Sanctuary

The Future Of Sanctuary

June 20, 2025 Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González, Dissent Magazine. Strategize! History, Immigrant Rights, Immigration, Refugees, Sanctuary, Sanctuary Cities

In the summer of 1984, a caravan of vehicles full of religious activists sped across the United States. Moving from Tucson to Los Angeles to Denver and finally ending in Detroit, this self-styled “Sanctuary Freedom Train” was transporting a Salvadoran family of four that had fled their war-torn country and arrived in the United States seeking political asylum. Raul and Valeria Gonzalez had escaped with their two children after Raul, a teacher, had been arrested and beaten by government soldiers and threatened with worse if he were to continue his literacy work among the country’s poor.

No Sanctuary: How Hospitals Collaborate With ICE

May 1, 2025 Mike Pappas, Left Voice. Resist! Deportations, Entrapment, Health Care, ICE, Sanctuary, Worker Rights and Jobs

Are hospital staff now staging fake meetings to help ICE trap their employees? That seems to be what happened recently in Minnesota. Aditya Wahyu Harsano’s case highlights how hospital officials do not care about their patients or staff, and underscores the need for healthcare workers to fight back against these attacks. Harsono, a 33-year-old Indonesian supply chain manager at a Minnesota hospital, is a father to an eight-month-old child with special needs who was recently arrested by ICE in his former workplace Avera Hospital in Marshal, MN.

Massachusetts Organizers Fight For A Sanctuary State

February 14, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Resist! ICE, Immigrants, Massachusetts, Sanctuary

Grassroots organizers in Massachusetts are demanding that their state stand with immigrant communities in declaring Massachusetts a sanctuary state—ensuring that state officials will not collaborate with Trump’s policy of mass immigrant detentions and deportations. Spearheaded by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the campaign outlines a set of four demands of the Massachusetts state government: ending law enforcement collaboration with ICE, stopping racist demonization against immigrants, stopping any new restrictions on housing assistance, and keeping ICE out of the state’s public schools and other institutions.

Trump Says Schools, Churches, Hospitals Aren’t Off-Limits To Immigration Police

January 23, 2025 Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout. Strategize! Donald Trump, ICE, Immigration, Sanctuary

For years, undocumented immigrants have held onto the knowledge that — while no place is ever completely safe — places like schools, hospitals and houses of worship have been much less likely to face raids from either Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection (CBP). That changed on January 21, when Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a statement announcing that the administration has rescinded guidelines that previously deterred immigration police from conducting raids in locations considered “sensitive” or “protected.”

The Sanctuary Movement Put US Foreign Policy On Trial

June 10, 2024 Natascha Elena Uhlmann, In These Times. Strategize! Border Patrol, History, Immigration, Refugees, Sanctuary, US Foreign Policy

Forty-two years ago, a Tucson congregation changed the landscape of immigration politics when what started with a legal clinic for Central American asylum seekers quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Now, some immigration scholars who have tracked the Sanctuary Movement for many years say the spirit of the movement is alive and well in student organizing for Gaza. The Sanctuary Movement was born in the ‘80s against the backdrop of repression, death squads, and massacres in El Salvador and Guatemala. Refugees were arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in desperate search of safety, but few would find the refuge they sought.

Women-Led Groups In Chicago Spearhead Response To Migrant Influx

September 12, 2023 Rebekah Barber, Scheer Post. Organize! Chicago, Housing, Migrant Rights, Sanctuary, Women Activism

Over the past year, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has bused more than 13,000 migrants to Chicago. Many entered the city with next to nothing — and some didn’t even make it safely. Last month, the Texas Department of Emergency Management announced that a 3-year-old girl had died en route to Chicago from Texas — the first known fatality of Abbott’s Operation Lone Star. For years, Chicago has declared itself a sanctuary city, and substantial state and local resources have been allocated, helping many of the new arrivals tomove into more permanent housing. Still, about 6,500 of these migrants are spread out across 15 shelters, and about 1,500 are sleeping at airports and police stations.

Central Oregonians Stall ICE Bus With Impromptu Protest

August 14, 2020 Emily Cureton, OPB.org. Resist! Detention Centers, Immigrant Rights, Oregon, Sanctuary

An attempt by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to detain two men in Bend did not go as planned Wednesday afternoon, after hundreds of protesters stalled the action for more than 10 hours, leading to a standoff with Border Patrol agents later that night. Immigration attorney Micaela Guthrie, who was among the first advocates on the scene, said the men were taken into custody in the morning, then loaded on to two buses. One man was detained at a gas station and the other was pulled over in his car, the men told a translator by yelling through the closed windows of the bus.

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