Independence Hall, the Rocky statue, the Liberty Bell, and … a 2016 Honda Civic parked in Fishtown?
That odd appendage at the end of the list just became one of Philadelphia’s newest tourist attractions on Google Maps.
How does a silver two-door get minted a must-see site in the birthplace of America?
It gets completely covered in ice.
In photos of the car now seen around the world, a sheet of ice wrapping around the roof and hood of the car extends all the way down to the pavement. Paralyzed windshield wipers propped up perpendicular to the dashboard look like a pair of arms flailing frantically for help as the car suffers a frigid death. Passersby might easily mistake the sight for an ice sculpture of a car rather than a real one.
A screenshot of the frozen car in Fishtown on Google Maps.
The journey from plebeian commuter vehicle to local celebrity has been a source of both humor and headache for 24-year-old Tianna Graham, the car’s owner.
At first she wasn’t terribly worried about the situation.
“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out,” she remembered thinking.
Then the shock wore off.
“Now I’m like, ‘OK, what do I actually do now?’”
The saga starts at the intersection of North Front and East Allen Streets, under the El tracks, where Graham first parked her car on Jan. 23. She knew a major snowstorm was looming, so when she found an open spot near her apartment, she leaped at it.
When they returned, they found the spot still vacant, so Graham parked there again.
A car parked in Fishtown becomes completely encapsulated in ice.
On Wednesday, Graham, a fifth-grade math teacher at Community Academy of Philadelphia, noticed the street she had parked on was cordoned off with caution tape.
She asked a nearby police officer if she should move her car, she said, and he advised her to leave it there.
What happened next, Graham, the city, the people of Philadelphia, and frozen-car fanatics worldwide may never fully know.
On Thursday, the Philadelphia Water Department repaired a leak on a six-inch water main at North Front and East Allen Streets around 2:30 p.m., said department spokesperson Brian Rademaekers.
The department did not receive any reports of water gushing dramatically from the pipe, Rademaekers said. It is not clear if water from the pipe, from the highway overpass, or from another source led the car to become enveloped in ice.
But, when Graham returned from work last Thursday around 3:30 p.m. during what turned out to be a weeklong Arctic freeze and checked on her Honda, she saw it frozen absolutely solid.
A car parked in Fishtown becomes completely encapsulated in ice.
“I was freaking out a little bit,” Graham said. “I was just like, ‘I don’t even know where to start.’”
So she started where many Gen Zers start — on Instagram.
Graham posted the photo on her private Instagram story, asking friends what she should do.
Her first instinct was to try to break apart the ice. So she and her friend came at it with a small shovel and an ice pick but quickly found it a futile effort.
Graham was, however, able to pry open the passenger-side door and look inside.
“There was water everywhere,” she said. “The inside of my car is soaked. The floors are soaked. My seats were soaked. Everything is wet inside.”
On Friday, she was able to turn on the ignition, she said, but had no such luck when she tried again this week.
She filed a claim through her insurance company, Geico, which dispatched a tow truck Monday, she said. It is now awaiting inspection.
A car parked in Fishtown that got covered in ice gets towed.
“It’s really just overall inconvenient,” she said. “I understand that it’s like hilarious and everyone’s loved it, but nobody has been offering any kind of valid help at this point.
“I don’t really know where to go from here,” she said.
As Graham was dealing with the logistics of trying to save the car, the car itself was skyrocketing toward social media stardom.
Photos and videos of it began circulating online. Area residents began posting clips of themselves visiting the car, some even climbing on top of it.
When 23-year-old Abbigail Erbacher came up to Philly to visit her friend on Sunday, the frozen car was quickly added to the day’s itinerary.
The Egg Harbor Township, N.J., resident had seen the videos of the car on TikTok, identified the location with her friend based on landmarks around it, and headed to Fishtown.
“My first thought was, ‘Oh, my god, this is real.’ And then my next was, ‘I feel so bad for her,’” Erbacher said. “It had to have been encased in anywhere from an inch to two inches of ice.”
Her video starts with her screaming upon seeing the car and gently knocking on the frozen solid driver’s-side mirror. The overlaid text: “philadelphias newest monument.”
As of Wednesday the video had 22 million views.
Erbacher was surprised to see her clip become so widely viewed, but was not at all shocked to see the story itself gaining traction.
“I think our generation is so unserious,” she said. “These sort of things feel like the type of things that only happen to our generation.”
