Philly migrants skip work, school, and shopping amid fears of ICE enforcement

Every Sunday morning, Nelly Garcia slides into a pew at St. William Roman Catholic Church in Northeast Philadelphia, meeting a close friend for the Spanish-speaking service, but this week something was off.

Her friend didn’t show up.

She decided it was too risky, since she is undocumented, that ICE agents could appear and deport her to Guatemala.

“She’s already told me, ‘If [ICE] gets me, you’re in charge of sending me my things,’” said Garcia, 49.

In the first nine days of the Trump administration, reports of ICE activity have ricocheted across the Philadelphia region, driving anxiety in immigrant communities and causing some people to change their routines and step back from daily life.

On Tuesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided a North Philadelphia car wash, arresting seven migrants and sparking a protest by about 25 pastors, activists, and city residents outside the agency’s Center City office. Philadelphia ICE officials said they could provide no information on the arrests.

On Wednesday, rumors of an impending ICE raid unsettled Philadelphia’s famous Italian Market, closing businesses and leaving stalls vacant.

For Jesus Mozo, who has worked at a market restaurant for decades, the sense of emptiness sprang from weeks of talk that “they are coming.”

”At this point I’d rather ICE already show up instead of living like this, in this unknown,” said Mozo, who is well-known and depended on in the community. ”We have to get together, do a march or something, because this is going to affect not just our economy, but that of the city, too. … We are people, too, and we can’t keep living in this level of fear.”

Elsewhere, some immigrants stayed away from supply stores like Home Depot, where undocumented men looking for work may gather in parking lots, hoping a contractor will offer a day’s pay, and others skipped their stop at Wawa, in case ICE agents might be watching.

At times it was hard to tell what was real, what was rumor, what was normal ICE activity, and what was stepped-up enforcement in a big, Democratic sanctuary city. News outlets confirmed one earlier arrest in the city.

A widely spread rumor that ICE agents were at Julia De Burgos Elementary School in North Philadelphia was false, the principal said in a message to families. And a report that ICE was parked outside Penn Presbyterian Medical Center turned out to be less provocative — an agency worker happened to be visiting a sick family member, according to a City Hall staffer who investigated.

But the reports showed the extent of heightened alert, particularly now that President Donald Trump has declared schools, hospitals, and churches to be potential targets for immigration enforcement.

Almost immediately after taking office on Jan. 20, Trump rescinded the ICE “sensitive locations” guidance that generally barred agents from taking action at those places. That policy helped make Philadelphia ground zero for a sanctuary movement that saw more than a dozen people living in churches here, knowing ICE could not enter.

On Sunday, attendance stayed close to normal at St. William in Lawncrest, and at the Vietnamese-language Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas in South Philadelphia.

Clergy there and elsewhere said they were keeping phone lines open, and a surge of calls came in to St. Thomas Aquinas from worried worshipers, said the Rev. Wilmer Chirino, the pastor.

He pledged that ICE agents would be stopped at the door, barred from entering even if they carried a legal, judicial warrant. Admittance would come only through the approval of the pope’s personal representative in the United States, he said.

“This is like an embassy,” Chirino said. ICE agents “can do whatever they want outside the property, but not inside.”

The White House declared late last week that “the largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway,” although “border czar” Tom Homan told ABC News that the scope of the removals — about 13 million undocumented people live in the United States — would depend on the amount of funding allocated by Congress.

On X, ICE officials posted a picture of agents placing a man in handcuffs and a phone number for people to report “suspicious activity.” At least one man was arrested earlier in Philadelphia as ICE undertook operations in sanctuary cities including Boston, Denver, Atlanta, and Washington, the New York Post reported.

“Spectacle is a part of the strategy of mass deportation,” said immigration historian Carly Goodman, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-Camden, and the author of Dreamland: America’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction. “It helps spread fear, which can drive people out of public life and make them more vulnerable, while fueling anti-immigrant propaganda.”

The 117,000-student Philadelphia school system also faced challenges as talk of ICE enforcement spread.

