Not since Ronald Reagan, whose dirty wars in Central America created the first flood of people fleeing north, have immigrant rights been so imperiled by a U.S. president.
Donald Trump, who copycatted Reagan’s slogan “Make America Great Again,” is president again, and once again echoed Reagan on his first day in office by promising the largest deportation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. history. He then outdid the former president by making churches, schools, and hospitals fair game for ICE raids.
It’s as if Trump has thrown immigrant rights into the back of a national bus he’s driving in reverse toward the era when America presumably was great — before 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her front seat to a white man, as Alabama law required, and was arrested.
Park’s triumphant march to the Supreme Court destroyed segregation, according to History.com, and inspired a variety of human rights actions that came of age when Vietnam War protests in liberal places like Berkeley grew into a nation-unifying outcry that forced an end to the war and led to activism in support of equality for African-Americans, women, and gays.
And then came Reagan, openly supporting a Guatemalan army general who had seized presidential power in a coup and brought genocide to Mayan people. He also poured military aid into El Salvador to defeat rebels trying stop the army’s slaughter of innocents, and illegally used money from Iranian arms sales to secretively fund the Contras, a right-wing army of irregulars trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. Reagan brought to a boil a region seething from U.S. interference for decades, according to Yale History Professor Greg Grandin, and people fled north, pleading for asylum from a president who saw them as Communist sympathizers, and deported thousands to face murder, torture, and imprisonment.
Out of this turmoil, the Sanctuary Movement arose March 24, 1982, when five churches in California and one in Arizona publicly denounced Reagan’s actions and “declared their intent” to provide safe havens for undocumented immigrants, according to the Southside Presbyterian Church of Tucson. The movement swept across the nation, embracing more than 500 churches of all denominations. It morphed into the sophisticated movement of today, involving local and state governments, numerous religious groups, and nonprofit organizations.
The wars eventually died out in the 1990s, but migrants kept coming because of economic disruption and political repression throughout Latin America, and in countries like Haiti. Post-Reagan presidents created asylum programs for some, but, as the flood continued and in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks, George W. Bush tried to tighten the border and return migrants by creating the Department of Homeland Security and its enforcement arm: ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Spurred by public demand, even liberal presidents pushed massive deportations — such as Obama, who became known as “the deporter-in-chief” for deporting 5 million immigrants.
And then came Trump, wielding a bullhorn of immigrant fear in his first administration.
He deported millions and built border wall elements — but still didn’t stop the flow, nor initially get him reelected. So, in his second run for president he turned up the volume by amplifying little truths about crime into monster lies about how immigrants were on a rampage of murder and rape and poisoning our nation’s blood, and that countries such as Venezuela were emptying prisons and insane asylums to send “their worst” north. And got reelected in part by promising the greatest mass deportation in history on Day One of his presidency. He also eliminated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion guidelines from federal agencies and recently threatened to de-fund any school or college that teaches DEI.
Stunned by Trump’s initial attack, leaders in today’s Sanctuary Movement at first laid low, “reeling” and uncertain, said a pastor with Universal Life Church, one of many religious organizations across the country providing church havens for immigrants.
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Much like Parks, who faced an antagonistic society when she sued the government, Sanctuary advocates are facing a bellicose president who rejects legal and socially accepted codes of conduct respected by every other president, including Reagan, who kept hands off the Sanctuary Movement and honored the sanctity of what Trump has targeted.
The movement’s uncertainty suddenly vanished in early February when dozens of religious groups at the heart of sanctuary efforts joined in lawsuits challenging Trump’s action as violating constitutional freedoms of speech and worship. It’s a daring move given the harsh new reality: previous presidents accepted guardrails, while Trump is feverishly dismantling legal and socially accepted codes of conduct that had corralled his predecessors.
Trump has also threatened raids and legal action against a movement that provides legal, health, and food services to migrant communities, especially in cities, counties and states that have declared themselves sactuarial, meaning they will not provide police nor other assistance to ICE when it comes calling. Rapid Response Networks set up by cities and counties in such areas even provide instant warnings from citizens when ICE units are spotted.
Meanwhile, fear and uncertainty haunt the nation’s immigrant communities as Trump demands that ICE greatly increase its immigrant-snatching efforts while he prepares a vast holding area at Guantanamo Bay, as well as detention centers housed at military bases across the country in order to accommodate the record number of deportees he envisions.
In the face of such threats, it is time for all human rights supporters to stand together in resistance, said another pastor of the Universal Life Church in a border city of Arizona.
“But I think it has to look very different than the prior Sanctuary Movements … I’m more interested in us learning how we create sanctuary for one another out in the wider world through rapid response networks, jail and incarceration support, alternative education systems, interrupting racism, and more.”
The community partners she referenced are governmental and nonprofit groups within the 13 states and dozens of cities and counties — such as Philadelphia — which have formally declared themselves as sanctuaries, braving the wrath of Trump’s vows to punish them with legal action or by denying federal aid for such things as disaster relief. Response is fast-growing at the local level among cities like Alameda, a sanctuary city in the sanctuary state of California. City residents have begun organizing to support immigrants by, among other things, handing out cards advising them of their rights if ICE comes knocking. At the state level, Governor Gavin Newsom just signed two bills to fund lawsuits challenging Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship and aid nonprofits who defend immigrants rights. Similar actions are spreading across the country in what seems like a contagious re-birth of human rights support.
It’s as if the front seats of Trump’s bus are suddenly filling up with activists and political leaders trying to force him to drive through the Supreme Court on his route to the past. But this court — packed with Trump appointees — is not the court of Rosa Parks’ day, which begs the question: where does one go for justice in the Trump era?
