In Sanctuary Everywhere, Barbara Andrea Sostaita reimagines practices of sanctuary along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to explore the possibilities for radical fugitivity in the face of militarized border enforcement. After the 2016 presidential election, churches, universities, cities, and even states began declaring themselves sanctuaries. Sostaita proposes that these calls for expanded sanctuary are insufficient when dealing with the everyday workings of immigration enforcement. Through fieldwork in migrant clinics, shelters, and the Sonoran Desert, Sostaita demonstrates that, as a sacred practice, sanctuary cannot be fixed in any one destination or mandate. She turns to those working to create sanctuary on the move, from a deported nurse offering medical care on the border to incarcerated migrant women denying rules on touch in detention facilities to collectives set up to honor those who died crossing the border. Understanding sanctuary to be a set of fugitive practices that escape the everyday, Sostaita shows us how, in the wake of extreme violence and loss, migrants create sanctuaries of their own to care for the living and the dead.

Barbara Andrea Sostaita is Assistant Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. The Fugitive Sacred 1
1. The Desert: Vanishing Time and Sacred Landscapes  33
2. The Detained: Contraband Touch in the Carceral Borderlands  62
3. The Deported: Lines of Flight through Nogales, Sonora  94
4. The Dead: Scenes of Disturbance and Disarticulation  127
Closing Ritual. Presente  158
Conclusion. Samuel Never Left Sanctuary  166
Notes  171
Bibliography  185
Index  195