“We did see attendance go down last week,” said one teacher, who was not authorized to speak on the record due to the district’s policies and works at a school with a large number of English-language learners.

Some teens confided that immigration fears were causing them to limit their movements around Philadelphia. But city government policy bars staff from inquiring into students’ immigration status, so it can be hard for school employees to tell who might be struggling unless students speak up.

“I’m just taking it easy on kids,” the teacher said. “They have real concerns, and they have since the day after the election.”

Officially, the district reaffirmed its 2021 “sanctuary schools” policy, reiterating its commitment to shield immigrant students and families from inquiries by federal authorities.

Panic had already erupted last week in the Italian Market’s Ninth Street corridor — home to Mexican and Latino businesses — when “an American woman” came into the shops shouting that ICE was going to raid the area at 4 p.m., according to multiple business owners there. The hour came and went last Wednesday without incident, but workers were shaken.

“Some people are trying to help, but others are trying to intimidate us, scare us,” said Isabel Espinosa, who lives legally in the United States after emigrating from Mexico. “We have to remember to put fear aside and make space for calmness, because there is no thriving in panic.”

Espinosa, 61, operates a store at the market that sells dresses for communions and quinceañeras, the traditional 15th birthday celebrations that mark girls’ transition to adulthood. Business has been slow since the inauguration, she said, a reminder of her experience during Trump’s first term, when she lacked legal permission to be here.

“Rumors in the streets would say ICE was on Ninth Street, and I used to run outside to check and make sure I didn’t have to pack my things and go,” Espinosa said. “I am a resident now, but I can still see that same fear in my community.”

In fact, on Wednesday she had to close her store after workers told her that they were afraid to come in, that they had been warned of an impending ICE raid.

New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia pressed its “Know your rights” training and said nearly a dozen new churches had joined its base of 33 member congregations in little more than a week. The Latino group Juntos said it would restart its “community resistance zones,” where South Philadelphia residents work to help immigrant neighbors. People can sign up to join a network to assist one another in case of ICE raids or unlawful police action, the group said.

Juntos is continuing its own “know your rights” training and plans a Feb. 11 seminar for educators on the sanctuary-schools policy.

It is also alerting people that Trump has revived “expedited removal,” a policy that permits the immediate deportation of undocumented people who have been in the United States for less than two years. Juntos is urging those who have been here longer to always carry proof, executive director Erika Guadalupe Nuñez said.

Trump has pledged an unprecedented campaign to deport millions of undocumented immigrants across the country, putting at risk an estimated 47,000 people in Philadelphia, 153,000 statewide, and an additional 440,000 in New Jersey.

Most Americans want them removed.

A recent poll by Ipsos and the New York Times showed that 63% support removing undocumented immigrants who entered the country during the last four years, and 55% said they favor deporting all those who have no legal permission to be here.

Experts say that mass deportation would require billions of dollars to dramatically expand the nation’s immigrant enforcement and detention system, and that what is currently in place could never handle the load. ICE employs about 20,000 personnel in the United States and around the world — about half the number of the FBI — and operates under an $8 billion budget, according to the agency.

Last week in the Italian Market, an undocumented Mexican man who has spent decades in the United States went to work as usual, saying he was ready for whatever fate awaited.

“We can’t stay at home with our arms crossed,” said the man, who gave his first name as Armando. “We are here to work, no matter how scared we feel.”

He came to Philadelphia as a teenager, but after decades of filing legal paperwork, and raising three U.S.-citizen children with his citizen wife, he is barely closer to obtaining permanent residency.

“I wish the president could see that we are not all bad people,” said Armando, 34, pulling his sweatshirt hood tight as he sorted fruit and vegetables in the cold. “We are not all thieves, we are not murderers. We are just normal people that work their hardest to have a better life for our kids.”

His children are teenagers, the youngest 13, and while it would be terrible to be separated, Armando said, he will not come back to the U.S. if he is arrested and deported. Nor will he ask his wife and children to give up their American life and go with him.

“I will have to be on my own,” he said, “and be their dad from a distance.”

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.