In January, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman James Comer launched an investigation into the policies of sanctuary cities for their “impact on public safety and federal immigration enforcement.” Then, Comer asked the mayors of Chicago, Denver, Boston, and New York City to testify before Congress so that they might be “held publicly accountable.” Instead, the hearing provided an opportunity for mayors of these cities to tout their cities’ low crime rates and defend their cities’ policies.
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The congressional hearings follow an early blitz by the Trump Administration against those jurisdictions that have pledged to protect undocumented residents. For example, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that includes a mandate to withhold federal funds from these jurisdictions as well as threats to levy criminal and civil action against elected officials who refuse to assist federal immigration enforcement. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi froze hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for multiple cities, counties, and states. In response, multiple jurisdictions have pledged to file lawsuits against the Department of Justice, arguing that federal law does not make local municipalities responsible for the work of immigration enforcement. Most recently, Trump invoked an 18th century wartime declaration to deport hundreds of immigrants—even after a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the order.
While municipal sanctuary policies vary in their scope and definition, most seek to limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officers. While such policies do not block immigration authorities from enforcing immigration laws, they may frustrate Trump’s promise to forge the largest deportation force in the nation’s history.
Efforts to punish and pressure sanctuary municipalities speak to the longevity and organizing potential of a social movement practice that activists have been deploying for 40 years. The origins of today’s efforts to challenge the state’s ability to detain and deport undocumented residents can be traced back to the 1980s, when sanctuary activists inaugurated the nation’s first concerted national effort for migrant and refugee justice.
Read More: What Are Sanctuary Cities and Why Is Trump Targeting Them?
The sanctuary cities movement began in the 1980s as an outgrowth of the faith-based Sanctuary Movement, a campaign that provided shelter and protection to Central American refugees fleeing civil wars, despite U.S. immigration policies denying them asylum. Led by churches, synagogues, and faith-based organizations, this form of “sacred resistance” declared places of worship as sanctuaries for Salvadoran and Guatemalan asylum seekers, openly defying federal authorities to advocate for humanitarian aid, legal reform, and an end to U.S. intervention in Central America.
Sanctuary’s direct challenge to state power, however, placed it in the crosshairs of the Ronald Reagan Administration. Nearly from the movement’s inception, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Naturalization Service agents surveilled congregations, infiltrating Bible studies, placing spies in parish pews, secretly recording private conversations, and breaking into church offices. The federal government eventually brought 71 indictments against sanctuary workers. The “sanctuary trial,” which played out on the front pages of national newspapers and the nightly news, concluded in May 1986 with eight defendants found guilty of 18 felony counts of transporting and harboring migrants.
These prosecutions turned out to be something of a pyrrhic victory. During the trial, more than two dozen cities and counties joined a “municipal sanctuary” effort. As more Americans learned about the horrific consequences of U.S. military intervention in Central America, they pushed their elected officials to issue resolutions and make statements, even if they were mostly symbolic, in support of asylum seekers. Some of the earliest sanctuary municipal efforts arose in college towns with active peace and solidarity networks such as Berkeley, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Ithaca, New York; and Madison, Wisconsin. But the nation’s largest cities, including New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and St. Paul, also joined these efforts. In 1986, the governors of New Mexico and Wisconsin, meanwhile, declared their entire states as “sanctuaries” for asylum seekers.
In Berkeley, city council members opened this new phase of the sanctuary movement by passing a “City of Refuge” resolution in February 1985. The resolution’s non-cooperation agreement mirrored one the city had passed in 1971 when elected officials had offered their support for conscientious objectors who refused to be drafted during the Vietnam War.
Many of these sanctuary city resolutions made clear allusions to the historic and sacred underpinnings of their efforts. By declaring themself a “City of Refuge,” for example, San Franciscans harked back to the ancient Hebrew scriptures, which called for cities to be set aside so that justice-seekers might find safe harbor. In the northeast, leaders in cities like Cambridge, Massachusetts referenced the city and nation as places that “for centuries served as a haven for refugees of religious and political persecution” from across all continents. Further, they asserted that the “historical and moral tradition of the nation is rooted in the provision of sanctuary to persecuted people.”
The resolutions issued varied in tone and policy. Many commended local houses of worship for providing sanctuary. In Olympia, Washington, where the city council passed a resolution calling itself a “City of Peace,” elected officials lauded the work of people of faith, noting that “these groups and individuals have acted in a way they consider morally and legally correct and in the best tradition of our country which is founded on the principles of providing a safe haven for those fleeing political persecution.” In Takoma Park, Maryland, the city ordinance noted that “all people should have equal right to enjoy the benefits of Takoma Park without fear of harassment or discrimination due to their nationality or citizenship status.”
Sanctuary cities activists, however, faced pushback. In Los Angeles, the city’s faith leaders were among the earliest to organize for refugee support, forming the Southern California Ecumenical Council in 1978. In the following year, the LAPD passed Special Order 40 which prohibited law enforcement from initiating “police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person.” This policy, featuring a non-cooperation stipulation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agents, served as an early precursor to later “sanctuary city” policies.
Read More: Sanctuary Cities Can Be Better Prepared to Welcome Migrants
By 1985, however, as the city council debated a new “City of Refuge” resolution in support of LA’s growing Central American population, an organized conservative opposition intervened. Although council members narrowly passed a sanctuary resolution, a rising anti-sanctuary tide swelled in the following weeks. By February 1986 the council repealed its “City of Refuge” designation. However, it failed to dispense its key non-cooperation agreement. The political move effectively stripped the city of its sanctuary standing in name though not practice.
In Illinois, an active sanctuary coalition in Urbana-Champaign worked to get their elected officials to pass an ordinance that would make the college town a “city of refuge” in early 1986. Here too they faced an organized countermovement that sought to stop the resolution dead in its tracks. Sanctuary’s opponents descended upon the college town and threatened Republican aldermen with primary challengers if they didn’t kill the effort. One alderman said anyone who voted in favor of the resolution obviously had communist sympathies and cautioned that passage would “draw a lot of illegal aliens here, maybe even terrorists.” After four months of contentious debate, the city council passed a watered-down resolution that asked the Department of Justice to follow the Refugee Act of 1980, but included no stipulations blocking police or city staff from aiding federal immigration enforcement in the area.
Like the fight over the sanctuary trial, however, the debates over sanctuary cities ultimately proved fruitful for the movement for refugee justice. The decade-long struggle to ensure Salvadorans and Guatemalans had a legal pathway to political asylum in the United States ended with significant victories, including successful court cases against the federal government and federal legislation that created temporary protected status, a designation that prevented hundreds of thousands of people from being deported back to danger over the next decades.
Since the 1980s, activists fighting for immigration and refugee justice have continued to turn to sanctuary practices, both sacred and secular, as a method to protect members of their communities. Through the rebirth of sanctuary in the mid-2000s to the dramatic explosion of sanctuary organizing following Trump’s first presidential election, sanctuary congregations and cities have faced opposition at every turn. Now, the second Trump Administration is well on its way to adding another chapter in this decades-long struggle.
Lloyd D. Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. Sergio M. González is Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University. They are the co-hosts of the limited edition podcast series Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State and Public Fellows with the Public Religion Research Institute.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
