"ICE Out" legislation passed by Philadelphia City Council

Philadelphia City Council has passed a series of bills that will limit how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates in the city.

The seven "ICE Out" bills were read in front of a boisterous crowd in the city council chamber Thursday, who held up signs and chanted as each was approved.

The legislation was introduced earlier this year by Councilmembers Rue Landau, a Democrat, and Kendra Brooks, of the Working Families Party.

"With this ICE out legislation, we are doing everything in our city's power to limit ICE activity in Philadelphia and get ICE out of our city," Brooks said in February.

The measures included in the bill package would:

• Ban ICE agents from concealing their identities or wearing face coverings
• Make city property off limits for ICE activity
• Limit Philadelphia Police Department collaboration with ICE through 287(g) contracts
• Put restrictions on how the city can collect and use information and data related to citizenship and immigration status
• Strengthen protections against discrimination based on citizenship and immigration status

The bills now go to Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, who could sign them into law, veto the legislation or let them become law without her signature.  

People both for and against the legislation spoke in front of City Council on Thursday before the votes.

"Undermining ICE will tempt many of these people to come to Philadelphia to live here illegally," Lynn Landis with Philadelphia's Republican Network said. "It is City Council's job, yeah, just a second. It is City Council's job to protect Philadelphians, not illegal aliens."

"When I think of the people I pastor, the African immigrants, the Haitian immigrants, the Jamaican immigrants who live in fear that a knock on the door will take away that ICE could turn their home into a place of terror," the Rev. Gregory Holston, executive director of Just Nation, said. "I'm concerned that we need to do something."

Following the legislation's preliminary approval earlier this month, sources told CBS News Philadelphia that some parts of the proposed laws are on shaky legal ground and lawsuits could be expected.

"When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with us, we must have a more visible presence so we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities," ICE previously said in a statement. "The vilification of ICE must stop."