Amherst Reaffirms Its Sanctuary City Status Ahead of Trump’s Term

Amherst reaffirmed its status as a sanctuary city on Nov. 16 following the reelection of President Donald Trump. Amherst first became a sanctuary city in 2017 during Trump’s first term in office.

Sanctuary cities are generally defined as “a jurisdiction that has on record a non-cooperation agreement with federal immigration authorities,” said Lloyd Barba, an assistant professor of religion who teaches a class on the sanctuary movement. This means that if federal immigration authorities attempted to locate individuals in Amherst, local police would not assist in the investigation.

In a sanctuary city, local police do not record the immigration status of an individual reporting a crime.

“There’s actually … better cooperation between police and community members, especially immigrants,” Barba said. “There’s empirical research ... that shows that this results in safer communities, and that [it] also builds trust.”

Sanctuary cities will also not hold someone in custody on the basis of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) request, except in instances of criminal detainment.

In a speech before the AAS last week, President Michael Elliott similarly said that the college would not voluntarily share information about students’ immigration statuses with federal authorities.

These policies were heavily debated after Trump’s first election when many cities and even states made the effort to establish themselves as sanctuary communities. Trump pursued anti-sanctuary policies, such as threats to limit federal funding for sanctuary cities, targeted these cities during his first term, and is threatening to do so during his second. Whereas his first campaign focused on building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump has now called for mass deportations and would “in [his] best own wishes, destroy sanctuary cities.”

Barba shared his concern over Tom Homan’s appointment to Trump’s cabinet as “border czar.” Homan is a former ICE official known for being aggressive on deportation.

“[Homan] has been in this sort of public confrontation with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu ... [and] making threats against sanctuary cities,” Barba said. “We didn’t see that to the same extent in Trump’s first term.”

Sofia Tennent ’25 has explored these tensions through her own research in Barba’s class. Her final project focuses on the ways in which the movement has been recorded and archived over time. “We have a lot of questions about the sort of stories that people are forced to tell when they're requesting sanctuary,” she said. Public sanctuary allows for more confidentiality for those seeking it.

Tennent expects that Trump’s second term will cause more of a focus on private sanctuary, such as services provided by churches and individual organizations, as opposed to public government institutions like sanctuary cities.

“It seems like the sanctuary movement in the second Trump term is just going to be inherently very different,” she said. “A part of it is burnout. It seems like organizers don’t know exactly what resources they’ll have to handle the situation because it’s going to look so different, and they're just scared.”

However, Barba remained more optimistic about Amherst's future as a sanctuary city after Trump’s second victory.

“Amherst’s sanctuary resolution can be read with a stronger hint of boldness, if you will, or a little more courage … the Town of Amherst, I think, to its credit, is being proactive,” Barba said.