Before Ventura, California, approved its Community Autonomy, Rights and Equality policy providing sanctuary protections to undocumented immigrants, transgender individuals and people seeking abortions last year, more than 100 residents showed up to a City Council meeting to debate the policy.
Ryyn Schumacher, a City Council member, said during the meeting that with the policy, the city was “demonstrating moral leadership in a climate of fear” and standing on “the right side of history.”
The policy orders city officials and local police not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement activities or enforce federal or state laws that restrict or criminalize gender-affirming or reproductive care. It “may not benefit any of us directly in any way, but it does not mean it isn’t important to thousands of people in our city,” Schumacher said.
Sanctuary city regulations like Ventura’s, often relating to state or federal policies on campaign wedge issues characterized as the “culture war,” are politically charged, Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien, a political science professor at San Diego State University, told Smart Cities Dive.
Largely used to help protect undocumented immigrants from federal enforcement activities, sanctuary policies protecting immigrants have become more common since the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown. But over the past decade, a growing number of cities and states have implemented policies providing sanctuary for other groups of individuals whose rights they believe are under attack. These policies direct police to refuse to cooperate with laws targeting people who are transgender or non-binary or those who are seeking an abortion.
Sanctuary laws also exist in communities seeking to protect rights on the right of the political spectrum. Second Amendment sanctuary laws seek to limit the impact of state and federal gun regulations. And in 2019, Waskom, Texas, declared itself a “sanctuary city for the unborn” by banning most abortions within the town’s limits.
There are risks involved with implementing such policies, especially when they run counter to the federal government, O’Brien said. If the laws face federal legal challenges, “these fees can add up, and state and local governments do not have the same economic means at their disposal as the federal government,” he said.
Even so, Trump administration pressure to date against immigration-related sanctuary policies hasn’t been “terribly effective,” O’Brien said. Few cities have retracted their policies as a result of that pushback.
A patchwork of legislation
Researchers have identified 350 to 400 cities that have implemented sanctuary policies, said Loren Collingwood, a political science associate professor at the University of New Mexico and an expert on sanctuary cities.
Sanctuary city policies date back to 1971, when Berkeley, California, passed a resolution to protect military personnel on the USS Coral Sea aircraft carrier who refused to return to duty during the Vietnam War. The policies evolved in the late 1970s and 1980s, as cities started implementing non-cooperation statements and ordinances regarding local enforcement of federal immigration policies.
One-third of all U.S. counties have enacted Second Amendment sanctuary ordinances prohibiting law enforcement officials from enforcing state and federal gun control laws, according to a 2024 study. These policies are proliferating largely in rural, conservative counties in Democratic-controlled states that have enacted gun-control regulations, Rick Su, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, wrote in a 2021 report for the American Constitution Society.
“Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions could be understood to be largely symbolic — an effort by certain communities to express their opposition to legislation at the state level,” Su wrote.
Many cities passed reproductive care sanctuary policies after the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, which upheld the nationwide right to seek an abortion, in 2022. Meanwhile, nearly 100 municipalities have designated themselves as “sanctuary cities for the unborn” by outlawing abortion within their jurisdictions.
The flurry of sanctuary city regulations has created a patchwork that can be confusing to navigate as rights and protections differ from state to state, county to county, and city to city, O’Brien said.
This creates a scenario in which someone with financial means can travel from a state where abortion is banned to a state where it’s protected, while low-income women cannot, O’Brien said. Rights are preserved for some but eliminated for others, he said.
“Local governments are stepping into areas where federal legislation isn't possible because of the deep divisions on the issue and their incorporation into culture war politics,” he said. “This can create confusion and a lack of equity.”
The sanctuary city term has also become overused, as it has been applied to policies that have no relationship to the original movement, he added.
South Lake Tahoe, California, for example, is considering designating itself a “bear sanctuary city” based on a policy that would require nonlethal management of bears. Other cities, including Buffalo, New York, have declared themselves “climate refuge” cities, billing themselves as sanctuaries for residents from areas affected by climate disasters.
“The term sanctuary does resonate in the mind of voters, though, and that may be a reason for its increased popularity to describe a whole host of policies,” O’Brien said. But “if every policy is a sanctuary policy, then the term functionally means nothing.”
“A feel good policy for everybody”
Most sanctuary policies are passed in areas where the policies are politically popular, so local officials are less likely to face significant blowback when passing them, O’Brien said. But there can be risks for cities that pass sanctuary policies preempting state-level legislation. Some Republican-controlled states have passed laws threatening jail time and fines for mayors and officials who pass sanctuary policies regarding immigration.
“The states have more tools in their box to compel compliance from cities and counties than the federal government does,” O’Brien said.
Jim Duran, a Ventura City Council member, told Smart Cities Dive that he cast the lone vote in opposition to the city’s CARE policy because there was no way to enforce it and California state law already protects people who are trans, seeking an abortion or undocumented.
Duran was concerned the Trump administration could retaliate against the policy by pulling $60 million in federal grant funding the city was recently awarded for a water infrastructure project. During the meeting, some residents shared that same concern.
Losing federal funding is a major concern for cities and a reason why smaller cities try to stay off the radar when discussing sanctuary policies, Collingwood said. So far, however, the courts have blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to rescind funding.
In Ventura, “it was more of a feel-good policy for everybody, instead of what are we going to do practically about this,” Duran said. “I don’t know how it can make anybody feel safe if there is no implementation of enforcement.”
