(Im)migration and Refugee History, Rights & Countering Xenophobia

In the 1980s, the United States experienced a refugee crisis. Thousands of Central Americans were fleeing civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, traveling north through Mexico, and crossing the border into the U.S. [Note: Just tuning in? Listen to … Continue reading →

In the 1980s, Rev. John Fife and his congregation at Southside Presbyterian Church began to help Central American migrants fleeing persecution from US backed dictatorships. Their efforts would mark the beginning of a new — and controversial — social movement … Continue reading →

"The term 'sanctuary city' gained a new level of national recognition during the 2016 United States presidential election, and immigration policies and debates have remained a top issue since the election of Donald Trump. The battle over immigration and deportation will be waged on many fronts in the coming years, but sanctuary cities - municipalities that resist the national government's efforts to enforce immigration laws - are likely to be on the front lines for the immediate future, and social workers and others in the helping professions have vital roles to play. In this book, Melvin Delgado offers a compelling case for the centrality of sanctuary cities' cause to the very mission and professional identity of social workers and others in the human services and mental health professions. The text also presents a historical perspective on the rise of the sanctuary movements of the 1970s and 2000s, thereby giving context to the current environment and immigration debate. Sanctuary Cities, Communities, and Organizations serves as a helpful resource for human service practitioners, academics, and the general public alike"--Publisher's website.

Sanctuary cities, or localities where officials are prohibited from inquiring into immigration status, have become a part of the broader debate on undocumented immigration in the United States. Despite the increasing amount of coverage sanctuary policies receive, the American public knows little about these policies. In this book, Loren Collingwood and Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien delve into the history, media coverage, effects, and public opinion on these sanctuary policies in the hope of helping readers reach an informed decision regarding them.

"Just days after taking the White House, Donald Trump signed three executive orders targeting noncitizens-authorizing the Muslim Ban, the border wall, and ICE raids. The new administration's approach towards noncitizens was defined by bans, walls, and raids. This is the essential primer on how we got here, and what we must do to create a different future. Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary shows that these features have a long history and have long harmed all of us and our relationships to each other. The 45th president's xenophobic, racist, ableist, patriarchal ascendancy is no aberration, but the consequence of two centuries of U.S. political, economic, and social culture. Further, as A. Naomi Paik deftly demonstrates, the attacks against migrants are tightly bound to assaults against women, people of color, workers, ill and disabled people, queer and gender non-conforming people. These attacks are neither un-American nor unique. By showing how the problems we face today are embedded in the very foundation of the US, this book is a rallying cry for a broad-based, abolitionist sanctuary movement for all"--

What is a sanctuary city? We answer with an example that explains what immigration detainers are and why we should call them "constitutional cities".

Here are answers to common questions churches have when considering whether to provide sanctuary, but it is not legal advice and does not substitute for consultation with an attorney.

Updated 10/4/22: Map and list of sanctuary cities, counties, and state that are obstructing federal immigration enforcement.

The concept of “sanctuary” congregations has many definitions and applications. In the 1980s, Reform Movement congregations provided sanctuary primarily to central Americans at risk of deportation. As the Union for Reform Judaism stated in a 1985 resolution:

Proponents say sanctuary citites encourage better police relations. Opponents say the cities harbor criminals.

A growing movement of immigrant and over 700 faith communities doing what Congress and the Administration refuse to do: protect and stand with immigrants facing deportation.

One way people of faith and conscience can help provide sanctuary is by working partners in cities, counties, school districts and other local governmen...

Sanctuary policies do not conceal or shelter unauthorized immigrants from detection. Here's what you need to know about these policies.

Background on so-called sanctuary policies and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) on federal, state and local action on immigration enforcement.

Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics

Naomi Tsu, an attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, answers questions about sanctuary cities.

The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Thursday the conclusion of a week-long targeted enforcement operation that resulted in the apprehension of more than 170 at-large aliens throughout the U.S., where sanctuary policies have largely prohibited the cooperation of law enforcement agencies in the arrest of criminal aliens.

