ICE, immigration and local response

Reporting on the reach and impact of immigration enforcement in Pittsburgh and across Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Allegheny County Council is set to consider a bill that would widely prohibit county employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. But council members said during a committee meeting Thursday that they are largely in the dark as to how much interaction county employees currently have with ICE and other federal agencies. 

With scheduled votes looming later this month, council members mulled ways to get better information from county agencies. One member, Alex Rose, said “we have not been getting very straight answers” from various parts of county government.

Rose asked the council’s chief of staff how to exercise subpoena power to get information. Members discussed accessing security camera footage from the courthouse to see if ICE agents have been present and whether county law enforcement has interacted with them.

“I think there is a real need to talk about it in specific terms as opposed to abstract terms,” before voting on the bill, said Councilor DeWitt Walton. 

Suzanne Filiaggi, council’s only Republican member, said she wants an estimate from the county Human Services director of how much of the department’s federal funding could be put in jeopardy if the bill passes. President Donald Trump has threatened repeatedly to cut off federal funding from cities and counties that are designated as “sanctuary cities.”

The bill, introduced earlier this month, prohibits county employees from a number of actions, unless a state or federal law says otherwise, including:

• Inquiring as to a resident’s immigration status
• Retaining citizenship information provided on county documents for more than 60 days
• Entering into a contract with federal authorities to access county data to support immigration enforcement
• Detaining a person for no legal reason other than a federal immigration detainer request
• Assisting ICE or border patrol “in any capacity” with enforcement operations.

The county’s employees include about 300 police officers, plus scores of sheriff’s deputies and detectives under the district attorney, as well as a vast Human Services workforce that interacts with and collects data on some of the county’s most vulnerable populations.

The bill was sent to the Committee on Public Safety, which met Thursday to discuss the need for more information. The committee is scheduled to meet again Feb. 19 to vote on the bill, after which it would receive a final vote from the full council. 

Members disagreed over whether next week’s committee vote can take place if county departments do not provide the requested information ahead of time. One member, Bethany Hallam, said she thinks the vote should occur next week no matter what.

“I don’t need to see anything to want to make sure that the county’s not cooperating with ICE,” Hallam said.

Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.

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Allegheny County Council says it doesn’t know how much county employees interact with ICE

by Charlie Wolfson, Pittsburgh's Public Source
February 12, 2026

<h1>Allegheny County Council says it doesn’t know how much county employees interact with ICE</h1> <p class="byline">by Charlie Wolfson, Pittsburgh's Public Source <br />February 12, 2026</p> <p>Allegheny County Council is set to consider a bill that would widely prohibit county employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. But council members said during a committee meeting Thursday that they are largely in the dark as to how much interaction county employees currently have with ICE and other federal agencies.&nbsp;</p> <p>With scheduled votes looming later this month, council members mulled ways to get better information from county agencies. One member, Alex Rose, said “we have not been getting very straight answers” from various parts of county government.</p> <p>Rose asked the council’s chief of staff how to exercise subpoena power to get information. Members discussed accessing security camera footage from the courthouse to see if ICE agents have been present and whether county law enforcement has interacted with them.</p> <p>“I think there is a real need to talk about it in specific terms as opposed to abstract terms,” before voting on the bill, said Councilor DeWitt Walton.&nbsp;</p> <p>Suzanne Filiaggi, council’s only Republican member, said she wants an estimate from the county Human Services director of how much of the department’s federal funding could be put in jeopardy if the bill passes. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2026/01/17/nx-s1-5679562/trump-sanctuary-cities-ice-immigration">President Donald Trump has threatened repeatedly to cut off federal funding</a> from cities and counties that are designated as “sanctuary cities.”</p> <p>The bill, introduced earlier this month, prohibits county employees from a number of actions, unless a state or federal law says otherwise, including:</p> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Inquiring as to a resident’s immigration status</li> <li>Retaining citizenship information provided on county documents for more than 60 days</li> <li>Entering into a contract with federal authorities to access county data to support immigration enforcement</li> <li>Detaining a person for no legal reason other than a federal immigration detainer request</li> <li>Assisting ICE or border patrol “in any capacity” with enforcement operations.</li> </ul> <p>The county’s employees include about 300 police officers, plus scores of sheriff’s deputies and detectives under the district attorney, as well as a vast Human Services workforce that interacts with and collects data on some of the county’s most vulnerable populations.</p> <p>The bill was sent to the Committee on Public Safety, which met Thursday to discuss the need for more information. The committee is scheduled to meet again Feb. 19 to vote on the bill, after which it would receive a final vote from the full council.&nbsp;</p> <p>Members disagreed over whether next week’s committee vote can take place if county departments do not provide the requested information ahead of time. One member, Bethany Hallam, said she thinks the vote should occur next week no matter what.</p> <p>“I don’t need to see anything to want to make sure that the county’s not cooperating with ICE,” Hallam said.</p> <p><em>Charlie Wolfson is the local government reporter for Pittsburgh’s Public Source. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.</em></p> <p>This &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.publicsource.org/allegheny-county-council-legislation-ban-ice-cooperation/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; first appeared on &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://www.publicsource.org&quot;&gt;Pittsburgh&#039;s Public Source&lt;/a&gt; and is republished here under a &lt;a target=&quot;_blank&quot; href=&quot;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/&quot;&gt;Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i0.wp.com/www.publicsource.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/cropped-ps_circle_favicon_blue.png?resize=150%2C150&amp;amp;ssl=1&quot; style=&quot;width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;&quot;&gt;</p> &lt;img id=&quot;republication-tracker-tool-source&quot; src=&quot;https://www.publicsource.org/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=1329421&amp;amp;ga4=G-CCLXQK5C14&quot; style=&quot;width:1px;height:1px;&quot;&gt;&lt;script&gt; PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: &quot;https://www.publicsource.org/allegheny-county-council-legislation-ban-ice-cooperation/&quot;, urlref: window.location.href }); } } &lt;/script&gt; &lt;script id=&quot;parsely-cfg&quot; src=&quot;//cdn.parsely.com/keys/publicsource.org/p.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;

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