Jenkintown revises police policy on ICE enforcement following community pushback

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Immigrant rights advocates and community members are pushing back on a new Jenkintown measure that they say allows local police to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents without judicial warrants.

On Sept. 29, the borough council approved a policy that outlined Jenkintown Police Department’s stance on “illegal immigration.” The order states that local police should treat everyone equally, follow anti-bias rules and cannot enforce immigration laws or call ICE on  victims, witnesses, juveniles or if someone is stopped for a traffic violation.

But it also instructs police to notify ICE under certain conditions, including if a person is arrested for a crime and is “believed to be in violation of immigration laws,” or if the police chief directs an officer to notify ICE.

“The illegal immigrations [policy] was just clarifying what the stance is and what our role is in any immigration enforcement, which is we are not involved in any immigration enforcement,” Police Chief Thomas Scott said at the meeting.

Advocates are concerned about some of the policy’s language.

Jasmine Rivera, executive director of Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, said the Jenkintown policy falls short of the “welcoming policies” adopted by other communities that define how local law enforcement should interact with ICE.

Sections of the Jenkintown policy that describe how and when Jenkintown police officers can notify ICE, and how the department will respond to ICE detainer requests, are not in line with welcoming policies elsewhere, she said.

Rivera’s organization has been supporting Montgomery County members who are pushing for the county and all 62 municipalities to pass welcoming resolutions.

“The big, big, big piece around being a welcoming city policy … is that without a judicial warrant, there is no need or reason for local government employees to be using local tax dollars to assist ICE,” she told WHYY News. “And what we see in the Jenkintown policy is still continuing to communicate with shared data and collaborate with ICE without a judicial warrant.”

The existing policy does not mention judicial warrants, Rivera said.

“Additionally, the use of ICE detainers is still allowed,” she said. “Once again, no mention of a judicial warrant. And it’s important to note that we’ve seen several local governments in both Pennsylvania and outside of Pennsylvania open themselves to legal liability when honoring ICE detainers. Detainers are requests, they are not mandatory, and when local government chooses to honor that request, they are the ones held liable.”

Both Scott and Jenkintown Mayor Gabriel Lerman told WHYY News on Thursday that they are working to revise the policy in response to community members’ concerns. They said they do not yet have a timeline for when the policy will be updated.

Lerman said the policy “has things that need to be fixed in it.” He said that although some of the measure’s content is “consistent” with what borough officials discussed as important, there are other elements that “are not in line with those expectations.”

He did not say exactly what will be in the updated policy, but he said it “will reflect … [that] we value everyone’s rights in this community, regardless of their immigration status.”

“The Jenkintown borough Police Department doesn’t have the authority to enforce immigration law. So that’s not something that they would need to be directly involved in. So our community feels that immigrants are important,” Lerman said. “We don’t want to create a policy that makes immigrants feel afraid to come to Jenkintown, whether that’s, you know, to live here or visit here.”

Borough Council Vice President Christian Soltysiak, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, said in a statement that she agrees with Lerman.

“I want immigrants to feel welcome and safe in Jenkintown,” she wrote.

Justin Mixon, a Jenkintown-based immigration attorney, said he was “shocked” when he first read the policy. Mixon said he is concerned for the safety of his clients who live in the borough or travel through it.

“I couldn’t imagine that our little borough would would have a policy like that, because I knew that in Montgomery County, in Pennsylvania, since January, really, there’s been a movement to define the rules to make sure that police aren’t dabbling in immigration enforcement, because it’s not what they’re trained for,” he said. “It’s not what our tax dollars should be paying for.”

Mixon said some of the language could allow racial profiling.

“In this climate, November 2025, you know, with the stories on the news, ICE in the streets, grabbing people just for speaking Spanish,” he said. “So I wanted this to be a safe place, and it has been. It has been from 2017 until now.”

Scott said the general order came about when he was updating a number of police department regulations and realized that there was no policy on “dealing with immigration authorities.” He said the borough is taking feedback from people in and outside of the borough.

“We’re not going to just dismiss this,” he said. “We are a welcoming community. We are not one of these communities that’s going to be actively engaged in trying to not treat everyone with this dignity and respect.”

As local law enforcement, Scott said that the Jenkintown Police Department doesn’t have authority to enforce immigration law. But he said it does have “an obligation” to work with federal, state and other local law enforcement and do “due diligence” to check whether anyone who has committed a crime in Jenkintown has an outstanding warrant for a misdemeanor or felony with another agency.

“If they’re wanted for something else, and there’s a warrant, then we will contact that agency to avail them that we have that person in custody,” Scott said. “Doesn’t matter whether they’re an immigrant or not. It’s all about how we do business as police officers.”

Rivera acknowledged the complexities of immigration law, and said it often is “a lot of new information” for people who aren’t “actively versed” in the topic. She said she applauds the current policy’s language around not sharing information with ICE if immigrants are victims of or witnesses to a crime, if an immigrant is charged with a motor vehicle violation and if they are a juvenile.

“I believe that with more information, with more education, this policy can be improved,” she said. “Those are very clear delineations of the values that we all hold dear. But there’s still just so much more to improve on.”

Mixon said he would be “very happy” if the borough changes the current policy promptly.

“If they made a mistake on Sept. 29 and they voted this thing in and it’s there, it’s on the books,” he said. “The police are supposed to follow these awful rules and dabble in, you know, figuring out who immigrants are and calling ICE and all that. That’s an emergency. That’s a crisis, they should have changed it already …  They just need to fix it.”