It's already illegal under state law, but Republicans in the Arizona Legislature want voters enshrine to a ban on "sanctuary city'' policies in the state Constitution.

A look back at the leaders and laws that have shaped Chicago's involvement with the sanctuary movement since 1982.

The arrests were made in Seattle, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., from October 3-9.

The latest sanctuary cities news from The Texas Tribune.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Voters in one of Arizona's most liberal cities rejected an initiative Tuesday that would have made Tucson the state's only sanctuary city amid concerns that it went too far in restricting police officers...

What is a sanctuary city? And can Trump really defund them? Here's a look at what the term means and its implications in immigration policy under Trump.

This report - Federal Funding of America’s Sanctuary Cites - quantified federal funding (FY2016) to the agencies and entities of America’s 106 Sanctuary Cities.

Amidst looming threats of mass deportation from the incoming administration, what is the role of local governments and local law enforcement?

"The city of El Centro is located in southern California's Imperial Valley, near the US-Mexico border. Surrounded by desert, sand dunes, and mountains, it is isolated and difficult to reach, but has long been an important place for Mexican migrants attracted to the valley's agricultural economy and proximity to the border. The Shadow of El Centro tells the story of how the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp of 1945 evolved into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Service Processing Center of the 2000s and became a national model for detaining migrants-a place where the policing of migration, the racialization of labor, and detainee resistance coalesced"--

"In 1965, the Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quotas of the 1920s that had severly limited immigration to American from everywhere but Western Europe. The result was mass immigration from Latin America, Asia, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. The wave of immigration and the restrictionism it produced led to a bitter political struggle over immigrants' rights that continues to this day. This book is a history of the post-1965 political battles between advocates of expansive admissions policies, rights, and benefits for immigrants and their anti-immigration, or restrictionist, opponents. Coleman argues that as immigration rendered what had once been seen as hard boundaries of the physical nation-state into something more porous, the rights of immigrations became crucial to immigration control. Restrictionists sought to limit immigrants' access to the American welfare state by arguing that they were a burden to the state and taking jobs from working- and middle-class Am ericans. However, the legacies of the civil rights movement, a growing commitment to deregulation, unusual political alliances, and institutional structures provided significant barriers to anti-immigration efforts. By the end of Reagan's presidency, restrictionists efforts to reverse the flow of immigration rights failed at the national level. In the 1990s, however, with national policy-making gridlocked, restrictionists focused their efforts on the state level. States acquired new powers in driving immigration policy and curtailed the expanded notion of alienage rights that had been forged over the previous decades. Coleman provides a new way of understanding the political history of immigration, looking not at borders and admissions policy but at the broad, internal battles over domestic policy that resulted from immigration. The author draws on a wealth of new sources from the Carter, Reagan, and Clinton administrations as well as from immigration and civil rights organizations. Th is book reveals that the current wave of anti-immigration sentiment seen in the electoral success of Donald Trump is not a recent phenomenon but has deep roots in the post-1965 immigration battles"--

"A deeply reported, newsbreaking account the humanitarian crisis of our time by the journalist who has been at the center of the story: MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff, winner of the 2019 Walter Cronkite Award, offers a chilling expose of the human cost of the Trump administration's border and immigration policies"--;In June 2018, Donald Trump's most notorious decision as president--the systematic separation of thousands of desperate migrant families at the US-Mexico border--had secretly been in effect for months before most Americans became aware of the astonishing inhumanity being perpetrated by their own government. Jacob Soboroff was among the first journalists to expose this reality after seeing firsthand the living conditions of the children in custody. His influential series of reports ignited public scrutiny that contributed to the president reversing his own policy and earned Soboroff the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Broadcast Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism. Soboroff has spent the past two years reporting the many strands of this complex narrative, developing sources from within the Trump administration who share critical details for the first time. He also traces the dramatic odyssey of one separated family from Guatemala, where their lives were threatened by narcos, to seek asylum at the U.S. border, where they were separated--the son ending up in Texas, and the father thousands of miles away, in the Mojave desert of central California. And he joins the heroes who emerged to challenge the policy, and who worked on the ground to reunite parents with children.