Paper short abstract:

This paper outlines the manner in which sanctuary cities in the US establish governmental regimes for managing city populations regardless of their immigration status and yet maintain a good/bad immigrant narrative that facilitates the deportations of immigrant residents that are accused of crimes.

Paper long abstract:

Sanctuary cities in the United States have policies that mandate the elaboration of city government agency protocols for administering city and county services to all people regardless of their immigration status. While hailed primarily as mobilizing city and county government resources and institutional apparatuses for the purpose of halting deportations and including immigrants in city projects as essential city residents, this paper will outline how they additionally do two major things: clarify the manner in which city governments may assist in deporting certain immigrants that city politicians deem undesirable, and in so doing, fortify a narrative that only law-abiding immigrants are worthy of sanctuary. It will provide examples of how sanctuary cities administer services regardless of immigration status as well as examples of how the city has assisted in deportations, including deportations of children, people charged but not convicted of certain crimes, and even of domestic violence survivors who have contacted the police for protection from their abusers. In this manner, the paper will explain how sanctuary city policy regimes and the apparatuses they mobilize serve rather as a humanitarian deportation apparatus that maintain a good/bad immigrant hierarchy of inclusion when city populations are increasingly composed of mixed-immigration status households, and when national deportation efforts aim to incorporate municipal, county, and state government workers in immigration enforcement.