Philly Council advances bills restricting ICE in the city as Mayor Parker signals she won’t stand in the way

City Council members on Monday afternoon gave preliminary approval to a sweeping legislative package aimed at curtailing ICE operations in Philadelphia, following a daylong hearing in which immigrant advocates urged lawmakers to vote yes and aides to Mayor Cherelle L. Parker signaled the administration would not stand in the way.

The outcome of Monday’s vote in the Committee of the Whole was never in doubt, as 15 of the 17 Council members had already cosponsored the half-dozen bills and resolutions. If passed, the legislation would ban immigration enforcement from setting up staging or processing areas on city property, prohibit agents from wearing masks, and codify Philadelphia’s status as a sanctuary city into law.

The committee approved all of the bills and resolutions in a series of unanimous voice votes. Councilmembers Mike Driscoll, Mark Squilla, Katherine Gilmore Richardson, Curtis Jones Jr., and Brian O’Neill — Council’s lone Republican — were not present for the votes. The only two members who have not cosponsored the package are Driscoll and O’Neill.

It had been unclear for months where Parker would land. She is a centrist Democrat who has carefully avoided directly criticizing President Donald Trump’s administration, and she has generally not weighed in on the president’s mass deportation campaign.

» READ MORE: Philly City Council members will soon consider seven ‘ICE Out’ bills. Here’s what the proposals would do.

During Monday’s committee hearing, Director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs Charlie Ellison said Parker and her administration “understand and appreciate the intent behind this legislation,” and noted that the city already has some longstanding protections in place for immigrants.

Ellison also said some provisions of the legislation could be “legally problematic,” but it did not appear Monday that those concerns were significant enough for the administration to oppose the package.

Since she took office in 2024, Parker has repeatedly said that an executive order signed by her predecessor related to immigration enforcement remains in place. That order prohibits police and jail officials from complying with requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants, unless the agency has a warrant signed by a judge.

Ellison said the police department this month issued a new policy memo to all employees that formalizes the city policy prohibiting officers from assisting ICE with immigration enforcement.

Monday’s hearing was held before Council’s Committee of the Whole, which is made up of all 17 members. Council members heard six hours of testimony from administration officials, legal experts, and immigration advocates. No one testified against the bills.

Dozens of activists packed Council’s chambers in City Hall, waving signs and chanting: “ICE out.”

Merelyn Mejia-Shephard, 14, said in emotional testimony that her parents are both immigrants and that she fears losing them to deportation.

“The scariest thing to me is losing my family,” she said. “The safety and stability of my family and many other families depends on this package passing. Please, do this for us, the children of immigrants who have everything to lose.”

The package will now head to the Council floor for a final vote. But Monday’s approval from the Committee of the Whole all but guarantees the legislation will be approved.

» READ MORE: Philly lawmakers want to restrict cooperation with ICE and ban agents from wearing masks

If Council grants final passage to the legislative package in the coming weeks, the bills would then head to Parker’s desk. Parker can sign the bills, veto them, or let them lapse into law without her signature. She has never vetoed a bill.

If the legislation becomes law, Philadelphia would have some of the nation’s most stringent local restrictions on federal immigration enforcement operations. The city is home to an estimated 76,000 undocumented immigrants.

Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat and coauthor of the legislation, said she was glad the Parker administration now appears to be on board with the proposal.

“Right now, we can say the administration is moving and is starting to implement the blueprint that we put on the table,” Landau told reporters after the hearing. “They are starting to come up with policies and procedures and trainings for their staff, and that’s what we want and need.”

Supporters of Parker have credited her strategy of rarely discussing immigration during Trump’s tenure with keeping Philadelphia from being subject to the surges of federal agents that cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles have seen.

» READ MORE: ICE tactics in Minneapolis set off political firestorm from Philadelphia City Hall to Washington

Landau and coauthor Councilwoman Kendra Brooks, of the Working Families Party, said that they plan to call the measures up for final passage votes on April 23 and that they were not worried that the legislation could put Philly in Trump’s crosshairs.

“He’s unpredictable, and we can’t predict what he’ll do,” Brooks told reporters Monday. “I think the most important thing was for us to get this legislation on the books. So if he does, we’re prepared. This is all about being prepared, not a threat.”

The legislation that Council advanced Monday would do the following:

Three top administration officials who testified to Council on Monday signaled that they support the legislation, but said they have raised a series of technical concerns about language in some of the bills.

Ellison said those were outlined in a “confidential and privileged analysis” drafted by the city’s law department.

» READ MORE: Council President Kenyatta Johnson says Philadelphia can’t sit out Trump’s immigration fight anymore

Landau and Brooks introduced a series of amendments Monday that made changes to the bills.

The most significant of those adjustments clarifies that individual city employees would not be subject to civil liability for failing to comply with the legislation. But anyone who believes they have been affected by such a violation would be able to bring a lawsuit against the city and the agency in question.

Council attorneys said in a memo, which was obtained by The Inquirer, that there is “sound legal foundation” for each piece of legislation.

The memo included a lengthy defense of the bill that prohibits officers from concealing their identities. Similar measures have faced legal challenges in other jurisdictions — Trump administration officials say state- and city-level bans violate the constitutional provision that says federal law reigns supreme.

» READ MORE: Unmasking ICE in Philly could test the limits of local power over federal agents

Council’s position, the attorneys wrote, is that “the federal government cannot credibly argue that wearing masks and concealing identification is necessary for its operations as it is a new practice.”

It also appears that the Parker administration has questioned whether Council has the legal authority to ban city employees from taking certain actions related to ICE. The city operates under a “strong mayor” system, meaning lawmakers set funding levels and policy but the mayor oversees policy implementation and operations.

Council attorneys wrote in the memo that certain citywide policy decisions are within legislators’ powers, and that states and cities across the country have codified similar policies.

Vanessa Stine, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Pennsylvania chapter, testified Monday that the city would be on sound legal footing if Council adopted the package due to the anti-commandeering doctrine, a legal principle based in the Constitution’s 10th Amendment guarantee of states’ rights.

“The federal government may not compel states to implement federal programs through legislation or executive action,” Stine told the committee, adding that the city can make a “choice to minimize their entanglement with abusive and discriminatory federal immigration enforcement programs.”

For the better part of a decade, Philadelphia police have operated under an executive order that bars them from complying with requests from ICE to detain people without a warrant signed by a judge.

Administration officials have also long said that officers do not assist in immigration enforcement. But that policy has not been written down until now.

In what appears to have been an effort to preempt the Council hearing on the ICE-related legislation, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel sent a memo to officers on April 2 outlining a policy that explicitly states that officers may not assist ICE with pursuing noncriminal immigration violations.

The memo also states that Philadelphia police officers may not serve immigration warrants, transport people for immigration enforcement, or share nonpublic information for the purpose of immigration enforcement.

Deputy Police Commissioner Francis Healy said that, under the policy, the only time that police will participate in an ICE operation is if an agent is in an emergency situation, such as being assaulted.

“This is our community, so we’re here to make sure that the community is safe, that they feel safe. That’s why we actually put the policy in place,” Healy said. “There’s not a collaboration on civil enforcement between us and ICE. Period.”

And, under questioning by Landau, Healy confirmed that officers would intervene if an ICE agent uses force in a way that creates a public safety risk.

“If someone is going clearly above and beyond the line, we have a duty to protect all people,” Healy said.

Landau said that in several meetings with the police department, she had “never heard that loud and clear.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, “and I think everybody here today appreciates it that the police are saying they will intervene.”