Immigration advocates brace for Trump’s Day 1 deportation orders that could target 47,000 in Philadelphia

President-elect Donald Trump promised increased immigration restrictions and a closed border in the campaign that made him president. His inauguration on Monday could immediately usher in major policy changes that will have ramifications locally.

Trump has pledged to quickly issue a series of orders to toughen and expand federal immigration enforcement by deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, jailing migrant families, repealing birthright citizenship, and targeting sanctuary cities like Philadelphia.

People familiar with one plan told NBC News that Trump intends a major policy reversal concerning ICE, freeing the enforcement agency to arrest immigrants in places where agents have been officially dissuaded from taking action, including churches, schools, and hospitals.

While it’s unclear exactly who might be targeted, the scope, or how the government would carry out large-scale operations, advocates are already bracing for potential impact.

“All of a sudden, the shackles are really off,” said Cris Ramon, senior adviser on immigration for UnidosUS, the national Latino civil rights organization in Washington. “You’re really expanding the ability of ICE to do a lot more enforcement. … It’s going to put a lot of lives in a precarious situation.”

Trump’s immediate actions will likely be a series of executive orders to bolster Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to send a message that the border is closed, according to reporting from Politico.

He has promised an unprecedented campaign to kick out those who lack legal permission to be in the United States — about 13 million people, roughly the population of Pennsylvania. Experts who study immigration say that would be difficult to accomplish, requiring billions in tax dollars and an unrivaled government mobilization to remove several times the number of all those currently held in American jails and prisons.

At the same time, they say, even partial Trump-administration success could cause huge disruption, not only to those who would be arrested and detained, but to the economy and to American civic life as millions of workers, neighbors, and family members are sent out of the country.

An immediate local target would be the 47,000 undocumented people in Philadelphia, part of 153,000 statewide. An additional 440,000 live in New Jersey.

Councilmember Rue Landau is already planning a Trump Preparedness Hearing on Wednesday “to explore Philadelphia’s readiness and commitment to protecting immigrant, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized communities in preparation for the impending Trump administration.”

Pro-immigrant groups in the Philadelphia region have been preparing for a second Trump presidency since the November election — and some say they intend to be more strategic this time around. During Trump’s first term, his threats around immigration could quickly propel people into the streets to protest.

Often those threats were empty. But the response tied up and exhausted those who opposed his policies.

Now, said Jasmine Rivera, executive director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group, “we’re focusing on solutions — how to disrupt this deportation machine.”

Last month the coalition helped organize a demonstration for migrants that temporarily blocked traffic at the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge and saw 13 protesters taken into police custody. Several Philadelphia groups have planned local events to counter Trump’s inauguration with music, prayer, and protest. And District Attorney Larry Krasner has warned he would not hesitate to charge ICE officers with crimes if they should violate the law while taking official action.

“We are simply not going to allow the abuse of authority, hate crimes, activity that endangers children in violation of laws in Pennsylvania,” he said last month.

Krasner’s comments revealed the challenge to those who seek to resist — uncertainty around the level of aggressive immigration enforcement that Trump intends to mount. The president-elect confirmed he plans to try to use the U.S. military to carry out deportations, the first domestic deployment of troops under the Insurrection Act since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Politico reported.

Trump has said he wants to punish sanctuary cities, places that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities if they refuse to help carry out deportations. That’s become a contentious issue in Philadelphia, where Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has passed up chances to firmly reassert the city’s position.

The Parker administration says it’s focused on improving public safety and quality of life for Philadelphians, not on responding to Trump’s rhetoric. It says the city’s 2016 executive order directing its workers to respond to judicial warrants, not to ICE-issued detainers to hold immigrants in custody, remains in place.

But that message from Parker sparked protest from immigrant allies in Philadelphia and contrasted not only with some Democratic leaders in other cities but with her predecessor, former Mayor Jim Kenney.

The Kenney administration fought and won a major federal lawsuit in 2018 over Trump’s effort to make local police help 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.

“This is not a time for lack of clarity, in terms of actions or intention,” Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of the Latino advocacy group Juntos, told The Inquirer last month. “She needs to say it.”

In Washington, Republicans have already initiated legislation to crack down on illegal immigration.

U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R., Pa.) said Trump, with the help of Congress, will in short order deliver on promises that returned him to the White House.

Asked about fears that those policies could target undocumented immigrants living in the country for decades who have not committed crimes aside from entering illegally, Meuser scoffed.

”There’s not going to be anything scary. It’s gonna start with criminals. It’s gonna start with those that we know are here that are engaged in criminal acts,” he said. “It’s just going to go back to how immigration was handled for the last 100 years, up until maybe 15 or 20 years ago.”

Democrats have shown more willingness to back GOP-led immigration bills that target undocumented immigrants accused of committing crimes. The Laken Riley Act cleared its last major hurdle Friday and will likely become the first major immigration bill passed by Congress after Trump is sworn in. An initial version of the bill, which passed the House with the support of 48 Democrats last week, would require undocumented immigrants accused of crimes as minor as theft to be held by ICE and face possible deportation.

Democrats opposing that bill have warned that it could have tragic consequences for undocumented immigrants falsely accused of crimes and give outsized power to local attorneys general. Some of those same Democrats worry about what Trump’s impending orders could mean for their constituents.

“We know there’s an effort to scare people and we fully expect in the days following inauguration that we’re going to see some headline-grabbing enforcement action,” said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D., Pa.). But Scanlon cautioned that mass deportations would require Congress to approve billions of dollars in funding and urged constituents not to panic.

“Breathe. Take a deep breath. Don’t freak out,” Scanlon said. “We have wonderful, wonderful advocacy groups in the Philadelphia region who can help people understand what their rights are, and we’re just gonna try to navigate it as humanely and rationally as we can.”