PHILADELPHIA — Days after a presidential election in which immigration became a flash point, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker passed on a chance to reassert Philadelphia’s status as a sanctuary city, a place that resists federal pressure to help deport immigrants.

And this week, her staff offered tepid answers to questions about her position on sanctuary policies.

That cautiousness has leaders in the city’s immigrant communities concerned that people could be made vulnerable at a moment when the incoming Trump administration is promising to deport millions of undocumented migrants, among them nearly 47,000 in Philadelphia.

“This is not a time for lack of clarity, in terms of actions or intentions,” said Erika Guadalupe Núñez, executive director of Juntos, the Latino advocacy group. “She needs to say it. … The sanctuary-city policy has prevented a lot of families from falling into the deportation dragnet.”

Immigrant groups intend to rally at City Hall on Tuesday to demand that the mayor speak out.

The pressure on Parker, a Democrat, comes as the mayor is finishing her first year in office and as President-elect Donald Trump, to be inaugurated in January, pledges to commence a financial and legal assault on sanctuary cities across the United States.

And it arrives as sanctuary cities — places that deliberately limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement — have become an increasingly volatile political issue and potential vulnerability for Democrats, who are reeling from a bruising national electoral loss and trying to regain voters who think the party is soft on immigration.

On Wednesday, Parker spokesperson Joe Grace said the administration’s priority is to improve public safety and quality of life, not to respond to the president-elect’s rhetoric.

A 2016 executive order codifying the city’s sanctuary status “remains in place,” he said.

“The Parker administration remains laser-focused on the agenda that Philadelphians elected her to implement: making Philadelphia a safer, cleaner, greener city, with access to economic opportunity for all,” Grace said.

Last month, Parker similarly answered a reporter’s question about her commitment to maintaining Philadelphia’s sanctuary status, saying her administration “will make sure that we are prepared to address issues that come before us.”

Parker said during her campaign last year that she supports Philadelphia being a sanctuary city, but neither she nor other candidates made it a significant issue.

Immigrant-rights activists noticed.

“We are concerned about how she’s not publicly supporting,” said Patty Torres, co-deputy director of Make the Road Pennsylvania, an immigrant-justice group. “Philadelphia definitely needs a leader that protects immigrant families, now more than ever.”

But as advocates prepare to protest, others see the mayor’s approach as politically astute, given the unpredictability of Trump administration policy. Larry Ceisler, a public affairs executive based in Philadelphia, said Parker’s language is “responsibly cautious” in the wake of Trump’s election.

“She’s walking a really fine line here,” Ceisler said. “And you’re dealing with a potential of an administration in Washington like no one’s ever dealt with before — one that speaks openly about retribution and vindictiveness.”

Trump demands cooperation

Trump’s advisers are discussing how to strip federal funding from Democratic-run cities if their leaders refuse to help carry out deportations, the Washington Post reported. Trump said during the campaign that he would ask Congress to pass a law outlawing sanctuary cities, and demand that the “full weight of the federal government” fall upon jurisdictions that refuse to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Sanctuary cities generally refuse to deputize their local police officers as acting ICE agents, and some places, including the state of New Jersey, have sought to ban the creation of immigrant-detention centers.

Some big-city Democrats have forcefully defended their policies in the face of Trump’s threats. Denver’s mayor said his city wouldn’t “be bullied” into changing its values, and Los Angeles officials passed an ordinance to reinforce that city’s sanctuary status.

“Mayors are the first line of defense,” said Beatriz Lopez, deputy director of the Immigration Hub in Washington, a progressive policy group. “It’s immensely important that mayors have the courage and are able to employ the laws for their communities.”

The most prominent example of a city that could come under federal scrutiny may be Chicago, which Trump has repeatedly criticized as crime-ridden. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive, told the Post that his administration is preparing for potential federal funding cuts but won’t change its policy to comply with ICE.

The message from Parker — who ran on a tough-on-crime platform — has been far less absolute. It contrasts not only with Democratic leaders in other cities, but with her predecessor, former Mayor Jim Kenney. He made support for the city’s immigrant communities a cornerstone of his political identity, and eagerly warred against the first Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The Kenney administration 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.

Rafael Mangual, a fellow who studies urban crime and justice at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, said Democrats now have a chance to rethink sanctuary. The party’s electoral losses across the country reflect voters’ desire for a more “law and order” approach, he said.

Mangual said he hopes Parker’s tone is “a signal that she’s going to back away from the sanctuary-city policy.”

But immigration advocates want the opposite — for Parker to be more assertive.

“We hope that she fights back as previous administrations have done,” said Blanca Pacheco, codirector of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, which works to support immigrants. “We can work together to fight back, and make the city stand for families and for freedom.”

