On January 25, 2017, after having demonized undocumented immigrants during his election campaign, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, signs an executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”. It
On January 25, 2017, after having demonized undocumented immigrants during his election campaign, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, signs an executive order “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States”. It dramatically expands the mandate of federal immigration authorities and threatens sanctuary cities’ ability to protect immigrants of illegal status. Among other anti-immigration policies, the order restores and strengthens two programs from previous administrations extending to local police the enforcement powers of federal immigration law and directing the Department of Homeland Security to weekly publish crimes committed by aliens in sanctuary cities. Since the signing of the executive order, arrests and deportations have increased by 40%.
Resistance to deportation has been led in large part by faith organizations that draw from a long tradition of granting sanctuary. Following the ancient religious concept of sanctuary, churches have a duty to shelter people fleeing persecution. In the 1980s, US congregations of different faiths inaugurated a social movement that resisted federal law by offering direct sanctuary, hiding, providing shelter, food, transportation and legal assistance to refugees fleeing violence from the civil wars and collapsing economies in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, only to be met with discriminatory federal laws and regulations in the United States.
In 2007, activists and religious leaders in various cities, including New York, Chicago, and California, working with immigrant organizations, envisioned a New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) to engage faith-based groups specifically in support of the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Founding members of the NSM included clergy and congregations from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions