Sanctuary Cities

Sanctuary policies first emerged in the 1980s as a response to the Reagan administration’s denial of asylum claims for refugees from Guatemala and El Salvador. In response to a growing refugee crisis, and the fear that many of those who were being denied asylum faced persecution and death in their country of origin, churches and synagogues began offering “sanctuary” to refugees from these countries, based on ancient religious tradition. The Sanctuary Movement, as it came to be known, led a number of cities to adopt city resolutions in solidarity beginning in 1983, marking the birth of the sanctuary city. These policies forbade local officials from inquiring into the immigration status of residents and often criticized the Reagan administration’s refugee policies. Today, the scope of sanctuary policies has expanded, and they may not only bar local officials from collecting information on immigration status, but also include a refusal to honor immigration detainers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which are issued by ICE to request that local authorities hold immigrants until they can be taken into federal custody for deportation proceedings. Most sanctuary policies in the United States were passed during three periods. The first ran from 1983 to 1989, with the policies passed in response to the Central American refugee crisis. The September 11 attacks and the subsequent immigration crackdown and passage of policies like Secure Communities would lead to more policies being passed between 2001 and 2012. Lastly, the presidency of Donald Trump led to more declarations based on the administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigration. At the same time, an anti-sanctuary movement materialized for the first time at both the federal and state level that sought to either prevent further declarations or to attach penalties to sanctuary policies. One example is Texas’s SB 4, which in 2017 introduced state-wide bans on these policies and allows for fines and removal from office for officials who do not comply with federal immigration policy. The Trump administration itself sought to deny federal grants to sanctuary jurisdictions, something that had been floated in the past by Republican presidential candidates like Fred Thompson but had never been attempted by previous administrations. The rhetoric of the Trump administration on sanctuary policies, as well as the media coverage of the 2015 accidental shooting of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco by an undocumented immigrant led to more coverage of the topic than at any other point in history. This in turn led to increased scholarship, which continues, as researchers look to connect the Sanctuary Movement to modern sanctuary cities; to examine the effects of media framing of these policies; to analyze the causes of public support or opposition; to explore the legality of sanctuary and anti-sanctuary legislation; and to document the effects these policies have on the incorporation of immigrant communities and crime rates in sanctuary cities.