This installment was going to cover municipal rebellion — when a municipality’s attempt to do something positive is actively opposed by a larger jurisdiction, e.g. the state or federal government. It was going to cover marijuana laws vs. Jeff Sessions, the rebel mayors of Puerto Rico, more on municipal broadband, local net neutrality laws,... However, in light of current events, we’re going to focus on the sanctuary movement for immigrants.
Here’s the plan:
We’ll start with some brief background on sanctuary. Then history of municipalities, religious groups, and college campuses providing sanctuary. And we’ll survey risks and advice for setting up to provide sanctuary for each of these entities.
We’ll then finish with some commentary from our political comedians, a list of organizations providing legal assistance to immigrants, and upcoming actions.
The main takeaway from this diary is likely the sets of links to sanctuary resources and to legal assistance for immigrants.
If you are involved with a sanctuary project, or live in a sanctuary city or state, please post information about it in the comments. Where available, I’ll include a local example from where I live, in Seattle, WA. Please point to more organizations providing aid to immigrants, and especially those dealing with child separation. And please post about actions people can take, or how people can help.
What is sanctuary?
This refers to any sheltering of people from arrest or attack by outside authorities or by other people. It is in the tradition of the Underground Railroad, of hiding Jews in Nazi Germany.
Once Upon a Time, there was, in some countries, actual legal sanctuary on church grounds. The legal basis no longer exists, but is sometimes still respected by tradition. There is still legal sanctuary in foreign embassies...unless, of course, the host country decides to violate it.
The usage is more broad now, and includes resistance to external authorities by a local jurisdiction, e.g. states or cities refusing to cooperate with federal authorities.
The main emphasis for sanctuary is for people already in the United States, at risk of deportation, obviously, because people being turned away or arrested at the border don’t have access to the organizations providing sanctuary.
In an ironic twist, what we’re faced with currently is a failure of sanctuary — the right to asylum — being resisted by other forms of sanctuary. For background on the right to asylum, please read snackdoodle’s diary about the Refugee Convention:
The Immigration Law No One Is Talking About
The US signed this, and implemented laws to back it up. This says, among other things, that asylum seekers can enter anywhere — that bit about having to enter at ports is bogus. It says families must be kept together. It says religious items can’t be confiscated. Plus much more about treatment of refugees, being ignored now.
These people who are being turned away or arrested at the border can’t access sanctuary inside the US, as they’re either outside the US, or already in custody of federal authorities. This is why the Trump administration is trying to set up camps on federal property, such as military bases, as local authority doesn’t extend there.
For these people, the main form of direct assistance is legal. Negative publicity and religious condemnation may help pressure the administration to modify what it is doing. But as we’ve seen, they’re going to twist and lie. Trump’s “backtracking” on child separation wasn’t real — it says they’ll detain families together...indefinitely.
There are, however, points at which they have to cross other jurisdictions, or make use of non-federal services. At those points, they become accessible to sanctuary actions. For instance, once they’ve grabbed families and kidnapped their children, they have to transport the separated children and parents. We’ve seen multiple airline companies refusing to transport kidnapped children. At points they also cross paths with local law enforcement. If they are in a sanctuary municipality, local law enforcement can refuse to cooperate.
Sanctuary cities, counties, and states
History and examples
There are cities, counties, and even entire states that have adopted some form of sanctuary policies.
The same sanctuary movement in the US that began in the 1980s with churches determining to act as refuges for immigrants also propelled cities and other municipal governments to stop cooperating with immigration authorities. San Francisco led off in 1985 with a policy of allowing no funds for cooperation. (Since this was led by religious groups, the articles on the initial history are linked from the sanctuary churches section below.) Over 500 cities, counties, states have adopted sanctuary policies.
