Sanctuary cities and faith-based spaces have a lengthy history in the United States, but they became a particularly contentious–and important–practice during President Trump’s first term. Donald Trump came into office on a wave of rhetoric demonizing undocumented immigrants and a commitment to increasing deportations. With the advance warning, a wide network of immigration activists, including many faith-based organizations, planned how they would meet the challenge.

A week after taking office in 2017, then President Donald Trump issued the “Muslim Ban,” an executive order which immediately halted travel from seven predominantly muslim countries. As a result, people around the world were stranded in airports and legal residents of the US were being unlawfully detained by their government. The response was swift; a mass of people flooded to airports to show solidarity and reveal to the wider world the harmful and discriminatory nature of the act.