Deportations in the 21st century and the New Sanctuary Movement
When Elvira Arellano claimed sanctuary in a Chicago church in June 2006, she saw herself as a single mom, working to make a life for herself and her eight-year-old son. But her actions would mark a launching point for what became the New Sanctuary Movement (NSM) and, indeed, Arellano would emerge as one of its leaders. As an outspoken organizer, advocate, and public figure, she helped bring together migrants, activists, and local jurisdictions in a national effort for migrant justice.
Four years earlier, in 2002, Arellano was arrested during a workplace raid at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Knowing that her undocumented status made her a target for deportation, she pursued legal options for reprieve, such as an asylum claim or cancellation of removal. Neither was granted, but she refused to be separated from her son—a U.S-born citizen—or to be returned to the country she had left in search of a better life. Instead, she found refuge in Adalberto Memorial United Methodist Church. The small storefront church provided her shelter and protection from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which does not enter “sensitive locations,” like sacred spaces, to deport migrants.
Arellano’s story and advocacy galvanized the support of local organizations like Casa Aztlán, as well as faith communities and secular organizations nationwide. Her migration journey and resistance to deportation highlight how the U.S. government has increasingly targeted migrants as criminals. It also helps us understand why migrant justice movements returned to the notion of sanctuary in the early 21st century.
Arellano migrated in 1997, just one year after the U.S. passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), two of the harshest anti-migrant laws on the books. AEDPA was politically driven by fears of domestic terrorism, following the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings. More broadly, both laws politically responded to rising anti-migrant sentiment, as seen in increasing calls for border walls and the passage of state policies—like California’s Prop 187, which sought to prevent undocumented people from accessing health care, education, and other social services. IIRIRA and AEDPA poured resources into deportations, detentions, and border policing. Arellano’s arrest in a workplace raid occurred one year after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that incited renewed legislative and rhetorical attacks against migrants. The U.S. government responded to 9/11 by mobilizing our collective grief, identifying enemies, and harnessing expansive authority to wage war both abroad and at home.
In response to the September 11 attacks, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This new department was set up to oversee immigration enforcement, which reorganized the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) into ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Moving immigration enforcement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to DHS marked a seismic shift in how the U.S. treated migrants.
In the past, migration was seen primarily as a labor issue, and the INS was therefore housed under the Department of Labor. In 1940, migration was considered an issue of law enforcement, and the INS moved to the DOJ. The most recent shifts—creating ICE and CBP and moving them to the DHS—now explicitly ties immigration to national security and suggests that the U.S. “homeland” is not for migrants, creating deeper divides between who belongs and who does not. The change casts migrants as suspected threats to the homeland. Only two weeks after George W. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act, the DOJ launched “Operation Tarmac,” an airport security sweep targeting undocumented workers as security threats to transportation infrastructure. These raids ultimately ensnared Arellano, who was not a security threat but rather a working mom who cleaned planes, into a deportation net.
Migrants and activists mobilized for migrant justice and dignity in response to escalating attacks on undocumented people. For example, the so-called Sensenbrenner Bill (2005) passed in the House, threatening to drastically intensify the criminalization of migrants and of anyone who provided help to undocumented persons. Though it ultimately failed to become law, as the House and Senate were unable to reconcile key differences in their approaches to immigration reform (such as a path to citizenship for undocumented persons), the proposed bill incited hundreds of grassroots groups—including faith-based, labor, and immigrant advocacy organizations—to mobilize. Millions of people took to the streets nationwide for “Day Without an Immigrant” protests on May 1, 2006, International Workers’ Day (also known as May Day) in the one of the largest migrant justice actions in decades.
While migrants like Arellano continued to mobilize for dignity and rights, the U.S. government cracked down harder. Indeed, Arellano took sanctuary just weeks after the massive, nationwide migrant justice protests on May Day 2006 and ICE’s launching of Operation Return to Sender on May 26, a sweeping campaign of raids across 30 states that ultimately deported 2,200 migrants.
Under these conditions, migrants and their advocates in faith-based and secular communities again mobilized under the banner of sanctuary to defend migrants. As the U.S. government increased ICE’s capabilities to raid, arrest, detain, and deport migrants, communities came together to protest the injustice of current immigration policies, charging that they at once exploit noncitizen workers for their cheaper labor while constantly threatening them with deportation.
While the New Sanctuary Movement has defended migrants under duress, its strategies are limited against the massive resources given to ICE and CBP, which have received bipartisan political support. ICE continued to pursue Arellano and eventually deported her in August 2007, when she left the Adalberto church’s grounds to attend a migrant rights protest in Los Angeles. She returned to Mexico with her son, Saul, who, as a US-born citizen, was able to travel to and from the United States. Nevertheless, she has continued to use her voice and story to organize not only for herself but for justice and rights for all migrants in the United States and Mexico. In fact, she returned to the United States in 2014 while leading a group of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. She and her infant son were briefly detained before being released to claim asylum. Her case is still pending, and she lives with her two sons in Chicago.
While offering refuge is a central strategy for protecting people under duress, migrant justice activists, like those of Mijente, the Movement for Black Lives, and Black Alliance for Just Immigration, emphasize that creating a sanctuary for all people demands more than defense. Their work focuses on changing laws and policies that criminalize people and communities, as well as changing public discourse about race and immigration. Sharing Arellano’s story is part of this effort. As she told the Chicago Tribune: “Ten years since I took sanctuary, time has proved to us that what we did was correct. ... It's necessary to protect families. [Sanctuary provides] a place where families and children can go to wage that resistance."
A. Naomi Paik is the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21st Century (2020) and Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II (2016). She is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, in Criminology, Law and Justice, and Global Asian Studies.
This post is part of a series, The Politics of Sanctuary. Visit the series’ introduction to learn more and to explore other entries. The series has received funding support from the Smithsonian’s Latino Initiatives Pool and the Asian Pacific American Initiatives Pool.