Former Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney: Sanctuary cities are 'common sense'

Julia Terruso, The Philadelphia Inquirer on Jun 10, 2025

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PHILADELPHIA — Former Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney called the city’s sanctuary city policy a “pragmatic” and “common-sense” solution to a broken immigration system that he said is now being “weaponized” by President Donald Trump.

“In the absence of much-needed federal immigration reform, mayors and governors are forced to figure out how to make our communities run,” Kenney wrote in an op-ed published Tuesday in the Washington Post, defending the policy he signed via executive order in 2016.

“Signing the declaration was a common-sense policy decision. And as a descendant of once-marginalized Irish immigrants, I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said.

For Kenney, a Democrat who was term-limited and left office in 2023, the op-ed provides rare public commentary on a high-stakes issue from someone who advocated passionately for the city’s immigrants as mayor but has kept out of the public eye since.

It comes as his successor, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, has exhibited a much more taciturn response to Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration and as federal immigration authorities increasingly deport undocumented immigrants with no criminal history.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles have sparked protests in recent days, prompting Trump to send in the National Guard and U.S. Marines, against the will of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, who called such deployments an overreaction that has only aggravated the situation.

Kenney weighed in on that situation in a statement to The Inquirer, applauding Newsom for standing up to what he called “domestic tyranny.”

“I would encourage Governor Newsom and other governors and mayors to continue the fight to defend and protect our core American values against Donald Trump and his misguided and un-American agenda,” Kenney said.

A spokesperson for the White House, Kush Desai, responded to Kenney’s op-ed by calling him a “moronic career politician” who “ruined once-iconic American cities like Philadelphia with soft-on-crime and sanctuary policies that have spurred violence, open-air drug use, and decay.”

In Philadelphia, local law enforcement officials do not fulfill ICE detainers without a warrant. But ICE still carries out its enforcement of immigration law, and there have been reports of ramped-up raids in the region.

“If the Philadelphia Police Department ever had a migrant in custody who had committed or was suspected of a crime, all Immigration and Customs Enforcement had to do was get a judicial warrant and we immediately transferred custody to them,” Kenney wrote.

“What Trump paints as lawlessness is actually a requirement that an administration inclined to ignore the rules follow due process in each and every proceeding.”

Kenney estimated 50,000 Philadelphians are undocumented in the city of 1.5 million. He said the policy was meant to assuage fear that could prevent them from going to hospitals or reporting crimes

Kenney has not commented on Parker’s handling of the situation, and his op-ed did not criticize any Democratic leaders but did compel them to speak “common-sense rhetoric on immigration that does not deny our welcoming values.”

“It’s the smart thing to do for our politics, and it’s also the right and moral thing to do for our country,” he said.

Philadelphia is one of five cities and 11 counties in Pennsylvania that the Trump administration listed as sanctuary jurisdictions, at risk of losing federal funding.

Parker’s administration responded by distancing itself from the term sanctuary, saying Philadelphia is a “welcoming” city. The city’s law department has said it will defend the policy on the books, regardless of what it is called.

As of Tuesday, Philadelphia had received no official notification from the federal government about potential cuts. The sanctuary list was removed from the Department of Homeland Security’s website days after its release.

After a judge ruled in favor of Philadelphia’s sanctuary city status in 2018, Kenney celebrated the ruling with a dance in his office and a speech in City Hall in which he touted immigrants’ contributions to the city. He said then that Trump “can’t bully Philadelphia into changing its policies.”

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