Sanctuary city
A sanctuary city is defined as a jurisdiction, such as a city or county, that intentionally limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts. While not all sanctuary cities have formal laws establishing this status, many have adopted informal policies that protect undocumented immigrants by not sharing their immigration status with federal authorities, particularly in cases of non-immigration-related offenses. Estimates suggest that there are between 200 to 560 sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States, including major cities like New York and Chicago. The concept of sanctuary cities has deep historical roots, with origins tracing back to ancient practices of offering asylum and refuge.
The modern sanctuary movement gained momentum in the 1980s, particularly in response to large-scale immigration from Central America, as churches and communities sought to provide safe haven for those fleeing violence and persecution. The topic of sanctuary cities has sparked intense political debate, particularly during the Trump administration, which sought to penalize these jurisdictions through funding cuts and increased federal enforcement. While the Biden administration has reversed some of these policies, tensions surrounding the role of sanctuary cities in immigration enforcement continue to be a contentious issue. As of 2024, many sanctuary cities remain committed to their policies despite ongoing political pressure and potential legal challenges.
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Sanctuary city
The term sanctuary city describes any jurisdiction that does not fully comply with federal immigration efforts. Any city, county, and some states can be considered "sanctuaries" even if they do not have actual laws in place. Many simply have informal policies in place stating they will not cooperate with federal law enforcement. Because of this, the exact number of sanctuary jurisdictions can be difficult to pin down, but estimates show there are at least 200 to 300 nationwide, including many of the nation's largest cities, such as New York and Chicago. These sanctuary cities act as a refuge for immigrants, allowing them to avoid deportation. Most sanctuary cities share the common function of not supplying a resident's immigration status to federal law enforcement when a resident has been arrested for a non-immigration-related offense. More than 200 state and local jurisdictions identifying as sanctuary cities did not comply with requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in 2015 to detain individuals. The Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes sanctuary policies, estimated that over 180 cities or counties served as sanctuary jurisdictions. As of 2019, the World Population review had identified more than 560 sanctuary cities, counties, and states. As debates regarding sanctuary cities continued, the issue became increasingly politicized and prominent as Donald Trump, who had campaigned in part on a platform of cracking down on illegal immigration and had been elected president in 2016, and his administration targeted sanctuary cities with policies such as a 2017 executive order that aimed to withhold federal funding from such jurisdictions. Though that effort was challenged and blocked by litigation, by early 2020 the administration had engaged in other attempts at compliance such as placing conditions on federal policing grants and sending federal enforcement officers to sanctuary cities to aid in deportation and arrest operations. These Trump-era policies were rescinded by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Background
The idea of a sanctuary city is not new. In fact, the concept dates back thousands of years. In ancient Greece, Athenians offered the right of asylum to anyone likely to be persecuted by another person. They even designated sanctuary cities for the purpose of saving the lives of defeated military members. In other words, those who had fought for the opposition had some place to go where they would not be persecuted. For example, in the sixth century BCE, those who followed Cylon, who aspired to be the ruler of Athens, fled to the temple of Athena on the Acropolis as political fugitives.
Historically, churches were often seen as a safe place of refuge or sanctuary. Early on, church councils established the right of churches and bishops to extend sanctuary to criminals. Many clerics in the Roman Empire, for example, would extend sanctuary as a means of proclaiming those rights of the church to the Roman state. Laws were passed to protect the rights of churches and the tradition of granting sanctuary continued into the Middle Ages and beyond.
The more modern concept of a sanctuary city can be traced back to the sanctuary movement of the 1980s. In 1980, the United States began to see large-scale immigration into the country from Central America. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua began to enter the country as they fled civil war, repression, and economic devastation. As debate raged on in Washington, DC, over whether to allow these immigrants to stay in the country, many citizens took matters into their own hands and offered these refugees a safe place to stay. Churches and synagogues declared themselves to be sanctuaries, taking in high numbers of refugees. Lawyers and bar associations also took up the cause, providing free representation at immigration hearings for those seeking asylum. At the height of the sanctuary movement, more than 150 churches and synagogues in Arizona, California, and Texas openly defied the government by sponsoring and supporting refugee families.
Overview
The concept of sanctuary cities has long been a source of heated debate in America. During the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, the administration of President Ronald Reagan fought back against the idea of providing sanctuary for the Central American refugees. Approval rates in asylum cases for those from El Salvador and Guatemala were less than 3 percent in 1984. That same year, asylum seekers from Iran were approved in 60 percent of cases, Afghans were approved 40 percent of the time, and 32 percent of those seeking asylum from Poland were approved. Thousands of Salvadorans and Guatemalans detained near the U.S. border with Mexico were deported without ever having the opportunity to receive legal advice, and many who were not immediately deported were pressured to agree to return to their country voluntarily.
Debate on sanctuary cities has continued into the twenty-first century, and the topic of illegal immigration has remained a hot-button issue. In the 2016 presidential election in the United States, Republican nominee Donald Trump campaigned on curbing illegal immigration by tackling sanctuary cities and building a wall along the country's border with Mexico. Trump won the election, and shortly after taking office in January 2017, he attempted to make good on the campaign promise.
On January 25, 2017, less than a week after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order designed to crack down on sanctuary cities. The order would strip federal funds from sanctuary cities and any jurisdiction providing refuge for undocumented immigrants. The move sparked immediate backlash and paved the way for a showdown with immigration advocates. Protesters took to the streets to voice their concern, and many mayors of sanctuary cities came out against the order, saying they would continue to provide refuge for immigrants even if it meant losing funding. Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel was one of the first to speak out against the order just moments after it was announced. He said the city would not budge on its policies and would remain a sanctuary city.
In April 2017, a federal judge in California dealt a legal blow to the president's plan, temporarily halting his threat to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities. U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick, in San Francisco, imposed a nationwide injunction against the order, saying lawsuits challenging the order were likely to succeed. The judge referred to discrepancies in the Trump administration's interpretation of the executive order. While other lawsuits and legal action kept the executive order in limbo into the fall of 2017, in November, Orrick ultimately ruled that the broadness of the order was unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction.
Despite this ruling, over the following years, particularly as the 2020 presidential election grew closer, the Trump administration made further attempts to prompt cooperation from sanctuary jurisdictions in its battle against illegal immigration. Beginning in 2018, several sanctuary cities filed lawsuits arguing that the government had unconstitutionally instituted new rules and conditions that linked whether they would receive federal law enforcement grants to whether they had policies in place in which local law enforcement aided in federal immigration enforcement and investigation. While some federal judges ruled against the conditions, in 2019, a Seattle federal appeals court decided that providing favorable treatment in giving grants based on cooperation with federal immigration policies was lawful according to the specific grant program in question. In February of the following year, around the same time that it was announced that federal enforcement agents affiliated with border control would be deployed to a number of sanctuary cities to support local deportation and arrest efforts, a Manhattan federal appeals court ruled that the federal government had the authority to impose grant money conditions.
In January 2021, President Joe Biden submitted an immigration bill to Congress and issued several executive orders to undo Trump's immigration policies. In May, Biden and the Department of Justice rescinded the Trump-era memo that blocked sanctuary cities from receiving federal funding.
In January 2021, Biden submitted an immigration bill to congress and issued several executive orders to undo Trump's immigration policies. In May, Biden and the Department of Justice rescinded the Trump-era memo that blocked sanctuary cities from receiving federal funding. However, in 2024, Biden did urge local law enforcement to comply with federal immigration law enforcement efforts. Despite this plea, sanctuary cities did not change their policies. After Trump's win in the 2024 presidential election, many sanctuary cities announced they would resist any mass deportation plans Trump attempts to enact.
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