Latinx Leadership and Legacies in the US Sanctuary Movement, 1980-2020

Abstract

A longstanding criticism of the Sanctuary Movement in the United States has held that it is an immigrant rights movement without immigrant leaders and instead is merely a movement of white American activists. While there has historically been some merit to this criticism, this article covers a growing body of evidence which undercuts this argument and demonstrates how this criticism often obscures more than it reveals. This article revisits studies on the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s as well as the New Sanctuary Movement since 2006, with special attention given to more recent activism since former president Donald Trump’s election. Latinx leadership comes in many forms and is best exemplified by activists and (ex-)sanctuary seekers in Chicago and Denver among other locations. Finally, this article considers how Trump’s draconian, zero-tolerance policy emboldened Latinx, especially Latina, sanctuary seekers and leaders to speak up, lead, and resist on an unprecedented scale.