Sanctuary in a Trumpist Context: Reactive or Radical?

• In Event: Migrants, Refugees, and Social Policies

Abstract

Since President Trump was elected in November, there have been calls by cities and universities to maintain or to quickly create sanctuary status. The forms of sanctuary that have been proposed largely conform to what sanctuary cities are supposed to do already: to have a separation between ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement—the federal institution that largely “polices” immigrants) and the police and local authorities. For example, if an undocumented immigrant called the police because of a theft, the police should not turn the immigrant in to ICE because of the call. Or if an individual enrolls in a public school or college, the administrator should not report the individual’s undocumented status to ICE. Campuses that have declared themselves sanctuaries have broadened the definition a bit to include safe spaces for the numerous other groups that feel threatened by a Trump presidency. Offering sanctuary in a church is related to but very different from these efforts. Nevertheless, most people (including most professors) believe that the first set of declarations are enough.
In this paper, I explore the difference between these broad (and yet also inclusive) declarations of sanctuary and the more specific and narrower offer of sanctuary in churches to undocumented individuals who have received their letters of removal (i.e. who face detention and deportation). While I believe that both forms of sanctuary are necessary, the second is more radical than the first. It is more literally creating a sanctuary space that resists current laws and “interrupts” unfree power dynamics. Although the term “interrupt” is used in the context of interrupting urban crime and gang activity, I am introducing a counter-narrative that suggests that sanctuary “interrupts” the unfree and undemocratic aspects of immigration policy, particularly in a Trumpist context. That is, these seemingly more “legitimate” and formal political dynamics are now eerily like gang behavior in some respects. The more literal offer of sanctuary is both legal and yet extra-legal—it opens up a concrete space for resistance against sovereign power. Arguably it fights legal and yet extra-constitutional power with quasi-legal but democratic power. This iteration of sanctuary is in keeping with more ancient notions of sanctuary as a sacred place that should not be violated by temporal powers and as a haven from misjudgment and abuse. While sanctuaries perhaps once conferred sacred status on those who entered these spaces, today it is the institution that is sacred and which thus far, has not been violated by ICE while the individual is only safe insofar as s/he doesn’t step outside of the church structure. The individual is therefore not sacred. For example, ICE recently nabbed a priest when he stepped out of his church into the parking lot. The individual certainly has a haven while protected in the religious structure but has no “sacred” qualities apart from this material structures.
Despite the more radical orientation of literal offers of sanctuary, authors and participants in the 1980s sanctuary movement have argued (notably, Susan Bibler Coutin), that this movement and the people it helped—Central American refugees who will never be recognized as such—was full of divisions, too. A key debate was if providing sanctuary for “illegitimate” refugees was sufficient or if the movement sought legislative reform and/or adjustment of this group’s status. A second debate revolved around the relative “innocence” of individuals and groups whose cases were upheld as an example of the injustice of not designating as a refugee people or groups clearly fleeing persecution. Interestingly, there has been a preference for refugees with no political affiliations, who were randomly targeted for violence. In contrast, journalists and politicians who resisted right-wing death squads and conservative governments were viewed as somehow “choosing” their persecution. In this way Coutin and Hector Perla have argued that this preference for apolitical figures to symbolize this movement depoliticizes the very issues causing refugee flows in the first place. I would add that this exposes the degree to which the category of refugee is by no means universal or inclusive in the way that it is conventionally treated in academic research.
In a Trumpist environment, these dynamics can be viewed as merely reactive. However, drawing upon the work of James Scott and Rhacel Parreñas Salazár (among others), I will argue that these efforts can be viewed as radical in Trumpist America.

Author

• Kathleen R. Arnold, DePaul University