PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A federal judge ruled Thursday that Philadelphia does not have to honor detainer requests from ICE to hold undocumented immigrants in custody until the agency picks them up.
U.S. District Court Judge Chad F. Kenney ruled in favor of the Department of Justice in July, overruling a new Philadelphia ordinance requiring ICE agents to unmask during operations in the city.
But this week, he ruled in favor of Philadelphia’s decision not to honor ICE detainers, citing several previous court rulings that found compliance with immigration requests was not mandatory.
Both the unmasking measure and prohibition on detainers were key parts of the ICE OUT legislation package that City Council passed in April.
Philadelphia has not honored ICE detainers since 2015, when Mayor Michael Nutter ended the practice through an executive order. Following mayoral administrations have upheld the order. The ICE Out package codified it into law.
The DOJ initially only sued the city over the unmasking ordinance, but expanded the lawsuit to include the no-detainer policy.
It argued the provision was a “blanket refusal” for the city to cooperate with the federal government. Kenney ruled that not complying with the detainers did not impede enforcement of immigration law.
