For the last year, Elianis Gautier Peraza has been working to influence city governments across Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to pass ordinances restricting federal immigration enforcement.The 38-year-old, who moved to the United States from Puerto Rico in 2018, lives in Forks Township, a small and conservative community. While her township is unlikely to budge, she’s worked with immigrants’ rights advocates and members of her Democratic Socialists of America chapter to focus on cities around the Lehigh Valley.But results have been mixed.When an ICE raid in Bethlehem resulted in 17 people being detained in June, 2025, advocates with the DSA organized to get 17 people to hold a minute of silence during the public comment period there.Maryland ramps up legal action against federal immigration facilitiesWhile the city has released a statement saying it wants immigrants to feel safe, Gautier Peraza said elected officials have declined to take up legislation reining in federal immigration enforcement.A similar push was more successful in Allentown, where a non-cooperation policy was adopted.Easton passed a resolution urging city employees not to aid immigration enforcement, but stopped short of passing legislation that would bar them from doing so.Gautier Peraza is hopeful immigrant advocates like her are building momentum.“People are beginning to wake up,” she said, and noted that some Lehigh County council members, and officials on city council in the region have taken up their cause. “There’s a lot of people out there very engaged.”Since the beginning of 2025, dozens of Pennsylvania cities and counties have considered or passed legislation aimed at limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities or supporting immigrant communities. Elected officials in places like Allentown, Easton, Reading, Upper Darby and Narberth, as well as in counties such as Allegheny, Bucks and Montgomery have all passed some form of legislation or resolution aimed at restricting cooperation with immigration officials or protecting residents.Still others have law enforcement agencies, district attorney’s offices or corrections departments that have agreed to actively cooperate with ICE agents, which means using their employees’ time and available resources to aid in immigration enforcement.But the patchwork is rapidly changing, and the ability of local governments to take action is limited.For many elected leaders, whose purview is generally managing the budget and resources of a single municipality or county, they’re having to learn on the fly what they can and can’t do to restrain or support a federal law enforcement agency better-funded than most of the world’s militaries.“It’s not just municipal government that’s wrestling with this, I think it’s all of us as American citizens,” said John Brenner, executive director of the Pennsylvania Municipal League and the mayor of York from 2002 to 2010. “That’s why you have residents of our communities, whether it’s a city, bureau or township, who are going to their local officials. And I think local officials are trying very diligently to listen to those concerns and try to explain what we can do.”Communities try to find their waySince the Trump administration began its immigration enforcement crackdown, Pennsylvanians like Gautier Peraza have begun to ask their elected officials on the municipal, city and county level what they plan to do if federal immigration agents come to their communities in force.Immigration arrests have surged around the commonwealth. In the first three quarters of 2025, agents arrested 4,800 people, 3.5 times more than they did during the same period in 2024. And nearly 40 percent of those arrested had no criminal histories, according to an analysis by the Capital-Star.As images from larger, targeted operations in cities like Minneapolis, Chicago and Los Angeles go viral, more municipal and county officials have begun to question what they can do to avoid similar scenes at home.Dozens of bills that would govern ICE activity across the commonwealth have failed to make progress in the state legislature, where Democrats control the House and Republicans lead the Senate. For many Pennsylvanians, that means local officials may be the only elected politicians they can effectively lobby to enact legislation governing what federal agents can and can’t do in their communities.And many local officials are feeling the pressure.“What I hear from our members is that they’re concerned that a large number of ICE enforcement agents will be deployed to either their community or nearby communities, and that that will have an impact on what they’ll do,” Brenner said. “If it’s anything like it was out in Minnesota, that presence drains local resources.