Facing Trump's mass deportation plans, some sanctuary cities shift their tone
Leaders of several sanctuary cities where officials had prominently rejected Trump’s first-term immigration policies are shifting their tone.
Leaders of several sanctuary cities where officials had prominently rejected Donald Trump’s first-term immigration policies are shifting their tone as he prepares to take office again and carry out his mass deportation plans.
Some local officials have softened on how closely they want their cities to be identified with the “sanctuary city” label and have pledged to work with federal immigration authorities. But others have doubled down on their cities being sanctuaries for undocumented immigrants and reject any notion that they’d cooperate with a Trump administration seeking to deport millions of them.
The mixed approaches of officials in some of the largest and heavily Democratic cities in the U.S. underscore the country’s shifting politics on immigration. While leaders in these cities largely — and often loudly — rejected Trump’s immigration policies when he was last in the White House, some are now willing to work more closely with his administration on a top priority or tamp down their rhetoric.
In Philadelphia, Mayor Cherelle Parker and District Attorney Larry Krasner, both Democrats, seem to have shied away from some of the rhetoric celebrating the city as a sanctuary — as well as the oppositional approach city officials took in the past.
Asked whether he still considered Philadelphia a sanctuary city, Krasner did not directly answer.
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