‘Sanctuary people’ redefine what it means to protect immigrants in uncertain times

Hundreds of thousands of Haitians in the U.S. are living in uncertain times. On June 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could proceed with a plan to end Temporary Protected Status – a federal program that allows people to stay in the United States when the government considers their own country unsafe – for around 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. Their work permits are scheduled to end July 24, leaving TPS holders at risk of deportation.

This uncertainty is not new. In 2010, President Barack Obama granted TPS to Haitians living in the U.S. after an earthquake killed approximately 200,000 people in Haiti. The original period was 18 months, but TPS has been renewed multiple times because of humanitarian concerns, gang violence and political unrest.

Haitian communities in Ohio, where I study immigration, have been particularly on edge since 2024, when, during the presidential campaign, Trump and JD Vance repeated false claims that Haitians living in Springfield were eating pets. Many of the city’s estimated 12,000 Haitian residents endured harassment, and the city experienced more than 30 bomb threats.

Yet Haitians have built lives here, often with the support of neighbors, nonprofits and churches – groups speaking up as the community prepares for the end of TPS. Days before the Supreme Court decision, Ohio’s Catholic bishops issued a statement expressing deep concern for “our Haitian neighbors.” Echoing a November 2025 statement about immigration from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, they told Haitians, “We stand with you in your suffering, since, when one member suffers, all suffer.”

Meanwhile, residents in Springfield have organized prayer vigils, rallies, food drives and donations for Haitian families. Many groups that have supported immigrants for years are faith-based, such as G92. Another, Springfield Neighbors United describes its work as centering “love your neighbor values.”

These responses reflect themes in my research on faith communities supporting immigrants and how they become “sanctuary people.” In the 1980s, churches in the sanctuary movement prioritized offering physical protection to Central American asylum-seekers. In recent years, however, I have seen faith-based advocates’ sense of sanctuary expand. The idea now encompasses efforts to assist people most affected by immigration policy, as well as other vulnerable groups, and to assure them that they are not alone.

Catholic roots

This broader understanding of sanctuary is rooted in Catholic social teaching – especially the idea of accompaniment, which prioritizes closeness to people who are suffering.

Accompaniment has a long history in faith-based social justice movements in the U.S. and Latin America. One of the most famous examples comes from Archbishop Óscar Romero, who was assassinated in 1980 and declared a saint by Pope Francis in 2018. Romero challenged people to accompany the rural poor amid the violence and persecution of El Salvador’s civil war.

Pope Leo XIV affirmed the importance of accompaniment in meeting migrants’ needs during his visit to the Italian island of Lampedusa on July 4, 2026. “Before any intellectual consideration or ideological conviction,” he said, “the encounter with those who lie before us, stripped of everything, calls us to be close to them.”

Accompaniment is a defining feature of today’s immigrant advocacy, embraced by faith-based and secular activists alike. It is also a central value for “sanctuary people” – a term I learned from Ruben Castilla Herrera, an activist in Columbus.

Herrera, who died in 2019, helped create coalitions of support for immigrants. After the 2016 presidential election, he called on secular and faith-based activists to see all of their efforts – including to work to end police violence that disproportionately affects the poor and people of color, and to protect LGBTQ+ rights – as interconnected struggles to create places of safety: to be sanctuary for one another.

“Sanctuary comes from the people,” Herrera somberly observed on Sept. 5, 2017, as a woman named Edith Espinal entered into sanctuary at the Columbus Mennonite Church. Faced with a deportation order that would separate her from her family, Espinal lived there for more than three years. In February 2021, during President Joe Biden’s administration, she was granted an order of supervision, which allowed her to return to live with her family in Columbus, Ohio.

Wider sense of ‘sanctuary’

Throughout my research, I have observed how groups across Ohio expanded the idea of sanctuary beyond physical protection for migrants and asylum-seekers, reflecting a national shift.

Organizations like El Centro de Servicios Sociales in Lorain, Ohio, for example, worked closely with Sacred Heart Chapel, a Catholic parish, when more than 200 Puerto Rican families arrived in the city after Hurricane María in September 2017. In the weeks and months that followed, sanctuary people helped secure housing, jobs, language instruction, translation services, health care and guidance enrolling children into local schools.

“Sanctuary people” also supported families left behind following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at Corso’s Flower & Garden Center in northern Ohio on June 5, 2018 – one of the largest ICE actions in the U.S. at the time. The raid prompted the creation of Los Niños de Corsos, a grassroots organization led by young people who tried to educate the public about detention’s impact on families and communities and respond to their needs.

The following year, when 680 workers were detained in a Mississippi poultry plant, Los Niños de Corsos collected food, diapers, money and clothes to help their families. Members of the organization drove to Mississippi to deliver the items, and accompany people during some of the most challenging moments of their lives.

Here and now

In recent weeks, sanctuary people in Ohio have accompanied Haitians as they face the uncertainty of what is to come.

With some people afraid to leave their homes, advocates and volunteers are raising money, collecting food and toiletries, and doing shopping for Haitian families. They also encourage neighbors to eat at immigrant-owned restaurants, shop in immigrants’ businesses, and participate in book clubs to learn more about immigration, Haiti and U.S. foreign policy.

The sanctuary people who do this work believe that closeness, preparing and sharing meals, and simply showing up for mundane tasks can reassure people in need that they are not alone.

Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center, captured this sentiment at a rally in front of Springfield’s City Hall the day the Supreme Court decision was announced. After assuring fellow Haitians that their resilience would guide them this moment, he told other residents, “You have welcomed your neighbors, spoken out against injustice, defended vulnerable families, and refused to let hate and division have the final word.”