HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s next governor will shape the commonwealth’s ongoing response to the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportation, as well as a slew of other immigration issues.
The two major party candidates for the office have starkly different approaches.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat seeking a second term, has publicly criticized ICE tactics. He vowed to use “every tool” to stop the agency’s plans to convert two large, vacant warehouses into mass detention centers. After his administration cited environmental laws to bar federal officials from carrying out their conversion plan, ICE abandoned the idea.
Republican candidate Stacy Garrity, the state Treasurer, has said Pennsylvanians and public officials should cooperate with ICE. She did not take a definitive stance on ICE’s warehouse detention plans, and criticized Shapiro’s vocal opposition to the facilities as political “posturing.”
As the Trump administration has continued to pour historic investment into ICE, the agency’s presence in Pennsylvania has increased. Since December 2024, 140 local governments have agreed to 287(g) partnerships, in which they collaborate with federal immigration officials. That’s the fourth most in the country, behind only Florida, Texas, and Missouri.
The federal government establishes immigration law, but governors can influence enforcement in their states.
Those who oppose the Trump administration’s policies can champion state budget-line items that allocate money to legal counsel for anyone facing deportation, establish commissions aimed at protecting immigrants and their personal information, and join or file lawsuits against the federal government. Plus, they can ban state and executive law enforcement from honoring detainers, which are requests from ICE to hold a person for up to 48 extra hours past their normal release time.
The state’s chief executive can also use environmental and zoning laws to block infrastructure they oppose, as Shapiro did with ICE’s planned warehouses.
Governors who back the administration can work closely with federal officials to build detention centers, push for more funding for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, order state agencies to freeze new H1-B visa petitions, and transport migrants to Democratic-controlled areas.
Governors of all political persuasions can sign or veto relevant laws.
Here’s a look at what Garrity and Shapiro have said on key immigration issues.
Cooperating with ICE
Shapiro has condemned federal immigration policies and taken tangible steps to make it harder for ICE to operate in Pennsylvania — though the ACLU has pushed him to do more.
Garrity declined to answer Spotlight PA’s specific questions about how the state should interact with ICE, but called the Biden administration’s immigration policies “dangerous and irresponsible” and said Trump had secured the southern border. She has previously said Pennsylvanians and officials should “cooperate” with ICE, and in a statement her campaign said the commonwealth “needs a governor who will work with the federal government, not sue it.”
State and local collaboration with ICE took on particular prominence after the agency killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. At the time, Shapiro answered questions at a book signing event for his memoir, saying his administration does not cooperate with immigration officials.
“We do not do ICE’s work for them here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said, according to the Capital-Star. “Our state police [don’t] ask for people’s status and we do not share any of that information with the federal government.”
The administration published guidance laying out people’s rights if they are stopped by ICE in public or visited at their homes. And a Pennsylvania State Police policy from 2022 — before Shapiro took office — says troopers should not search or arrest people based on immigration status, citizenship, or nationality. State Police are also not allowed to arrest or detain someone based on an ICE administrative warrant, only a judicial warrant.
“PSP does not and will not make operational decisions based on ICE priorities,” the Shapiro administration said in a January letter to Pennsylvania community leaders.
Legal experts told Spotlight PA in February that the State Police’s four-year-old policy could be more definitive, and has the potential to open the door for troopers to inform ICE operations.
The policy allows State Police to communicate directly with federal immigration officials about a criminal “immigration warrant.” Additionally, if a trooper learns in the course of their job that a person is a foreign national, they may provide that information to ICE, provided they submit an internal report documenting the sharing.
(The Shapiro administration argued this is rare, telling Spotlight PA that in 2025 there were 50 instances of State Police officers contacting ICE after encounters with foreign nationals; troopers conduct hundreds of thousands of traffic stops annually.)
Advocacy groups like the ACLU have called on Shapiro’s administration to stop sharing state-managed data through the Pennsylvania Justice Network (JNET), an intergovernmental database that contains court records and criminal histories. Another state database used by law enforcement, the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Assistance Network, also contains information about Pennsylvanians’ criminal histories, as well as driver’s licenses.
“The governor could cut off unrestricted ICE access to these databases today and force ICE to get a judicial warrant every time the agency wants to use these tools,” wrote ACLU Advocacy and Policy Strategist Alex Domingos in July.