Between the political climate and the pandemic, Erbacher said, she and many others Gen Zers feel particularly prone to bad luck.
“I think we definitely feel a bit victimized,” she said. “And so when things reinforce that, we’re like, ‘OK, cool. That would only happen to us, so we just kind of got to go with it.’”
And Graham did, indeed, go with it. She started documenting the journey on TikTok herself late last week beginning with a simple video featuring the camera panning around the frozen car to the Rob49 song “WTHELLY.” That post got 8 million views.
and there she goes! yes it is totaled btw! if you feel inclined to help, go fund me in bio! no i’m not begging for money, but people have been asking how they can help and anything is appreciated to help w rental (which is not covered) and the difference to a new car! btw yes, the inside it soaked. yes, it did start but now will not (even after a jump)
On Monday, she posted two more videos: one of her girlfriend and friend gingerly cracking the ice off the car with hammers to the No Doubt song “Just a Girl,” which was viewed more than 27 million times, and another of the car getting towed away to the song “Vroom Vroom” by Charli XCX that was watched more than 12 million times.
“Bye ice car!” she wrote over the video of its immobilized tires cutting through hefty chunks of ice as the tow truck dragged it across the street.
Sandra Schultz Newman, 87, of Gladwyne, Montgomery County, the first woman elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the first female assistant district attorney in Montgomery County, the first woman named to the board of directors of the old Royal Bank of Pennsylvania, longtime private practice attorney, role model, mentor, and colorful “Philadelphia icon,” died Monday, Feb. 2. Her family did not disclose the cause of her death.
Reared in South Philadelphia and Wynnefield, and a graduate of Drexel, Temple, and Villanova Universities, Justice Newman, a Republican, was elected to the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in November 1993 and to the state Supreme Court in 1995. She won a second 10-year term on the Supreme Court in 2005 but, having to step down in just two years due to a mandatory retirement age, left at the end of 2006.
“I love the court. I love my colleagues. The collegiality was great, and I’m going to miss that,” Justice Newman told The Inquirer. “But I just felt like I wanted to move on.”
During her 10-year tenure, Justice Newman was chair of the Supreme Court’s Judicial Council Committee on Judicial Safety and Preparedness and the court’s liaison to Common Pleas Court and Municipal Court in Philadelphia. She ruled on hundreds of issues and wrote opinions about all kinds of landmark cases, from environmental protections to school funding to clergy privilege to the Gary Heidnik and John E. du Pont murder cases.
She had worked in criminal and family law and handled many divorce and custody cases as a private attorney in the 1980s, and was praised later by court observers for her attention to Philadelphia Family Court matters. Lynn Marks, of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, told the Daily News in 2005: “She’s been a wonderful justice, and she’s made herself accessible to the public interest community.”
In 2025, her colleagues on the Supreme Court named their Philadelphia courtroom after her. “She was a remarkable jurist, public servant, and trailblazer for women, whose work and impact will leave a legacy beyond the bench,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Debra Todd said in a tribute.
News outlets across the state covered Justice Newman’s election to the Supreme Court as she campaigned in 1995, and she easily collected more votes in the Nov. 7 election than any of the other three candidates, all men. She told the Daily Item in Sunbury, Pa., in September ’95: “I don’t think anyone should be elected solely on their gender. But I don’t think anybody should not be elected because of it, either.”
Justice Newman touted her collegiality and feminine life experience during the 1995 campaign and told The Inquirer she wanted to be a “role model for everyone in Pennsylvania.” She told the Press Enterprise in Bloomsburg, Pa.: “I think I can bring a sensitivity and understanding on many issues, such as criminal issues like rape. I have a deep sense for the need of a safe society.”
Justice Newman speaks in 2025 during the ceremony in which the Supreme Court named its Philadelphia courtroom after her.
After her election, Inquirer staff writer Robert Zausnersaid: “Wealthy yet down-to-earth, Newman talked often during the campaign about her grandchildren and insisted that people ‘call me Sandy’ once she was outside her courtroom.”
Former Gov. Tom Ridge called Justice Newman a “pioneering legal giant” and said she “inspired generations of legal professionals across the Commonwealth.” Ezra Wohlgelernter, chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, noted her “pathbreaking career” and “valuable service to our city and to the Commonwealth” in a tribute.
