Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning and social welfare, and founding director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, recently contributed a powerful essay to Jewish Currents titled “Fugitive Sanctuaries.” In this piece, Roy expands on her longstanding scholarship on inequality, displacement, and urban policy by placing recent federal immigration crackdowns in a broader historical and political context.

Drawing on the harrowing events of the 2025 “deportation summer” in Los Angeles, she shows how routine civic life was transformed into zones of terror for marginalized communities. Protesters challenged these policies, only to be met with claims of “violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement,” she notes, highlighting the escalation of federal force.

Roy writes that “it has only ever been migrant movements, rather than benevolent states, that have granted true safety for the endangered,” a line that encapsulates her central argument about solidarity and sanctuary. She urges readers to see sanctuary not as policy alone but as collective struggle in the face of aggressive enforcement.

Read the full article in Jewish Currents.