Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker is shying away from confirming Philly’s “sanctuary city” status in the wake of Donald Trump’s landslide election, despite pressure from Latino activists.
Parker, who was just took office on January first, took a pass on reaffirming the city’s sanctuary status in the week after Trump’s election in November. And since then, she and her administration have largely refused to comment too deeply on the issue, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Philly city council designated the town as a sanctuary for illegal border crosses in 2016, and this week, Parker spokesperson Joe Grace insisted that the order “remains in place.”
“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 added.
But activists are vexed that Parker is not giving the issue more attention.
“We are concerned about how she’s not publicly supporting,” said immigrant activist Patty Torres, co-deputy director of Make the Road Pennsylvania. “Philadelphia definitely needs a leader that protects immigrant families, now more than ever.”
Blanca Pacheco, codirector of New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, added, “We hope that she fights back as previous administrations have done. We can work together to fight back, and make the city stand for families and for freedom.”
Still, Parker ran for mayor with a tough-on-crime theme last year when she won election, and opposing deportations would seem to be a contradiction to that pledge.
Some are reading into Parker’s refusal to jump on the sanctuary train as evidence that she will side with the incoming Trump administration’s deportation goals.
The Manhattan Institute’s Rafael Mangual, for one, insisted that Parker’s aversion to commenting on the issue is “a signal that she’s going to back away from the sanctuary-city policy.”
Like other major U.S. cities, Philly has also seen busloads of illegals flood into its confines, but not to the same extent as cities such as Chicago, New York City, and Denver. According to WHYY radio, at 13.9 percent, the percentage of migrants in its population is higher than it has been since the 1940s. And last year, the city reported that nearly 3,000 migrants arrived on 71 buses that stopped there.
By this year, the Migration Policy Institute estimated that there are 47,000 “unauthorized” migrants in Philly. Overall, the state of Pennsylvania has spent about $1,216,181,625 on Biden’s border crisis.
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