Philadelphia is what’s often called a sanctuary metropolis. Whereas the time period has no fastened definition, it normally refers to a metropolis that has declared its refusal to cooperate – and even works at odds – with federal immigration enforcement.
Will dwelling in a sanctuary metropolis safeguard Philly’s roughly 50,000 undocumented immigrants and their households if President-elect Donald Trump delivers on his promise to deport a file variety of immigrants?
As a regulation professor at Temple College in Philadelphia, the place I supervise college students who characterize low-wage immigrant employees within the metropolis, together with on problems with immigration enforcement, I do know that sanctuary insurance policies are significant in that they throw a wrench into the federal immigration enforcement system.
However the backside line is that federal immigration officers – normally U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – can nonetheless perform deportations in a sanctuary metropolis. Dwelling in a sanctuary metropolis similar to Philadelphia doesn’t imply that metropolis residents are in any other case protected from ICE.
Philly’s sanctuary insurance policies
Via my work on the Sheller Heart for Social Justice at Temple Regulation College, I’ve researched sanctuary insurance policies in addition to how usually ICE depends on native regulation enforcement to assist determine and switch over immigrants.
Philadelphia’s numerous sanctuary insurance policies, which I’ll describe beneath, break that connection and depart ICE to its personal gadgets. In addition they sign to immigrants that the town is just not within the enterprise of federal immigration enforcement. That is vital for immigrant communities, because it means they need to really feel protected to entry public advantages and providers similar to getting care at a group well being heart or calling the police with out worry of immigration penalties.
Protestors take part in an Abolish ICE march via downtown Philadelphia in 2018.
Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto through Getty Photos
Philadelphia’s most notable sanctuary coverage, an govt order signed by then-Mayor Jim Kenney in January 2016, is its refusal to have its jails honor ICE detainers or requests for launch dates. An ICE detainer is a voluntary request asking native officers to carry an immigrant, who’s in any other case going to be launched, for an extra 48 hours so ICE can decide them up. Failing to honor ICE detainers disrupts the deportation pipeline and makes ICE’s job harder.
One other key Philadelphia sanctuary coverage dates again to 2009 and was signed by then-mayor Michael Nutter. It makes clear that metropolis officers don’t police immigration. Not solely are all metropolis employees – together with police, firefighters and behavioral well being employees – prohibited from asking about immigration standing in most conditions, however police are particularly directed to not cease, arrest or detain an individual “solely because of perceived immigration status.”
But there isn’t any approach to implement these sanctuary insurance policies. Beneath these legal guidelines, metropolis officers who violate them don’t face penalties. Compliance depends on a dedication from officers who imagine that following these insurance policies is the proper factor to do.
Philadelphia has additionally acted in different methods to interrupt the hyperlink between the town and immigration enforcement.
As of 2017, Philadelphia jails have had a protocol that daunts ICE from interviewing immigrants held in jail. Previous to offering ICE with entry to such people, the jails should first ship a consent kind to an immigrant to tell them of their proper to say no an ICE interview.
In 2018, Philadelphia ended ICE’s entry to the town’s Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System, or PARS data database, utilized by the Philadelphia Police Division and district lawyer’s workplace. Town stated it terminated its database-sharing contract with ICE given the “unacceptable” method the company used the system, which “could result in immigration enforcement action against Philadelphians who haven’t been arrested, accused of, or convicted of any crime.”
Sanctuary campuses and church buildings
Other than the town itself, different private and non-private establishments inside Philadelphia have created sanctuary areas.
The College of Pennsylvania, for instance, declared itself a sanctuary campus in November 2016, stating that the college would refuse to permit ICE entry onto Penn grounds with out a warrant.
In June 2021, the College Board of Philadelphia adopted a sanctuary decision as a part of an effort to create welcoming faculties for immigrant youngsters.
In the meantime, non secular establishments, such because the Germantown Mennonite Church in Northwest Philly and the Tabernacle United Church in West Philly, have offered sanctuary inside their church buildings to immigrants who’ve obtained last orders of deportation from ICE.
Since 2011, ICE has had a “sensitive locations” memo that disfavors, however doesn’t totally prohibit, immigration enforcement in locations of worship, in addition to hospitals and faculties. The Biden administration strengthened the “sensitive locations” memo in 2021. Trump reportedly intends to rescind the coverage, as quickly as his first day in workplace.
Activists need Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker to decide to defending Philadelphia’s sanctuary insurance policies if the incoming Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement.
Matt Rourke/AP
Retaliation in opposition to sanctuary cities
From the point of view of the incoming Trump administration, sanctuary cities harbor “dangerous immigrants.”
Regardless of an abundance of robust rhetoric, knowledge exhibits that lower than 6% of deportation instances introduced underneath the earlier Trump administration from 2017 to 2019 had been based mostly on prison grounds.
Nonetheless, the incoming administration has vowed to punish sanctuary cities by slicing their federal funding, significantly funds earmarked for native regulation enforcement.
Previous cases of retaliation, nevertheless, failed. The primary Trump administration was unsuccessful at terminating a US$1 million federal grant to Philadelphia after the town sued and received in federal courtroom.
In the course of the marketing campaign, Trump proposed getting Congress to ban sanctuary cities. This effort will equally be mired in authorized challenges. Cities, like states, have constitutional protections in opposition to being compelled to manage or implement federal applications.
But retaliation makes an attempt in opposition to sanctuary cities by the federal authorities appear possible. Philadelphia Metropolis Council member Rue Landau has been outspoken about sustaining the town’s sanctuary standing to make sure that public sources won’t ever be used to assist federal deportation efforts. However Mayor Cherelle Parker has not dedicated to strengthening and even making certain the town’s sanctuary protections.
Whereas sanctuary insurance policies don’t stop undocumented immigrants from being deported, they do characterize cities exercising the proper to outline their group and promote a way of belonging in direct resistance to federal insurance policies.