The Deportation Regime in the Sanctuary City: Reformist Sanctuary Policies, Law Enforcement Legitimization, and Universal Representation in New York City

This article analyzes how reformist sanctuary frameworks tied to local and state governmental structures contribute to the deportation regime’s capacity to target multiply marginalized and criminalized communities even as they may produce material changes that benefit certain individuals with precarious legal statuses. I draw the data for this study primarily from interviews with legal practitioners and community organizers based in New York City. These interviews are contextualized with a systematic review and analysis of relevant governmental and organizational sources and journalistic news articles regarding immigration enforcement and sanctuary policies. This article examines ways that discourses and policies focused on legitimizing law enforcement practices in sanctuary cities and campaigns centering so-called universal legal representation in immigration court can entrench, extend, and obscure immigration enforcement in the City of New York. Based on these insights and informed by the efforts and analyses advanced by prison and police abolitionists, I argue for the reorientation of ideas and practices of protection away from the reformist rationales present in sanctuary jurisdiction models, advocating instead for non-reformist, abolitionist orientations of sanctuary.