church buildings, town officers and activists assisted migrants fleeing the violent stipulations created by way of U.S. proxy wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.
Within the early Eighties, migrants arriving within the U.S. faced restrictive asylum processes. To a big extent, this was once the results of the Reagan management’s refusal to recognize the level of human rights violations perpetrated by way of U.S.-supported regimes in Central The usa.
In 1984, the government authorized not up to 3% of U.S. asylum claims by way of candidates who had fled El Salvador and Guatemala. By way of comparability, asylum claims have been authorized for over 30% – and in some instances, 60% – of refugees from Iran, Afghanistan and Poland.
In reaction, U.S. activists and church and town leaders started to recommend on behalf of refugees from Central The usa. They sought to impact alternate at house and in a foreign country, in the end coalescing into what was referred to as the Sanctuary Motion.
This in large part decentralized coalition considering protective refugees by way of offering protected housing, continuously in church buildings, and advocating for his or her proper to hunt asylum. And so they engaged in public outreach to boost consciousness concerning the stipulations in Central The usa and the U.S. govt’s position in conflicts there.
The objective was once to modify U.S. coverage. As one sanctuary employee in Texas mentioned in 1985, in keeping with accounts compiled on the Benson Latin American Assortment on the College of Texas at Austin: “Sanctuary offers a way, by which folks can, number one, be safe from the fear of death, and, number two, speak out as to what is really going on in Central America.”
Father Richard Sinner, left, and Salvadoran starvation strikers sit down outdoor the Immigration and Naturalization Provider processing heart to protest immigration measures on Feb. 21, 1989, in Brownsville, Texas.
Walt Frerck/AFP/Getty Photographs
The Sanctuary Motion additionally ended in arranged visits to the U.S.-Mexico border to witness the techniques during which migrants have been being handled by way of U.S. immigration officers. In Texas between 1983 and 1985, for example, folks have been invited to report the actions of immigration officers at Port Isabel Detention Heart.
Participants of the Sanctuary Motion additionally shared one of the crucial horrors they discovered about from missionaries and refugees returning from Central The usa, in keeping with accounts within the Benson Latin American Assortment.
As a member of the Rio Grande Border Witness team conveyed, in keeping with data preserved within the Benson Latin American Assortment, there have been repeated tales out of Central The usa “of women being raped and stabbed” and “of fathers being murdered in front of their families.”
As consciousness about violence in Central The usa larger, extra folks and congregations within the U.S. was concerned within the Sanctuary Motion. At its top in 1986, the motion incorporated 300 church buildings that recommended sanctuary for Central American migrants and the rules underpinning the Sanctuary Motion.
Public and symbolic
It was once all through this top that U.S. towns first started making sanctuary declarations and later handed binding ordinances.
In 1985, Berkeley, California, which had in the past declared itself a sanctuary town for conscientious objectors to the Vietnam Battle, made some of the first sanctuary town declarations on behalf of refugees from Central The usa. Its solution reaffirmed town’s “support for the principle of sanctuary and for those groups which engage in this time-honored tradition of humanitarian assistance.”
Town officers mentioned that no town worker would “violate the established sanctuaries by assisting in investigations, public or clandestine, by engaging in or assisting with arrests for alleged violation of immigration laws by the refugees in the sanctuaries or by those offering sanctuary.”
A member of the clergy with New Sanctuary Coalition enters an immigration court as federal brokers wait outdoor on July 8, 2025, in New York.
AP Picture/Olga Fedorova
Towns similar to San Francisco and Santa Fe, New Mexico, adopted with declarations or binding ordinances. Those projects have been continuously particularly crafted for migrants from Central The usa and contained evaluations of U.S. overseas coverage and asylum coverage.
A 1989 San Francisco ordinance, which remains to be in impact, was once impressed by way of the perception that the U.S. had particular duties to the electorate of El Salvador and Guatemala on account of its position within the conflicts there.
There was once robust rhetoric and symbolism within the sanctuary town resolutions handed within the Eighties. This holds true for the prevailing, as sanctuary declarations and insurance policies have turn out to be more and more polarizing in nowadays’s political local weather.
Additionally, as I notice in my very own paintings, public acts of sanctuary can come at a value, continuously on the expense of the very folks they’re supposed to assist. So that you can elevate public consciousness and sympathy, the ones short of safe haven continuously have their maximum harrowing moments laid naked for public intake.
The Sanctuary Motion that started within the Eighties, partly to protest U.S. fortify for repressive governments, has continued for greater than 40 years as an expression of shock for and team spirit with immigrants who come to the U.S.
The query now’s how the motion will evolve within the face of the Trump management’s threats.
Some sanctuary town leaders, similar to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, have spoke back by way of pointing to the worth of insurance policies that foster neighborhood agree with and assist stay all citizens protected. How different leaders and communities reply continues to be observed.
