Philly immigrant leaders fear Trump’s deportation plans, vow to fight back

The day after the election, it all came rushing back to the Rev. Renee McKenzie — the fear she felt for immigrants, the potentially life-and-death choices they faced, and the way they turned to her for help during the first presidency of Donald Trump.

Less than a year into his first term, she made the decision to let a desperate, undocumented family of five take sanctuary inside the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia, placing them beyond the reach of federal authorities and blocking their deportation to a Mexican homeland where they feared they would be killed.

Now President-elect Trump promises a second term driven by an intense escalation in enforcement, including the mass deportations of millions of people — and McKenzie expects Philadelphia churches and faith leaders will be called on again to place themselves between immigrants and the government.

“People will turn to the church,” said McKenzie, now serving at Calvary St. Augustine Episcopal Church in the Belmont neighborhood, “and I pray the church will respond.”

Across Philadelphia last week, immigrants and their allies reacted to Trump’s election with dread, worry, and promises to fight anew in one of the nation’s preeminent sanctuary cities — jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal immigration agents.

An estimated 47,000 undocumented people live in Philadelphia, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Across Pennsylvania, an estimated 153,000 are undocumented, the agency said, and in New Jersey, the figure is about 440,000.

Trump has promised that the largest removal operation in American history will begin on his first day in office, Jan. 20.

”Our message to everybody who’s coming to this country illegally is … pack your bags because Donald Trump’s coming back,” Vice President-elect JD Vance told Pennsylvania supporters at a rally in Leesport in September.

Trump told MSNBC there is “no price tag” attached to his deportation plans, painting his efforts as a way to make Americans safe from migrants he has inaccurately painted as dangerous criminals. He has pledged to immediately undertake an additional series of actions and restrictions, including an attempt to end birthright citizenship, the long-established law that says someone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen.

“We’ve read what his plans are,” said Peter Pedemonti, codirector with Blanca Pacheco of the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, “and I don’t have any reason to think he’s not telling us the truth.”

Pedemonti spent the day after the election talking with faith leaders and elders in Philadelphia, including some who fought or escaped from oppressive regimes in other countries.

“We did organize and fight through the first Trump administration,” he said. “This one is going to be worse, we know that. But we cannot throw away the lessons we learned, the knowledge we gained. We’re going to be relying and building off of that.”

Trump has said he wants to strip federal funding from sanctuary cities. At a Thursday news conference, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker was asked if she was concerned, and if she was committed to maintaining that sanctuary stance in Philadelphia.

“I don’t know what will happen in the future,” the mayor responded. “We will make sure we are prepared to address issues that come before us under a Parker administration.”

Right now, she said, she is focused on her plans to make Philadelphia the safest, cleanest, greenest big city in the nation.

Today, an estimated 11 million people are living in the United States without permission, about 40% originally from Mexico, according to the Pew Research Center.

A one-time removal operation would cost at least $315 billion and damage the economy by eliminating needed workers, particularly in California, Texas, and Florida, according to a new study by the nonpartisan American Immigration Council, which works for a fairer immigration system.

But Trump’s message that immigrants are a danger, “poisoning the blood of our country,” seemed to have landed with Americans, including those in Pennsylvania, who voted decisively to return him to the White House.

Many voters ranked immigration as a top concern, with 57% saying in an October New York Times/Siena College poll that they supported deporting immigrants who were in the country illegally. A June Gallup poll found that 55% of adults want immigration decreased, up from 41% a year earlier.

“We are going to need every single political leader, every single community leader, every single institution to really stand up,” said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition in Philadelphia. “That means not collaborating with the White House when it comes to deporting our people.”

Philadelphia emerged as a center of resistance during Trump’s first term, with opposition to harsh immigration policies led by both community organizations and the city government.

The administration of former Mayor Jim Kenney fought and won a major lawsuit in 2018 over Trump’s effort to make local police enforce federal immigration laws, kicked ICE out of a database it believed the agency was using to find undocumented people, and barred city employees from asking residents about their immigration status.

At one point, 14 undocumented immigrants were living in sanctuary in Philadelphia churches, the most in any U.S. city. They were safe there, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidelines dissuaded agents from entering houses of worship to make arrests.

Among the first into sanctuary were those welcomed by McKenzie.

Carmela Hernandez and her four children fled to this country in August 2015, after being threatened by the same drug criminals who killed her brother and two nephews. The family was denied asylum by the U.S. government, and took sanctuary only days before their scheduled deportation on Dec. 15, 2017.

They lived in the Church of the Advocate and then in the Germantown Mennonite Church for more than three years, ending sanctuary in March 2021. That came after ICE officials said the family was no longer “a priority for enforcement,” that they fell outside of guidelines that targeted those considered threats to national security, border security, and public safety.

A friend said on Friday the family was living quietly and did not wish to be contacted by news media.

After Joe Biden became president in 2021, Philadelphia-area immigrants and allies largely felt optimistic, encouraged by a Democrat who said he saw immigration as essential to the nation and its aspirations.

Because many of the Trump administration’s harshest policies had been enacted by executive order, not legislation, they could be reversed the same way. At the least, they said in 2020, the change in administrations would end the Oval Office demonization of immigrants and their families.

But by the midterm elections, many people had become disenchanted with Biden.

The number of beds to jail undocumented immigrants soared in Pennsylvania. A health rule used to expel immigrants at the border had been expanded, and federal authorities continued to arrest and expel people who came here hoping to provide for their families.

Today about 16% of Philadelphia residents were born outside the United States, the highest share since the 1940s, according to a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The foreign-born population more than doubled from 105,000 in 1990 to 232,000 in 2022, even as the overall city population grew very little, census figures show.

The city’s sanctuary stance has also made it a target.

Beginning in late 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent nearly a thousand immigrants to Philadelphia aboard unscheduled, unannounced buses, saying that sanctuary cities needed to help ease pressure on overwhelmed border towns. Kenney and immigrant allies called it a cheap political stunt that hurt families.

“There’s a lot of people in our communities who are very scared right now,” Rivera said. “People are calling, ‘What does this mean, what do I do?’ … But I am ready to fight, to fight back and protect my community.”