Sanctuary: Past Mobilization Informing Today's Fight for Migrant Justice

For more than forty years, people of faith have organized their houses of worship and their cities into sanctuary spaces for those at risk of detention and deportation. These efforts, known collectively as sanctuary movements, have represented some of the most vibrant and active initiatives for migrant and refugee justice in the nation’s history. Amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment and a runaway federal immigrant enforcement system, however, sanctuary efforts today face a growing number of challenges.

Join a panel of sanctuary activists and scholars as we discuss the past, present, and future of sanctuary in the United States.

• Hosted by the
• Moderated by Dr. Bradley Onishi, founder of IRMCE and Axis Mundi Media
• Generous funding provided by the Henry Luce Foundation
• This is a free event, please register
  Panelists:
  Dr. Sergio M.González is Assistant Professor of history at Marquette University. He is the co-host of the limited edition seven-episode podcast series Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State. A historian of twentieth-century U.S. migration, labor, and religion, his scholarship focuses on the development of Latino communities in the U.S. Midwest.
  Dr. Lloyd Barba is Assistant Professor of Religion and Core Faculty in Latinx and Latin American Studies at Amherst College. He is the co-host of the limited edition seven-episode podcast series Sanctuary: On the Border Between Church and State. His work on immigration blesses the memory of his parents, who arrived as teenagers from Jalisco in the 1970s.
  Sharon Hunter-Smith is a member of University Church’s Sanctuary Committee. She also serves as the congregation’s representative to the Sanctuary Working Group, a network of 35 congregations and organizations in Chicago assisting asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented immigrants  to find housing, legal representation, case management and emergency support.
  Dr. Barbara Sostaita is an Assistant Professor in Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is the author of Sanctuary Everywhere: The Fugitive Sacred in the Sonoran Desert—an ethnography of care practices in the militarized borderlands.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

University Church, 5655 South University Avenue, Chicago, United States