As we enter a second Donald Trump presidency, the stakes could not be higher for undocumented people and asylum seekers in this country. Having promised mass deportations to a degree never attempted in the United States, President-elect Trump’s new border czar, Tom Homan, has signaled that the administration’s cruelty will begin in my backyard — Chicago. What he might not be counting on is organized resistance from labor, faith, and immigration leaders that will attempt to thwart these plans.
Last December, during an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Trump promised to do away with the “sensitive locations” memo that restricts Immigration and Customs Enforcement from entering churches and schools. This would be a significant departure from how ICE previously approached sanctuary spaces — i.e., locations such as churches, schools, and hospitals where undocumented people and asylum seekers could seek refuge without fear of deportation.
Although there has never been a law preventing ICE agents from going into these sanctuary spaces, the policy against it provided a level of forbearance that activists could depend on. With Trump’s stated intention to do away with that policy, some may take that to mean the end of sanctuary, but I think it will only make it stronger.
As a scholar of the Sanctuary Movement and the pastor of a New Sanctuary Movement congregation, I’ve been thinking a great deal about how churches and faith leaders should respond when and if Trump follows through on his mass deportation plans.
Public opinion has turned against immigration generally in the United States with a majority of those surveyed in a 2024 Gallup poll (55%) saying that they would like to see decreased immigration. Current public opinion about immigration mirrors public opinion during the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s. During that time, advocates worked to shield asylum seekers from deportation while giving them a platform to speak by utilizing the church’s considerable privilege to stymie deportation efforts.
With Trump’s aggressive rhetoric during his campaign about seeking to revoke the legally protected status of Haitian refugees, both undocumented people and congregations that support undocumented people are afraid of what might happen when he is inaugurated on Jan. 20. And while these are certainly frightening and challenging times, congregations can play an important role in safeguarding both the undocumented and asylum seekers.
While sanctuary is the most practical and boldest way for congregations to resist mass deportations, that strategy is only one part of a broader commitment to unequivocally oppose politicians’ rhetoric about strong borders and the need for deportations. When people speak about immigrants this way, they are talking about God’s very presence on earth.
In Chicago, a sanctuary revival is underway. More so than in previous years, I have noticed that the faith leaders I’ve spoken with are open to offering emergency assistance to people during ICE raids. My congregation is one example.
Faith leaders are not alone in their support of immigrants. The Chicago Teachers Union has been successfully pushing the school board to reaffirm its commitment for schools to be “sanctuary schools,” a designation that protects students from having their immigration status collected or shared and forbids ICE from entering school grounds. They are joined by unions and workers’ centers such as the one run by Arise Chicago, which has been organizing congregations, faith leaders, and workers so that they can better understand immigrant workers’ rights and how to protect them.
Luckily, the city of Chicago remains a sanctuary city, one of the great legacies of the original Sanctuary Movement in the 1980s. Trump and his allies have made it clear that they intend to target Chicago and other cities’ sanctuary status through the withholding of funding. So far, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is striking a defiant pose.
Such a formidable network means that churches aren’t alone. Many of the networks that have been built by the original Sanctuary Movement as well as the New Sanctuary Movement over the decades remain, and the policies that cities agreed to over the decades also remain in place. However, those agreements will need to be revisited, and leaders will have to stand up to the increased pressure from the Trump administration. Church leaders can play a vital role by talking with elected officials, opening the church doors to local activists, and underscoring that vulnerable people are not political chips but the most beloved of God.
In conversations with my church’s leaders, the willingness to step up in these extraordinary times is borne of our decade of housing a family in the New Sanctuary Movement in our church building. We have already had the conversations that allowed us to get to a point where we understood that such actions risked the ire of authorities, but we were willing to do so for the sake of justice.
Perhaps that is the biggest hurdle for many congregations who are interested in this work. In my book, I document how, for many congregations, it takes numerous conversations to reach a point of consensus about how to help asylum seekers — especially when the proposed actions might conceivably draw unwanted attention from the authorities. I am lucky to pastor a congregation that has already discerned that the risk is worth it. For that reason, I try to speak to other congregations about offering sanctuary. I try to help them understand the risks while also explaining to them that since the 1980s, there has been no action taken against congregations that practice providing sanctuary. Still, what has previously been the case is not guaranteed to continue during a Trump presidency.
I think it is unlikely that the new administration will look to court significant controversy by having ICE agents make arrests inside of a church. But we should still expect Trump and his administration to disregard previously stated policy to enact an anti-immigrant agenda. That is why congregations must prepare now by building consensus about precisely what level of risk they are willing to take in the middle of mass deportations. The most risky action would be physically protecting undocumented people from deportation. But congregations that find such a strategy to be too risky can support other congregations and networks that are providing shelter, supplies, and food to immigrants and asylum seekers.
The most important thing for congregations who are committed to undocumented people and asylum seekers is to have a plan, make an inventory of the resources the community has, and assess how to distribute those resources. Putting a maximum focus on resource distribution may sound secular. But how congregations choose to use or withhold these resources is an intensely spiritual concern.
Sanctuary is under attack, but just because it is embattled doesn’t mean that its defeat is imminent or that it has lost its incredible spiritual and practical power. Indeed, it is precisely in this context that we can live out our theology. If we believe that God is revealed in “the least of these” then the least we can do is offer protection from cruelty.
The Trump administration has said that it will make deportations in Chicago a priority, but churches like mine are stepping up to attempt to limit the damage he can do. Whether they will be successful is anyone’s guess, but I think Trump is biting off more than he can chew. If churches commit to collectively organize against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, then we are sure to win.
Michael Woolf is the senior minister of Lake Street Church of Evanston in Illinois and the author of Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically About Whiteness and Sanctuary Movements. He is the co-founder of Challenging Islmophobia Together Chicagoland with his spouse, Rev. Anna Piela.
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