Philadelphia’s ambitious plan to scare off ICE

After weeks of the Department of Homeland Security terrorizing the people of Minneapolis by sending armed goons into the community under the guise of “immigration enforcement,” the political blowback against the operation is clearly bothering Donald Trump. The shooting deaths of two peaceful locals who were protesting the invasion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents has led the White House to attempt to create the appearance of backing off. On Monday night, “commander at large” Gregory Bovino was pushed out of his role, even though his abuse of the city clearly came at the express wishes of Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.

But as Salon’s Jason Kyle Howard noted, the president has not backed down in any meaningful way in his crusade to treat blue cities as an enemy to be conquered. The ICE invasion came after the president abandoned his plan to assault cities with the National Guard. He hasn’t given up the strategy of using militarized abuse of liberal communities as sadistic propaganda to feed the MAGA base. This reprieve for Minneapolis should be understood as a temporary regrouping while the White House schemes about which city is next on their list and how they will mount their attack. 

As a resident of Philadelphia, I can attest that the entire city is worried that we’ll be next in the barrel. ICE has already been on the ground, grabbing immigrants and scaring people. But locals are also terrified the city will soon be singled out for a full-scale invasion like Minneapolis is experiencing. Trump has always spoken of Philadelphia with deep contempt, and folks haven’t forgotten his repeated efforts to stop the vote counting here in 2020 as part of his concerted effort to steal the presidential election from Joe Biden.

What’s happened to Minneapolis is “frightening for us to watch,” explained Rue Landau, a Democratic city council member. “We have to be prepared in Philadelphia for when they come.”

On Tuesday, Landau and Working Families Party council member Kendra Brooks unveiled an ambitious plan to shield the city from ICE and empower local law enforcement to arrest federal agents who descend on the city with ill intent. Under the “ICE Out” legislation,

• Federal officers would be banned from obscuring their identity with face masks and required to wear badges;
• City services, including police, would be prohibited from cooperating with ICE or providing them data on residents;
• ICE agents would be banned from any city property — including courts, schools and hospitals — without a judicial warrant;
• And public services and private businesses would be prevented from refusing service based on immigration status.

“This legislation is a comprehensive package to set clear limits on ICE’s tactics of fear, surveillance and violence in our city,” Brooks told Salon.

During a rally announcing the bill, District Attorney Larry Krasner denounced the “small bunch of wannabe Nazis” Trump is unleashing on cities and promised to prosecute ICE officers who break state and local laws. “If we have to hunt you down the way they hunted down Nazis for decades, we will find your identities,” he said. “We will find you. We will achieve justice.”

For months, activists have been demanding more support from city leadership, explained Elias Siegelman, an activist who works with No ICE Philly, which meets in the quintessentially Pennsylvanian location of a Quaker meeting house. He asserted that local law enforcement should do more “to push back against this invasion, to stand up for Philadelphians.” While the anti-ICE activists appreciate tough talk from Krasner and Sheriff Rochelle Bilal — both of whom recently warned they will “arrest” ICE agents who break local laws — the group is dismayed at what they see as a lack of concrete preventive action. 

The “ICE Out” bill is an effort by city council progressives to bridge that gap by codifying into law restrictions that will clarify when ICE agents can be confronted or even arrested. If the proposal passes, it has a real chance of being effective, not just at weathering an oncoming storm, but also in keeping Trump and Miller’s evil eyes from landing on Philadelphia in the first place.

Such a victory would be more than symbolic. It’s important to remember that the administration’s main goal in sending militarized forces against American cities is at heart propagandistic. They want to generate savage footage of ICE officers harassing immigrants and liberals, all to feed bloodthirsty MAGA audiences and distract them from Trump’s failures. The White House also hopes they can provoke locals into reacting with vandalism or violence to seed the narrative that “the left” is out of control.

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But Minneapolis has demonstrated there are other ways to deny Trump, Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem these aims. The resistance there has been fierce but peaceful, leaving no doubt that the bad guys were ICE and Border Patrol agents — not the everyday Americans who were abused and even killed while peacefully protesting. Democratic leaders like Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey helped keep the peace by unequivocally siding with the protesters against the Trump administration, calling on ICE to leave and bluntly describing the invasion as a politicized terror campaign. In doing so, Walz and Frey bought trust with the community, who took both leaders seriously when they called for non-violence and told residents not to take Trump’s bait.

If passed, Philadelphia’s “ICE Out” bill would follow Minneapolis’ model. The legislation would serve as a powerful deterrent to the Trump administration, signaling solidarity between government leaders and activists that would embolden folks on the ground to make life very hard for federal agents who want to terrorize the community. By taking away staging grounds for their showy arrests, it would also severely limit what immigration authorities can do in the city. The bill would empower residents to double down on tracking and filming agents, since, without their masks, the agents would be even more afraid of facing social consequences for their actions. But it would also keep the peace, making it harder for ICE to escalate conflicts with the community, while reducing feelings of frustration for activists. In the meantime, Brooks’ office has been sponsoring resident trainings on how to monitor ICE and protect one’s neighbors.

Since Trump and his administration famously have a tendency to back off when the going gets tough, it would follow that a good way to keep them out of Philadelphia is to raise the costs that would come with an invasion. But Cherelle Parker, the city’s mayor, has a different idea. She seems wedded to a head-in-the-sand approach, recently telling WHYY’s Cheri Gregg that she prefers to avoid confrontation with the president “to protect my city of Philadelphia.”

Without naming the mayor directly, Landau rejected this strategy as short-sighted. “We know Trump has his eye on Philadelphia,” she said. “Staying quiet will not keep us safe.”

Landau is right. There are many reasons the White House threatens random American cities — and Greenland, for that matter: a need to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files, conspiracy theories circulating on right-wing media or whatever pinball-like impulses are bouncing around in Trump’s brain. Lying low and hoping he forgets about you is not going to work. For all we know, the president could wake up one day while “Trading Places” is on television and think, “Yes, let’s stick it to Eddie Murphy for believing he can live in a rich guy’s mansion.” Refraining from poking the bear is only a useful strategy if the bear is a rational or predictable actor, and Trump is neither. He’s an already-impulsive 79-year-old who is experiencing age and mortality rapidly taking their toll.

But as Europe recently learned by getting Trump to back off his fantasies of colonizing Greenland, one strategy tends to work: making him feel like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. The goal in sending ICE after cities like Minneapolis is to create images of scared, cowering citizens being abused by masked officers, to feed the dark fantasies of the pathetic MAGA fans on X. If the White House thinks they’ll instead see ICE agents mocked, stymied and arrested, they are more likely to wonder if it’s just not worth the price of admission.

The post Philadelphia’s ambitious plan to scare off ICE appeared first on Salon.com.