Let's keep it straight, mmmmKAY!??
Sanctuary cities” is actually a misnomer. While many Americans believe that it refers to a city that doesn’t prosecute immigrants, so-called “sanctuary cities” actually refer to something far more specific.
There’s no single definition of what is a sanctuary city, but generally speaking, it’s a city (or a county, or a state) that limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents in order to protect low-priority immigrants from deportation, while still turning over those who have committed serious crimes. But in the spirit of America’s founding principles as a nation of immigrants, sanctuary cities act as a protective shield, standing in the way of federal efforts to pinpoint and deport people at random.
Faith communities started what became known as the “Sanctuary Movement” in the early 1980s. It was a symbolic extension of the medieval practice of churches providing shelter to all, regardless of their crimes. But for a handful of faith leaders in the southwestern U.S., the immigrants that they provided sanctuary to weren’t outlaws. They were refugees.
Central America was racked by nonstop violence and civil war, and death squads forced waves of people to flee north from Guatemala and El Salvador. Appalled to see the U.S. government turn away those migrants once they reached the border rather than take them in, church leaders decided to intervene.
John Fife, pastor of the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona, was one of the first to buck federal laws in favor of what he saw as a moral obligation to offer shelter to the vulnerable. He and a handful of other faith leaders started an underground network to smuggle refugees across the border to safety. The concept of “taking sanctuary” was quite literal. Central Americans, mostly families, were given shelter in the physical sanctuary of the church. At night, they would sleep between the pews.
“‘Sanctuary’ is an idea. It’s an action that people have always taken throughout history to protect the victims of human rights violations,” said John Fife, pastor of the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Arizona. “It was a different phenomena back then.”
Their defiance set up a major battle between church and state after the U.S. government infiltrated the movement. Fife was indicted in 1985, along with 10 other church workers, on a total of 71 counts that ranged from harboring illegal aliens to conspiracy. If the charges against church leaders were meant to have a chilling effect on sanctuary efforts, they did just the opposite. More than 500 faith groups would eventually sign onto the movement.
http://www.msnbc.com/specials/migran...nctuary-cities
https://americasvoice.org/blog/what-...anctuary-city/