Clio's Review: Sanctuary in America

Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González, Sanctuary in America: How Activists Defied the Government and Defended Immigrants—And Why It Still Matters (Oxford University Press, 2026).

In July 1980, as twenty-six Salvadorans crossed the Sonoran Desert into Arizona, thirteen perished before finding help. The survivors entered a U.S. legal system that routinely classified Central Americans fleeing political violence as economic migrants rather than refugees, despite otherwise qualifying under the 1980 Refugee Act. Historians Lloyd D. Barba and Sergio M. González explain that the incident provided a wake-up call for religious communities and birthed the modern Sanctuary Movement. Sanctuary in America offers a thorough analysis of how sacred refuge evolved from an ancient practice into one of the most persistent forms of grassroots resistance today.

Drawing on church archives, government records, interviews, correspondence, and refugee testimonios, Barba and González trace sanctuary’s trajectory across four decades. They follow the movement from 1980s congregations offering clandestine shelter to Central American refugees, to the emergence of municipal sanctuary policies, and the post-9/11 New Sanctuary Movement. In doing so, the authors make a vital contribution to the historiography of border enforcement while reframing religion as an engine of left-leaning civil disobedience— bringing essential balance to public memory, which so often equates religious activism strictly with the Religious Right.

The work is particularly sharp in analyzing sanctuary’s ideological flexibility. Rather than treating the 1980s focus on political asylum and the 21st-century focus on long-term undocumented residents as disconnected phenomena, Barba and González demonstrate how activists systematically expanded their framework. They show how proponents adapted traditional concepts of refuge—“usable sacred histories,” into a broader defense of family unity, community ties, and local belonging.

Clear, tightly argued, and intentionally written for a broad public audience rather than a strictly academic one, Sanctuary in America provides a valuable framework for understanding the ongoing contest between state authority and moral conscience.

For those looking to think past today's soundbites on immigration and state power, this volume is an essential start—and you can hear Barba and González unpack the history further on episode 12 of The Clio Dialogues.

Sanctuary in America is coming to bookstores on October 15, 2026, but you can preorder it at The Clio Dialogues Bookshop.org link above.