It turns out that counties are probably the most relevant type of administrative region for assessing how prevalent municipal sanctuary is — this is because it’s typically counties that have jails, and rounding up and holding immigrants in jails is the main support municipalities give to ICE. The Immigrant Legal Resource Center has evaluated counties for their level of acquiescence to or resistance to ICE — here is their report:
The Rise of Sanctuary: Getting Local Officers Out of the Business of Deportations in the Trump Era
They rate the level of compliance of counties with ICE on a scale of eight steps, ranging from complete acquiescence — having signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE, which “deputizes” the county to act for ICE — through refusal to cooperate — having a prohibition to participate in immigration enforcement. The bulk of counties fall somewhere in the middle. 2% have a 287(g) agreement; 4% (114 counties) prohibit immigration enforcement.
If you’ll please go to their map of counties by level of sanctuary policy in the above document, or open it here…
National Map of Local Entanglement with ICE
...you’ll see that California wins the sanctuary policy prize. It’s followed by Oregon and Vermont.
The California Values Act (SB 54, introduced by Kevin de Leon in 2017, signed by Gov. Brown, went into effect 1-Jan-2018) enacts sanctuary policies for the entire state.
A list of policies per state and city is available here.
See the Roy Wood Jr. (The Daily Show) segment Policing in sanctuary cities (embedded below in the comic section) for an example of what’s different in a sanctuary city.
Issues and resources
The Trump administration has attempted retaliation against cities, counties, states with sanctuary policies, either by revoking grants or threatening assorted forms of punishment that he probably can’t mete out. However, Republicans have passed laws that differentially and detrimentally affect “blue” states, even if not specifically tied to sanctuary. This serves as retaliation “in advance”.
But there’s nothing that requires state or local governments to assist the federal immigration authorities, because immigration is not in their purview. Several organization have put together resources for municipalities wanting to enact sanctuary policies:
Local Progress is aggregating sanctuary city resources from multiple organizations.
National Immigration Law Center Sanctuary City Toolkit
The Catholic Legal Immigration Network’s Sanctuary City Toolkit — information on economic contributions of immigrants, and talking points for promoting immigrant-friendly communities
Citylab article on digital privacy and opposing surveillance: The New ‘Digital’ Sanctuaries
It’s interesting to see how the National Conference of State Legislatures attempts to be neutral in their information on sanctuary policies. There is considerable useful information here, regardless of the attempted neutrality.
Sanctuary churches
History and examples
Churches are ahead of us on this — they’ve got an organization and support network and how-tos — the New Sanctuary Movement. Why “new”? Because the original Sanctuary Movement started in the 1980s. The “new” version started in 2007 and now has about 800 faith and immigrant communities signed on.
These articles provide some history and background for the sanctuary movement:
Why This Church Is Providing ‘Sanctuary’ To Undocumented Immigrants
Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, helped launch the “sanctuary church” movement in the 1980s, when places of worship across the country helped harbor Central American migrants facing the threat of deportation after fleeing violence in their countries. Southside was one of the first to publicly offer sanctuary and helped an estimated 14,000 immigrants throughout that decade, ABC news reported.
As you might guess, the Quakers were also involved in starting the sanctuary movement. In the following article, you’ll see that denial of asylum has happened before, with different “excuses”.
Quakers in the Sanctuary Movement
Between 1980 and 1991, nearly one million Central Americans fled political repression and violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua and sought asylum in the US. For much of that time, however, the US government maintained a policy of characterising these refugees as ‘economic migrants’ and refused them asylum.
Founded in 1980 by two Quakers and a Presbyterian minister from Tucson Arizona, the Sanctuary Movement provided legal, financial and material aid to these refugees, in open defiance of US Federal Law. From Arizona, the movement spread to other parts of the US and into Canada. As well as Quakers, the Sanctuary Movement involved Catholic, Presbyterian and other congregations - over five hundred of which eventually declared themselves official “sanctuaries” for refugees with no legal documents.
Here’s a current example, from the Seattle area:
Seattle area churches band together to support immigrants held at Sea-Tac Detention Center
This is the same prison that Rep. Pramila Jayapal got access to, and then led a protest in front of.
Immigrant moms in SeaTac prison 'could hear their children screaming'
See also the Kobi Libii (The Opposition w/ Jordan Klepper) segment War on ICE: Church Sanctuaries Used as Sanctuaries! (embedded below in the comic section) for an example of church sanctuary.