A 2024 report from the ACLU identified 16 instances over the previous 8 years in which ICE used JNET to identify people for arrests. For one arrest in 2020, ICE used JNET to search for the photo of a person scheduled for a probation appointment in Lehigh County.
The Shapiro administration said in a statement that “outside agencies do not have unfettered access to state databases,” but that it is “currently reviewing how ICE, CBP, and other federal government agencies can access our systems.”
When an outside law enforcement agency uses the databases, the statement said, Pennsylvania logs and tracks the request. Agencies can’t search for people based on immigration status, race, ethnicity, or nationality because the databases do not “categorically maintain information about immigration status or country of origin.”
The governor’s office also pointed out that ICE does not need state databases to access information about immigrants in Pennsylvania, so restricting the agency’s use of state databases would not prevent federal agents from tracking a person via national databases.
While Garrity didn’t respond to specific questions about whether and how she would cooperate with ICE as governor, she said Shapiro supported former President Joe Biden’s “failed immigration policies.”
“Thankfully, the Trump Administration reversed those dangerous and irresponsible policies, and our border is finally secure, but the pain remains,” a spokesperson for Garrity told Spotlight PA over email. “As a result of those Shapiro-endorsed policies, thousands of Pennsylvanians lost their lives to fentanyl overdose or were victims of other crimes.”
In the January appearance at which Garrity said it is “best to cooperate” with ICE, she also said that her time as an Army officer gave her “a different perspective” and that the best approach to the then-ongoing conflict in Minnesota was to “cooperate and take down the rhetoric,” according to The Inquirer.
Detention centers
The number of people arrested and then detained in Pennsylvania surged from 276 in January 2025 to 1,150 in July 2026, according to the Deportation Data Project, a University of California initiative that aggregates immigration enforcement datasets.
As detention rates have increased, advocates have called for ICE facilities in the state to be shut down. This includes Moshannon Valley Processing Center, the largest immigration detention facility in the Northeast.
During this time, Shapiro has worked to limit ICE detention centers in the commonwealth, and Garrity has criticized that response.
Moshannon has long faced allegations of poor medical care, substandard food quality, and abuse. A 2024 Temple University report concluded people detained there were subject to “punitive, inhumane, and dangerous conditions.” In June, Shapiro called for an independent inspection of the facility after Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials were denied entry and were told “they had no authority to conduct an inspection and would never be permitted to enter the facility at any time,” the Shapiro administration said.
Since then, DOC officials haven’t attempted another inspection. The Shapiro administration “continues to call for a full, thorough, and independent inspection of the Moshannon facility,” it said in a statement.
Along with Moshannon, ICE has agreements to use jails in Clinton, Erie, Franklin, and Pike Counties, which raked in more than $21 million for detention in 2024 and 2025.
In January, ICE purchased warehouses in Berks and Schuylkill Counties without sharing how it planned to use them. It wasn’t until February that county commissioners confirmed the agency planned to flip them into detention centers.
On Feb. 12, Shapiro wrote a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem warning that ICE would not receive the required state permits for water and sewage systems if the agency moved forward. Pennsylvania was one of almost a dozen states that fought to stop ICE from purchasing and using empty warehouses for immigration detention, whether through lawsuits or public pressure.
On March 6, the Department of Environmental Protection issued five administrative orders, two to the Department of Homeland Security and three to local authorities. The orders prevented water and sewage from being supplied to the warehouses and the building from being occupied until the Department of Homeland Security showed compliance with federal and state environmental laws.
“My Administration stood with local leaders and residents, enforced Pennsylvania law, and worked across agencies to protect people from being held in these warehouses and to protect the surrounding communities,” Shapiro said after ICE pulled out of the warehouses.
Advocates have also called on the Shapiro administration to shut down Abraxas Academy in Berks County, which operates partly as a detention facility for children. Abraxas has also faced allegations of abuse and neglect.
The Shapiro administration said in a statement that the state Department of Human Services investigates credible complaints. Pennsylvania officials visit the facility weekly and regularly meet with immigration advocates, the administration said, but added that the state has no role in the decision to place noncitizen children at Abraxas.
A spokesperson added that if an emergency removal order was filed against the facility, noncitizen children would be transferred into the custody of the federal government.
The state Department of Human Services “remains committed to keeping all children in Pennsylvania safe and will remain onsite at Abraxas to ensure these youth are being cared for under our high standards,” the Shapiro administration said over email.
