S4 E1 Raiding Sanctuary

Humphris, Rachel and Benson, Michaela and Sigona, Nando and Bloch, Alice (2025) S4 E1 Raiding Sanctuary. Who do we think we are? Presents MAGA and Migration.

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Abstract

When anti-immigration raids intensified in the USA after Trump’s return to the presidency, it left many wondering: how could this happen in places like LA, ostensibly a “Sanctuary City”? What, in fact, are sanctuary cities? Launching our new series on the role of borders and migration in the roll out of Donald Trump’s MAGA project, Rachel Humphris, author of “Making Sanctuary Cities” joins us to explain all. She outlines the rich history of such places, with roots in both traditions of sheltering refugees but also in activist histories of non-cooperation. Rachel also describes how the term ‘Sanctuary Cities’ was appropriated in the so-called ‘culture wars’, used by the right to paint a misleading picture of urban areas as full of “undesirable” outsiders and their apparently woke defenders. Plus, we ask: what does the label ‘Sanctuary City’ obscure in places such as San Francisco, where many are being forced out as big tech money floods in? And how, by focusing on the history of American cities’ complex and caveated relationship to the federal state, might we still hold to a future of hope and resistance?