Philadelphia mayor ends sharing of arrest records with ICE
PHILADELPHIA — Mayor Jim Kenney won’t renew a controversial city contract that allows federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to access a key law-enforcement database, known as PARS, and use that information against undocumented but otherwise law-abiding immigrants in Philadelphia.
“I cannot in good conscience allow the agreement to continue,” the mayor said.
The decision, announced Friday, follows months of consultation with community groups, lawyers and immigrant advocates, and weeks of tumultuous protests by anti-ICE demonstrators, who on Wednesday took over and held a City Hall stairway.
ICE officials criticized the city’s action as “needlessly compromising public safety,” and Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman called it “an irresponsible decision that results in the city harboring criminal aliens.”
“Sanctuary city policies make American communities like Philadelphia less safe by putting the rights of criminal aliens over the safety and security of American citizens,” she said in a statement. “Despite the misguided action taken by Philadelphia ..., DHS will continue to work to remove illegal aliens and uphold public safety.”
Mr. Kenney made his announcement at City Hall, in a ceremonial room that quickly filled with raucous cheering by pro-immigrant groups that have insisted the PARS agreement must end.
Mr. Kenney said the loud, public demands of Occupy ICE demonstrators — still encamped outside City Hall as he spoke — played little role in his thinking. Crucial to him was the city’s legal standing, affirmed after a federal court victory last month, and providing basic, humane treatment of people who came here from other lands.
“All of us have ancestors who were once immigrants,” the mayor said, choking up. “All of us.”
PARS is an acronym for a real-time computer database of arrests, operated by the city and shared via contract with ICE, the federal agency responsible for finding and deporting people in the country without documentation.
Mr. Kenney said he had grown concerned that ICE was using the database “in inappropriate ways,” including to conduct investigations of undocumented immigrants who had not broken any other laws. That sows fear and distrust in immigrant communities, he said, with the effect of discouraging crime victims and witnesses from coming forward.
Discussions with ICE officials did not allay those concerns but confirmed them, Mr. Kenney said.
Three city entities rely on PARS: the District Attorney’s Office, the court system and the police department, which is responsible to the mayor.
In the past, consensus among the three allowed the agreement with ICE to continue. Now, both District Attorney Larry Krasner and the mayor have withdrawn their consent, and the court system, officials say, has abstained.