Garrity didn’t respond to questions about detention centers in the state but previously said that Shapiro was “grandstanding” by opposing new ICE facilities. She called the rejection of facilities a “disservice to the seriousness of the issue at hand.”
“Pennsylvanians deserve a governor who will put their security and their safety first, and a governor who will review issues with the seriousness that they deserve and not follow the political winds as their guide,” Garrity said in a February Facebook post.
Commercial driver’s licenses
Last year, Shapiro’s administration faced federal scrutiny after ICE arrested an Uzbek national with alleged terrorist ties. The man, Akhror Bozorov, worked as a truck driver and had received his commercial driver’s license in Pennsylvania. The Trump administration blamed “Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania” for issuing it.
Shapiro responded that PennDOT relies on a federal database to check the status of noncitizen drivers, and that Bozorov had not been flagged there as a potential risk.
The Trump administration threatened to withhold nearly $75 million from Pennsylvania if it did not immediately revoke what it claimed were illegally issued CDLs to immigrants. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also conducted an investigation into PennDOT’s CDL program and found that it has issued “non-domiciled CDLs that extend beyond the expiration of drivers' lawful presence in the United States.”
Bozorov’s arrest and FMCSA’s findings drew attention from Republican state lawmakers. They convened a Pennsylvania Senate panel to examine the process for granting trucking licenses and to identify potential loopholes that could be closed with legislation.
Following a federal directive, Pennsylvania’s transportation department paused issuing commercial driver’s licenses to noncitizens who have work permits or specific work visas.
Shapiro supported legislation to strengthen CDL guardrails. In August, he signed into law a Republican-backed bill that cracks down on unlicensed CDL schools.
The administration, however, opposes the federal government's attempts to access Pennsylvania commercial driver records. Shapiro joined a coalition of 21 state governors suing the U.S. Department of Transportation for demanding personal records from a federal database of commercial drivers.
Garrity’s campaign did not respond to Spotlight PA’s questions on what specific policy changes she would support to strengthen CDL requirements.
However, Garrity has been an outspoken critic of the state’s CDL program under Shapiro. In a recent campaign video she said he had allowed “unqualified, illegally present drivers” to hold licenses.
“This isn't about immigration talking points. This is about whether Harrisburg can be trusted to run a basic licensing system, and right now it can’t,” Garrity said.
Last November, she called for “a full investigation into the issuance of a Pennsylvania CDL to suspected terrorist Akhor [sic] Bozorov under the Shapiro Administration.” And in an August interview with a conservative radio host, Garrity criticized PennDOT for administering CDL exams in multiple languages, and the governor’s administration for not sharing information about Pennsylvania CDL drivers with the Trump administration.
“To me, that's crazy. If people are supposed to be able to speak English for these CDLs, that's a huge issue,” Garrity said.
PennDOT offers written, knowledge tests in multiple languages, but the three-part skills test is administered in English, as required by federal regulations.
Pennsylvania’s agricultural workers
Though experts say the Trump administration isn’t focusing its raids on farms recently, laborers across the country have reported work disruptions and pervasive fear in the industry.
Pennsylvania is no exception. Lawmakers and leaders in the agriculture sector have warned that increased immigration enforcement at farms could lead to worker shortages and disrupt the state’s food supply.
About 7.5% of the 60,475 workers hired by Pennsylvania farms in 2022 were migrants, according to the most recent USDA data. A significant portion of those workers, almost 30%, were employed in Adams County’s fruit belt.
In a statement, the Shapiro administration said it “has heard from farmers across the Commonwealth about the hardships they are facing as a result of the Trump Administration’s cruel and chaotic policies.”
Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said he supports programs like H-2A visas, which allow immigrants to come to the United States to work seasonal farm jobs. Redding also stressed the need for federal reforms that expand seasonal farm work to year-round, and make it easier for businesses to participate in the program. (The Trump administration has also supported overhauling H-2A visas.)
Shapiro signed legislation in February 2025 that allows permanent legal residents to become certified poultry technicians after completing a state-administered training course.
Garrity has made support for farmers and Pennsylvania’s agriculture industry a central tenet of her campaign. But she did not respond to questions about how immigration policies could affect farms, and has not addressed the issue publicly.
She has, however, said she supports prohibiting foreign entities that pose a threat to the U.S. from purchasing Pennsylvania farmland.