Either “the first” or “the only” in many of her professional pursuits, Justice Newman was called a “Philadelphia icon,” “a force of nature,” and a “beautiful and radiant star” in online tributes. She flirted with running for political office several times and was colorfully profiled in Philadelphia Magazine in 1988. In that story, writer Lisa DePaulo called her “part woman/part tigress.”
She famously endorsed a controversial cosmetic product on TV in 2006 and attended many galas and charity auctions, and her name appeared in the society and opinion pages nearly as often as the news section. In a 1983 feature, Inquirer writer Mary Walton described Justice Newman as “beautiful … with tousled auburn hair and a slender figure that she liked to cloak in expensive designer clothes.”
Justice Newman was the only woman on the state Supreme Court in 2002.
A friend said online she was “irrepressible in an Auntie Mame sort of way.” Another said: “The world has become a little quieter.”
Justice Newman served as the first female assistant district attorney in Montgomery County from 1972 to 1974 and was an in-demand, high-profile partner at Astor, Weiss & Newman from 1974 to 1993. She returned to private practice in 2006 and handled mostly alternative dispute resolution cases until recently.
She told the Press Enterprise in 1995 that colleagues in the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office had adorned her desk with a green plant on her first day in 1972. “It was marijuana from the evidence room,” she said.
She wrote papers and book chapters about trial practice, death penalty statutes, and the electoral system in Pennsylvania. She spoke about all kinds of legal topics at seminars, conferences, and other events.
This photo of Justice Newman, her husband, Julius, and grandson Shane was taken for The Inquirer after she won on Election Day in 1995.
She cofounded what is now the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law in 2006, was a trustee for Drexel’s College of Medicine, and received dozens of service and achievement awards from Drexel, Villanova, the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Bar Associations, the Women’s Bar Association of Western Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Association for Justice, and other groups.
She was the president of boards, chair of many committees, and active with the National Association of Women Justices, the Juvenile Law Center, the American Law Institute, and other organizations. She taught law classes at the Delaware Law School of Widener University in 1984 and ’85, and at Villanova from 1986 to 1993.
She earned a bachelor’s degree at Drexel in 1959 and a master’s degree in hearing science at Temple in 1969. In 1972, she was one of a handful of women to get a law degree at what is now Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law. Later, she received four honorary doctorate degrees and was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvaniaby then-Gov. Ridge in 1996.
Outside the courtroom, Justice Newman volunteered for charities and legal associations. She was part of a group that tried unsuccessfully to buy the Eagles from then-owner Leonard Tose in 1983, and she was criticized in the early 2000s for her financial involvement in a bungled long-running effort to fund a new Family Court Building in Philadelphia.
Justice Newman chats with philanthropists and business leaders Raymond G. Perelman (middle) and Joseph Neubauer at the gala opening of the new Barnes Museum in 2018.
“Justice Newman filled every room she entered with her strength, energy, and exuberance for life and for the law,” Supreme Court Justice P. Kevin Brobson said in a tribute. “She lived with intention and spent her entire career focused on creating and expanding opportunities for future generations of legal professionals, especially women.”
Sandra Schultz was born Nov. 4, 1938. She graduated from Overbook High School and married cosmetic surgeon Julius Newman in 1959. They had sons Jonathan and David, and lived in Wynnefield, Penn Valley, and Gladwyne.
Her husband and son David died earlier. She married fellow lawyer Martin Weinberg in 2007, and their union was annulled 11 months later.
Justice Schultz was a longtime fashionista. She reveled in shopping trips to New York, and DePaulo reported in 1988 that her closet in Gladwyne was 800 square feet. She was also funny, generous, and kind, friends said.
Justice Newman dances with her grandson on Election Day in 1995. This photo appeared in the Daily News.
She funded several college scholarships, collected art, owned racehorses, cooked memorable matzo balls, enjoyed giving gifts, and tried to have dinner every night with her family. Sometimes, DePaulo reported, in the 1970s, she took her young sons to her law school classes at Villanova.
“Despite how busy she was, her family was always her priority,” said her brother, Mark. “She was also a true bipartisan who fought for equal rights and preserving our democratic institutions.”
In 2003, she was asked by Richard G. Freeman, editor in chief of the Philadelphia Lawyer, to describe her judicial decision-making process. She said: “There are beliefs that you have to put aside. One of the wonderful things about being on our court is that you can make new law where your beliefs fit into the law.”
