PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh City Council is considering legislation to ban cooperation with federal immigration operations.
This comes after some high-profile arrests in the city and a debate over the role of city police officers in all of this.
The mayor has said Pittsburgh police officers will not assist federal ICE agents, but some council members say they want to make that, along with some other spoken policies, crystal clear. To do this, they introduced legislation to put it all in the books.
“We’ve seen across the country and here in Pittsburgh, just really shocking behavior by ICE officers,” Council member Barb Warwick said.
Council member Warwick, along with Deb Gross and Erika Strassburger, are sponsoring the bill that designates city-owned properties like parks and rec centers as safe community places.
ICE agents would be banned from all nonpublic areas in those safe places.
We want to make sure every resident who lives in the city of Pittsburgh feels safe,” Warwick said.
While the mayor has made it clear that Pittsburgh police won’t assist with ICE operations, the legislation also prohibits the city from entering immigration enforcement agreements with the federal government.
We have met with the chief. His stance, as ours is, we are not going to cooperate with ICE,” O’Connor said.
Warwick says the council just wants to have it in writing.
“The real heart of it is codifying the non-cooperation that has already been made very clear by Mayor O’Connor, by Police Chief Lando and we are really just making that, and it’s time for city council to set that in stone,” Warwick said.
The council will likely debate the proposed legislation next week and then vote on it.
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS
©2026 Cox Media Group