Montgomery Co. Expands Resources For Immigrants Amid Mass Deportations

NORRISTOWN, PA — Montgomery County is expanding its resources for immigrants in an effort to even out inequalities in access to critical support, they announced this week. The move comes as the county's leading Democratic commissioners have doubled down on rhetoric in support of immigrant populations amid ongoing deportations by President Trump's administration.

The county's new Immigrant Resource Center will help connect residents to key information on civil rights procedures, legal representation, small business opportunities, and more.

"The Immigrant Resource Center was created to ensure that all of our residents, including the 100,000 that are foreign-born, have equal access to their local representatives—no matter how long they’ve been here,” Commissioner Neil K. Makhija said. "There are many ways to make our community inclusive, and one of the most crucial is ensuring civic life and community support are accessible equitably to everyone."

It comes as the county says they will not cooperate with federal requests to have local law enforcement assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in executing mass deportations.

"When traffic stops become de facto immigration checks, we create a subset of residents forced to live further in the shadows," Commissioners Makhija and Jamila Winder wrote in a recent Inquirer opinion piece. "This doesn‘t enhance public safety — it compromises it."

Anti-immigrant rhetoric, they argue, is not based in fact, citing studies from the conservative-leaning Cato Institute that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes.

The new Center's page includes resources in English and Spanish that will help immigrants better understand their rights, navigate the citizenship process, and more. It also provides connections and details to a variety of regional nonprofits working with the immigrant community, including job boards.