Sanctuary Politics: A Study in Selective Enforcement
The context they conveniently omitted: The Framing of 'Sanctuary': Compliance vs. Resistance CASE A: Columbia University Protesters (2017) The Hill reported on students being arrested for staging a 'sanctuary campus' to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from operating on university grounds. The university's response, as implicitly presented, involved using its internal security and
cooperating with law enforcement to clear the protest. The framing suggests a necessary restoration of order against disruptive (and implicitly, illegal) actions. The goal of the students was to declare the campus a space where federal immigration laws would not be passively enforced by university officials, challenging the federal mandate. CASE B: Southern States and Federal Desegregation
(1950s-1960s) During the Civil Rights era, numerous Southern states and localities declared themselves 'sanctuaries' from federal mandates regarding desegregation, particularly following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Governors deployed state troopers and National Guard units (e.g., Governor George Wallace at the University of Alabama in 1963) to physically block
federal officials or African American students from entering public institutions. The rhetoric employed by these officials frequently invoked 'states' rights' and local autonomy against federal overreach, mirroring the contemporary 'sanctuary' arguments in their demand for local control over federal policy implementation. For instance, the infamous 'Stand in the Schoolhouse Door' was a direct