Issues and resources
The resources page from the New Sanctuary Movement has links to guidance from several major denominations, how-to videos from individual congregations, a sanctuary manual in Spanish, etc.
The Presbyterian Church of the USA has excellent material for congregations considering becoming sanctuaries, that covers practical considerations and especially legal issues.
The main risk is that congregations can be charged with “harboring” people who are deemed not legally in the US. One interpretation of “harboring” says it only applies if the people are “hidden”. That’s not the usual case for sanctuary — people are generally fighting deportation orders, and it’s known where they are. There is no settled case law about what “harboring” means — this has been decided both ways.
Unfortunately, there is no real legal barrier to ICE entering churches. If the local government is on the side of the church, they can refuse to assist ICE, and may be able to interfere with them entering.
Sanctuary college campuses
History
This is a more recent development, mainly since November 2016, when there were student protests at multiple colleges, to push for non-cooperation with immigration enforcement. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has adopted a strongly-worded resolution in favor of sanctuary campuses.
Sanctuary policies range from (most critically) not providing information about students to ICE, to offering distance learning options for deported students so they can complete their degrees in exile.
The relevant Wikipedia article has a list of colleges that have adopted sanctuary policies, but may be out of date.
Issues and resources
The main issue is retaliation by the federal government. Colleges often are dependent on grants, and many come from the federal government. These might be cancelled or withheld. Another risk is legal — colleges might be sued over refusal to cooperate with authorities. Individual administrators, faculty, and students might be arrested or sued. There isn’t a tradition of sanctuary, as there is with churches, so ICE and CBP agents are more likely to just do what they want anyway. Support by the local community, and sanctuary policies of the city, county, and state can help. Some of the options for supporting undocumented students have less risk, such as providing distance learning, or forming cooperative agreements with other colleges to allow deported students to continue their work elsewhere.
The AAUP has a resource page, with sample policies and resolutions, and information from campuses that have enacted sanctuary policies.
Legal help for asylum seekers and other immigrants
This list concentrates on legal assistance. If you know of others, please add them in the comments. I’m including both organizations that provide direct representation of immigrants, and organizations that are bringing lawsuits against the Trump administration. Note that as immigrant parents and children are moved to other parts of the country, organizations not near the border will increasingly become relevant. (This list is in alphabetic order — no preference implied.)
American Civil Liberties Union
Catholic Legal Immigration Network
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law
Immigrant Defense Project
Immigrant Legal Resource Center (These are the folks who published the statistics on counties not cooperating with ICE, also linked above.)
National Immigration Law Center
National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project (Assisting those held at the Sea-Tac, WA, detention center.)
Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) (Fundraiser for RAICES: Reunite an immigrant parent with their child)
Southern Poverty Law Center
Texas Civil Rights Project
The Texas Tribune's list of organizations helping immigrant children separated from their parents
Action items
A nationwide Families Belong Together protest is planned for June 30th. Find your event here. MoveOn is doing the main organizing, but darn near every organization on our side is a partner in this (DKos, DFA, OFA, ACLU, SPLC, SEIU, Sierra Club, 350.org, PP, etc. etc. etc.).
The November elections are not that far off. Can you help with GOTV? If you’re not near a campaign that needs door-to-door canvassing, how about sending postcards to voters? or texting GOTV volunteers?
A little comic relief
No, not really...rather, as is often the case these days, comedians offer the most clear commentary. These are just a few examples.
Roy Wood Jr. (The Daily Show): Policing in sanctuary cities
Trae Crowder (Liberal Redneck): Space Forcing Families Apart
Stephen Colbert: The story we should be talking about
Kobi Libii (The Opposition w/ Jordan Klepper): War on ICE: Church Sanctuaries Used as Sanctuaries!
Jimmy Dore: Why we don't need ICE (Trigger warning: Don't watch this if you're bothered by Democrats getting called out.)
Discussion!
Again, please post about your own state, city, college, religious organization, etc., involved in sanctuary. If you know of more actions people can take, or more organizations providing assistance to immigrants and especially those whose children have been taken away, please post! Let us know if you’ve found good how-to information about setting up sanctuary. And about more upcoming actions.