Sanctuary Without Resistance

Activist movements that embrace the idea of sanctuary for noncitizens are rich with narratives of resistance. These narratives vary; some sanctuary advocates pursue resistance only to specific federal immigration policies, while others offer more radical critiques that challenge the very legitimacy of U.S. immigration law. But when local and state governments adopt sanctuary policies, the idea of resistance is often altogether lost. Local and state governments who adopt policies of noncooperation with federal immigration enforcement sometimes offer narratives in which the values that motivate sanctuary policies involve not resistance to injustice, but public safety, economic development, and other more traditional local-government goals.

In these narratives, local governments are not resisting cruel federal policies; they are simply minding their own business. This Article examines the abandonment of resistance narratives from an expressivist and law-and-humanities perspective, arguing that much is lost when sanctuaries fail to include resistance in their own narratives.