Stuck in Sanctuary: A Philadelphia Family Resists Deportation

The sanctuary movement in the U.S. dates back to the 1980s, when religious and lay communities offered shelter to refugees fleeing U.S.-backed dictatorships in Central America. While hundreds of churches continue to offer safe harbor for undocumented immigrants, more recently, the term "sanctuary" has come to acquire a much broader meaning. Its most common iteration, "sanctuary cities," describes a patchwork of jurisdictions that limit the use of local resources for federal immigration enforcement. Philadelphia's sanctuary movement, which long predates Trump's presidency, seeks to expand that definition. Spurred in large part by a series of high-profile deportations in the Obama years, a grassroots coalition of community activists, lawyers, and faith congregations pushed the city to adopt progressive legislation.