The rise of sanctuary cities

The national debate is fiery, but the idea of sanctuary reaches back to the Bible, where the Old Testament described “six cities of refuge.” The ideal ran through early societies and became popular through Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame," in which Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda from the gallows and carries her inside the cathedral, beyond the grasp of authorities.

The modern concept of sanctuary cities emerged about 50 years ago, the first believed to be the liberal bastion of Berkeley, Calif., where in 1971 the City Council declared the jurisdiction safe for soldiers opposed to the Vietnam War.

The movement became immigration-driven in the 1980s, as churches and human-rights activists declared sanctuary for refugees fleeing civil war in El Salvador and Guatemala, the group Global Refuge wrote in a history.

Philadelphia engaged from the start.

In 1984, the Tabernacle United Church in West Philadelphia became the first in the region to proclaim itself a sanctuary. The First United Methodist of Germantown followed suit, welcoming a young couple from Guatemala who arrived with their daughter, having journeyed here on a modern Underground Railroad.

The family eventually won a court case granting them asylum.

That church resistance reawakened when Trump took office. At one point in 2019, more undocumented migrants had taken sanctuary in Philadelphia churches than in any city in the country, blocking their deportation by putting themselves beyond the reach of ICE. Agency guidelines dissuade agents from taking action at houses of worship.

Today there is no firm definition of what constitutes a sanctuary city.

Some local governments have issued formal declarations, but often, as in Philadelphia, it is behavior that defines — the city’s decision to treat documented and undocumented residents the same, particularly in interactions with police or the courts.

Philadelphia and other sanctuary jurisdictions typically do not honor ICE-issued detainers to keep undocumented people in custody, responding only to judicial warrants.

Leaders in sanctuary cities say they could be sued if they obeyed administrative ICE detainers and held people beyond the release dates set by judges.

That’s what happened to Lehigh County and Allentown officials, who were successfully sued for keeping a man in prison — even after he posted bail — so that ICE could investigate his immigration status. It turned out that Ernesto Galarza was born in New Jersey, and his settlement for three days behind bars cost taxpayers $145,000.

But opponents of sanctuary policies say law enforcement must act in concert to deport people who are here without permission. They point to horrific, headline-grabbing crimes involving undocumented immigrants, incidents they say could have been prevented.

For instance, in 2015 a man who had been deported to Mexico five times, and returned each time, fired a shot that ricocheted and killed a 32-year-old woman in San Francisco, a sanctuary city. ICE officials said the county Sheriff’s Department had failed to honor their request to hold Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, releasing him only months before the shooting, the New York Times reported.

“The sanctuary-city policy is broadly misguided and, particularly as it relates to criminal offenders, is utterly insane,” the Manhattan Institute’s Mangual said. “Anything the federal government can do to move states in a more sane direction should be on the table.”

Philly among the strongest

Among scores of sanctuary cities, states, counties, and towns, heavily Democratic Philadelphia stands among the strongest. Or at least it did, emerging as a resistance leader during the first Trump administration, its opposition driven by community organizations and the city government.

The Kenney administration successfully argued in court that it was not part of the immigration-enforcement apparatus and did not have to devote staff to help ICE do its work. It said city police officers arrest people who they believe have committed crimes, regardless of immigration status, and a judge decides whether and when those people should be released.

Then-Police Commissioner Richard Ross testified that the department needs trust from the community in order to gather information and make arrests, and part of that is based on the fact that officers do not routinely collect data on immigration status.

Other places take the opposite tack.

Florida, Arizona, Texas, and other states passed laws banning sanctuary cities, and last month, Texas offered land to the Trump administration to build detention facilities near the border. Jurisdictions in nearly two dozen states help ICE by providing information and manpower under a program called “287g,” named for a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Sanctuary status can come with a price. Philadelphia became a target of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who sent busloads of migrants here in 2022, insisting that sanctuary cities must share in border problems.

Philadelphia officials and immigrant groups safely and warmly welcomed those riders, all of whom had permission to be in the U.S. as they pursued claims in immigration court. Almost all the arrivals were seeking asylum.

“No family should live in fear — whether it’s fear of eviction, fear of violence, or fear of deportation,” Councilmember Kendra Brooks said in a statement this fall, as city officials celebrated the five-year anniversary of a Kenney alliance that provides lawyers for detained immigrants facing deportation.

Juntos stands among the main organizations that have pushed for expansive sanctuary city policies in Philadelphia. And that are demanding the same now.

“Local protections are incredibly important,” Núñez said. “It’s important for the city to take intentional actions to build that. And that includes publicly declaring we’re a sanctuary city.”

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