Council President Kenyatta Johnson says Philadelphia can’t sit out Trump’s immigration fight anymore

Despite Philadelphia being a deep-blue city dominated by Democrats, local officials have been somewhat cautious in how they talk about President Donald Trump’s administration.

That has included the top legislator, City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who has largely taken a measured approach on national politics, opting to convene task forces and hold public hearings rather than go scorched-earth on Trump.

That was until last month, when Johnson, like the rest of the country, watched video footage on the news showing federal immigration enforcement agents bearing down on Minneapolis and fatally shooting two United States citizens.

Johnson said he was horrified by the tactics, and he quickly backed a package of legislation that would limit how immigration enforcement is conducted in Philadelphia.

He said in an interview Friday that he now sees City Council differently: as an “activist body” that is obligated to take legislative action in opposition to the Trump administration.

And Johnson said he questions the purpose of his position if not to stand up for the city’s most vulnerable — and right now, he said, that’s immigrants.

“It’s my responsibility to step up in this space and be more vocal,” he said over lunch in South Philadelphia’s Point Breeze neighborhood, the section of the city where he grew up and still lives. “It’s just the evolution of me really not addressing it from a political standpoint, but from a moral standpoint of advocating and fighting for individuals who really need a voice.”

» READ MORE: Philly ICE legislative package gets a veto-proof majority in Council

That reflects a shift for Johnson, the centrist Democrat who is entering his third year as Council president. He considers himself pro-law enforcement, and he typically takes an understated approach to leadership, preferring to dissent with others privately rather than duke it out in public.

In employing a more assertive approach, Johnson has also over the last several months started to diverge from Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, a close ally.

Parker has carefully avoided attacking Trump and his administration publicly since he took office for his second term more than a year ago. She says often that she is focused on executing on her own agenda, and people close to her say her strategy is aimed at protecting the millions of dollars Philadelphia receives each year in federal aid.

Johnson — who is seen as a potential future mayoral candidate himself — does not criticize Parker’s style.

“The mayor can respond how she chooses to respond,” he said. “For me, it’s a moral issue.”

Larry Ceisler, a public affairs executive and longtime City Hall observer, said he has watched Johnson rise from community activist to lawmaker.

He said the Council president, in his latest evolution, might have calculated that a majority of the 16 other members want the city’s legislative body to take a more active role.

“He is an activist at heart, and he has a tremendous amount of empathy for people,” Ceisler said. “At the same time, he’s a pretty good politician and he can count votes. It’s very difficult for him at this point to push back on the will of his members.”

But Ceisler said that Parker might have more to lose, and that she will “be on the hook for all this if there is retribution from Washington.”

Through the first eight months of the second Trump administration, Johnson largely kept focused on local policymaking.

When a reporter asked Johnson in January 2025 how he saw his role responding to the Trump administration, he noted that he had convened two working groups to study how Trump-backed policies would affect Philadelphia residents.

Other Council members introduced more than a dozen resolutions to condemn the Trump administration’s efforts that they said would harm Philadelphians, like cutting food assistance and prohibiting some diversity-hiring initiatives. One resolution opposed the federal government’s deployment of the National Guard as a crime-fighting measure in major American cities; another said Trump’s cabinet members were wholly unqualified.

Those measures, almost entirely symbolic, were largely spearheaded by progressive members. They passed the overwhelmingly Democratic Council with little debate and not much acknowledgment from the Council president.

But by September, Johnson began to speak up.

He was incensed when word spread that the Trump administration was seeking to alter some content related to slavery on federal properties, including at Independence National Historical Park. The National Park Service was reportedly looking to edit panels at the President’s House Site in Center City that memorialize the nine people whom George Washington enslaved.

Johnson at the time accused Trump of trying to “rewrite American history,” and he quickly allied himself with the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, the group that helped shape the site.

Last month, federal workers removed the exhibit and relocated the panels to the National Constitution Center, where they are in storage. Parker’s administration filed a lawsuit immediately, and the issue remains the only Trump initiative that Parker has vocally opposed over the last year.

“This history is a critical part of our nation’s origins, and it deserves to be seen and heard,” she said in a video posted on social media.

A judge is currently weighing the case.

» READ MORE: Here are the signs the Trump administration removed from Independence National Historical Park

The Council president said he wants the panels returned in time for an expected influx of tourists this year for several major events, including World Cup games and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation.

“It’s shameful that during this celebration of our country, the birthplace of America, here in the city of Philadelphia, we have to deal with a Trump administration trying to whitewash our history,” Johnson said last week.

Over the next five months, Johnson will juggle advocating for the return of the panels as he manages other high-profile local matters. Council must approve a city budget by the end of June, and its members are expected to play a crucial role in the Philadelphia School District’s closure and consolidation plan that will affect dozens of schools.

The “ICE Out” legislation that Johnson has already backed is also expected to be a major undertaking over the coming weeks. The seven bills that make up the package already have support from 15 of Council’s 17 members, which constitutes a veto-proof majority.

City Councilmember Rue Landau, a Democrat who is one of the prime sponsors of the immigration legislation, said Johnson “fully realizes the importance of this moment.”

“His support,” she said, “is a recognition that local government has a pivotal role to play in moments like these.”

Prior to this year, Johnson rarely talked about immigration. He has spent most of his career focused on public safety, gun violence prevention, and quality-of-life issues.

Today, he said, his top priorities include the safety of the nearly quarter of a million immigrants who make up an estimated 15% of the city’s population.

Johnson said he is especially concerned that the Trump administration quietly spent $87 million on warehouse space in Berks County, which records show will be used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bloomberg reported that the building, about 85 miles outside Philadelphia, is one of two dozen across the nation that ICE has identified for conversion into detention centers. ICE purchased another warehouse in Schuylkill County, about 110 miles from Philadelphia.

Together, the two facilities could hold 9,000 beds.

To Johnson, it was like the federal government was saying: “We want to set up shop right in your backyard.”

ICE is already operating in the city. But Johnson said the warehouse purchases are a sign that Philadelphia should prepare for a greater surge of immigration enforcement like the operation in Minneapolis, where more than 3,000 federal agents were deployed and large-scale protests ensued.

Countless Minnesotans have said they were harassed, racially profiled, and unlawfully arrested by ICE agents during the operation this year.

“Who’s to say that won’t happen to any of my constituents that I represent from Liberia? From Sierra Leone? From Cambodia?” Johnson said. “It can happen on any given day here in the city of Philadelphia.”