Category: Student Words on Sanctuary

Sanctuary is a safe harbor for those seeking protection from the surveillance or violence of the state. The sanctuary movement specifically serves to provide safe shelter for those who are facing unwarranted immigration control from ICE and DHS.

Sanctuary began as a religiopolitical practice of taking refuge with religious and historical examples dating as far back to ancient times. Since the 1980’s Sanctuary Movement, sanctuary has become a moniker, identity, and strategy connected to assisting undocumented immigrants.

Sanctuary is both an act of solidarity and an expression of love for those who need the most help; it is also the answer to a higher call asking to protect the vulnerable from injustices inflicted by great sources of power.

Sanctuary is a form of resistance to injustices done to our most vulnerable members of society. In its most radical form, it defies civil obedience by giving refuge. In all its forms, it attempts to seek community to convey justice.

Offering sanctuary means recognizing and assisting individuals and peoples persecuted. The act of offering sanctuary can extend beyond current borders and current legislation.

Sanctuary is a humanitarian, religious, and/or political act or moral stance that defies state notions of which individuals deserve protection and which don’t.

Sanctuary is an act of defiant aid. It challenges hegemonic power and risks legal and physical harm to provide harbor from a society’s most vile urges. Rooted in centuries of religious and social precedent, sanctuary is a last line of protection for the subjugated.

Sanctuary first sought to harbor migrants, but holds roots in religious tradition and has broadened to encompass more nebulous forms of faith-based immigrant justice. Though sanctuary embodies many tactics and monikers, at the heart of the movement are calls for systemic change.

In a world of chaos, Sanctuary offers connotational hope of support, security, and refuge to individuals being oppressed for exercising their liberty to have a dynamic existence.

Sanctuary is the provision of a welcoming and safe haven often housed in a sacred space. Supported by legal and social precedence, sanctuary shelters refugees from persecution and prosecution. The sanctuary ethos extends to adjacent auxiliary movements that offer legal aid, food, medical care, and other humanitarian services to refugees.