Why a film about the fight for immigrant rights in Philly during Trump 1.0 feels so relevant now
The issues at the core of Kristal Sotomayor’s short film, “Expanding Sanctuary,” are both meaningfully the same and poignantly different from what they were when it was shot eight years ago.
It’s 2018 in Philadelphia.
Donald Trump is president. Cristina Martinez, immigration advocate and chef of South Philly Barbacoa, is featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table and is one year away from her first James Beard Award nomination. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Philadelphia is one of the busiest in the nation, arresting around 3,000 people in the first six months of the year alone.
The community organization Juntos — in its signature green-and-white “Sí Se Puede” T-shirts — is visible at rallies and meetings to convince city officials to limit ICE access to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System database.
For anyone viewing Philadelphia filmmaker Kristal Sotomayor’s short film, Expanding Sanctuary, for the first time at a free virtual screening and Q&A on Wednesday at 8 p.m., the issues depicted as impacting the lives of Philadelphia’s unauthorized immigrants will seem both meaningfully the same, and poignantly different, than they are today.
Philadelphia immigrants haven’t changed really — they still fall in love, get married, tend to their children, work hard, and look out for neighbors in need. They still give their time to building strong and loving communities.
But Philadelphia’s current mayor, Cherelle L. Parker, is markedly less defiant about Trump’s anti-immigrant efforts than then-Mayor Jim Kenney was. And in this second term, the Trump administration’s direction of ICE has pushed the agency to become more gleefully militaristic and violent.
Legislation, like the Laken Riley Act, has passed with bipartisan support, essentially treating immigrants accused of a criminal offense as if they had already been found guilty of it — codifying the violation of their constitutionally protected rights. Plus, thanks to Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” ICE now has an extraordinary amount of funding to do with what it will.
So, I asked Sotomayor: Why release the film now, into a U.S. that speaks more frequently in virulent terms about immigrants, when the national justice picture is grimmer, and our municipal leaders have chosen to stay more silent than before?
“Yeah, many things have changed,” Sotomayor told me via email. “Politically in Philadelphia, you are right that there is now a mayor who is less willing to push back against the federal government to protect immigrant rights. The mayor has not been willing to uphold sanctuary status or sanctuary policies. We are also dealing with far more mass surveillance than there was in 2018 ... ICE now has access to everything from tax records to hospital records to things we probably are not even fully aware of yet.”
“I also do not think immigrant rights are as much of a national issue as they were in 2018,” Sotomayor added, “when the photo of the young boy in a detention center (essentially a cage) sparked widespread national outrage. I am not really seeing that same level of response right now [even though] there are protests around the country against the ramping up of ICE enforcement.”
But, Sotomayor added: “For me, it is vital that this film is circulating now. Expanding Sanctuary is a hopeful story. In many ways, the film feels like it could have been shot last week. It shows how communities organized, changed policy, and protected their families during the first Trump presidency, and [it] reminds us that collective action is still possible now.”
“At a time when so many people are feeling overwhelmed and hopeless, this film offers a success story,” they added. “It demonstrates that change is possible, that policy can be shifted, and that families can be protected, not just in the past, but moving forward into the future.”
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The Wednesday virtual screening of the documentary, which was honored at the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival, will be followed by a Q&A. Featured speakers are scheduled to include Sotomayor, Linda Hernandez, the Philadelphia-based community leader and holistic wellness practitioner who is the protagonist of Expanding Sanctuary, and Katie Fleming, an immigration lawyer and the director of public education and engagement at the Acacia Center for Justice.
The in-person screening of the film at the Table Sessions at Bartram’s Garden on April 29 and 30 will include live music from Mariposas Galácticas and food by South Philly Barbacoa’s Martínez.
I’ll be honest, I came away from my most recent viewing of Sotomayor’s film feeling a bit nostalgic. Not only was it filled with the faces of beloved community members — some of whom have recently stepped away from decades of work helping people see immigrants as human beings, not abstractions — but also because of the intimate specificity of what Expanding Sanctuary celebrates.
There on the soundtrack are the musicians who once told me that making space for convivencia is making space for life, for community, and, yes, for resistance. There on screen is the Philadelphia I adore — where James Beard winners feed desperate families living in sanctuary, where people show up to protest in their wedding dresses, where sidewalks become sign-making studios, and where mothers raise their families on both tortillas and hope.
The huge anti-ICE protests these days are amazing, but they should never obscure the fact that while we must always fight against injustice and the weakening of democratic norms, we cannot forget who we are fighting for — real people, real neighborhoods and communities, real cities whose civic leaders may have forgotten their voices, but whose residents never will.
For their part, Sotomayor is hopeful. “I think we are ramping up toward something that could be just as strong and just as powerful as what is portrayed in Expanding Sanctuary,” they told me.
“It may take some time for immigrant rights to become a national talking point again, as it was in 2018, but I do believe that moment will come with larger protests, deeper outrage, and, ultimately, real change.”
To attend the virtual screening and Q&A on Feb. 11, click here. For more information about the Table Sessions at Bartram’s Garden on April 29 and 30, click here.