‘We will arrest you’: District attorney, sheriff double down on warnings to arrest ICE agents in Philly

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Philadelphia elected officials are doubling down on last week’s rhetoric against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who violate the law

District Attorney Larry Krasner joined Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal and some city council members in speaking out against the potential for mass ICE raids in the city during a news conference at Salt and Light Church in the city’s Kingsessing neighborhood.

Krasner said ICE agents who break the law in Philadelphia will be arrested.

“We will arrest you. We will put handcuffs on you. We will close those cuffs. We will put you in a cell,” he said. “We will do everything in our power to convict you and we will make sure you serve your entire sentence because Donald Trump has no power whatsoever to pardon you.”

Krasner also defended Bilal, who got national attention last week when she said she would “bring the smoke” against ICE. She doubled down on that statement today.

She said that when someone commits a crime “in the city and the DA charges you, you will be arrested and you will go to jail. That’s the smoke.”

Councilmember Rue Landau said ICE raids can have a chilling effect that will prevent those without documentation from coming forward to testify in criminal cases, especially in cases such as domestic violence where the perpetrator could go free because of a lack of eyewitness testimony.

“If folks are scared to go to court, if they are scared the second they step out of their house to even get to that court hearing, they are in jeopardy,” Landau said. “If going to the hearing and walking outside puts them in harm’s way of ICE agents who are going to jump out of unmarked cars with unmarked vests and not showing their badges, they are going to jump on them, attack them and drag them away. They’re not going to participate in the process.”

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who is the daughter of immigrants, said her concerns with the ICE raids are not only focused on those without documentation.

President Donald Trump’s “secret police executed Renee Good, a mother, an American citizen, in broad daylight,” she said. “We see Trump’s actions for what they really are, a violent attempt to seize power and scare those who disagree with him.”

Gauthier pointed to next week’s commemoration of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and urged those in attendance to implement his nonviolent method of protesting to send a message to Washington, D.C.

“What he would want from our city, I think we all know that he was calling us to fiercely fight for our immigrant neighbors, not remain silent in the face of injustice,” she said.

It’s the second week in a row that a group of Philadelphia’s elected leaders gathered to decry activities related to federal immigration agents.

Last Thursday, Bilal drew national headlines for her criticism of ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fatally shot Good in Minneapolis. Bilal denounced ICE agents for wearing masks and called them “fake law enforcement.”

Krasner dismissed the argument that the ICE officer fired his weapon in self-defense and repeated his pledge to prosecute any federal officers who commit crimes in Philadelphia. “We will charge any ICE agent who tries this nonsense here,” Krasner said last week.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel put out a statement Friday saying the police department was flooded with calls from around the country in response to those comments. Bethel’s statement clarified that Bilal’s office is a separate entity from the police department and does not police the city or conduct criminal investigations.