Public commenters urge Greenville leaders to limit local cooperation with ICE

Two speakers used the council's public-comment period on March 9 to urge Greenville officials to adopt a local policy limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Mike Plundenin asked the council to adopt a Philadelphia-style policy that would bar local agencies from acting as extensions of federal immigration authorities. He said the policy should ban unmarked vehicles or officers concealing their identities when operating in the city and require that officers display badges, and added a list of other restrictions including prohibiting collection or sharing of citizenship or immigration status by city agencies without a judicial warrant.

Carlos Alfonso described personal family experience with immigration enforcement and said aggressive enforcement in neighborhoods scares residents away from interacting with civic institutions. Alfonso told the council that poorly trained agents who do not understand local communities can cause unnecessary harm when they operate without clear identification; he said his family sometimes has been detained and later found to include U.S. citizens, a process he said creates needless trauma and undermines public-safety goals.

Neither public comment was followed by a formal council response or vote. Mayor PJ Conley closed the public-comment period after the registered speakers completed their remarks; council members acknowledged the comments later in their reports but did not propose immediate action on the floor.

The comments are part of an ongoing national and local debate over whether and how municipal governments should set rules for cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. At the meeting, both speakers framed the matter as a public-safety and community-trust issue rather than solely an immigration policy argument.