In addition to her son Jonathan and brother, Justice Newman is survived by four grandchildren and other relatives. A grandson died earlier.
This photo of Justice Newman appeared in The Inquirer in 1983.
Services are private.
Donations in her name may be made to the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, 733 Third Ave., Suite 510, New York, N.Y. 10017.
Correction: One of the communities that Justice Schultz grew up in has been corrected.
Think you know your news? There’s only one way to find out. Welcome back to our weekly News Quiz — a quick way to see if your reading habits are sinking in and to put your local news knowledge to the test.
Question 1 of 10
Former Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams' tenure imploded as he was prosecuted on federal corruption charges nearly a decade ago. What is he up to now?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The role’s expectations are modest. Williams offers spiritual counseling and religious programming to the 600 or so prisoners held at Riverside Correctional Facility. It is part-time and pays about $21 per hour.
Question 2 of 10
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this week, indicating six more weeks of winter are yet to come. That clairvoyant groundhog calls this famed Pennsylvania place home:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The weather-predicting groundhog saw his shadow Monday outside his hole at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney. If you believe such things, that means the entire country — including our snow-covered section of the Northeast — can expect below-average temperatures for the next six weeks.
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Question 3 of 10
Formerly known as Lou Turk's, Delaware County’s lone strip club is changing its name, but keeping its highly anticipated flower sale. What holiday marks the occasion?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The annual Mother’s Day and Easter flower sales outside of the strip club will remain intact, despite the name change to The Carousel Delco. You wouldn’t want to tell your mom you bought her flowers at the Acme, would you?
Question 4 of 10
One South Philly restaurant has a popular cocktail that mimics a beloved style of soup. The soup is:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Chef Thanh Nguyen’s signature pho cocktail at Gabriella’s Vietnam is a many-layered marvel. It’s not like drinking pho broth spiked with vodka. A tiny squirt of Sriracha muddled with fresh culantro and ginger adds a soft orange hue.
Question 5 of 10
After weeks of uncertainty over their potential retirement, which Eagles staff member ultimately decided to return for another season with the team?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Fangio’s decision to stay brings some stability to an Eagles coaching staff that is already in the process of undergoing change. Hours before Fangio's return was official, Stoutland announced that he would be leaving his post as the Eagles offensive line coach after 13 years.
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This Mount Airy ice cream shop previously said it was closing for good, but will be sticking around after all:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Founder Danielle Jowdy announced in December 2024 that she planned to end her 14-year run at the end of 2025. But Liz Yee, a pastry chef at the nearby Catering by Design who also creates desserts for Doho restaurant, also in Mount Airy, plans to reopen Zsa’s on Saturday, Ice Cream for Breakfast Day.
Question 7 of 10
A few months ago, the Philadelphia Art Museum took up its new moniker. But now, it's changing again. The new (?) name is:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The PhAM acronym used in marketing materials will be dropped, and the museum will once again refer to itself in shorthand as the PMA as many Philadelphians long have. Why the retreat? In short, the new name was widely disliked.
Question 8 of 10
This boxing great's former home in Cherry Hill is once again on the market with an asking price of $1.9 million:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
About 300 people have been tasked with manually breaking up ice at crosswalks and streets in residential neighborhoods in Philadelphia following the region's recent stubborn snowfall. What are they called?
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
Mayor Cherelle. L Parker said that the city has tapped into its Future Track Program for snow-removal efforts. The trainees are typically at-risk young adults who are not enrolled in higher education and are unemployed. They get job experience, as well as other services, and they help in beautification projects. In the snow cleanup, Parker said, the trainees cleared more than 1,600 ADA ramps.
Question 10 of 10
Anonymous hackers claimed that a recent data breach compromised data for 1.2 million students, donors, and alumni at the University of Pennsylvania. But the school now says this many people were impacted:
CorrectIncorrect. XX% of other readers got this question right.
The school hired cybersecurity specialists to help investigate the Oct. 31 breach, which accessed systems related to development and alumni activities. A Penn source confirmed Tuesday that fewer than 10 people received notifications that their personal information had been affected.
Your Results
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Seems like you’ve been skimming more than reading there, buddy. There’s always next week.
You’ve read some articles (or made some educated guesses) but we wouldn’t come to you first for our local news recaps. Better luck next week!
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One of the lasting images of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign will be the masks worn by federal immigration agents.
The widespread use of facial coverings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers is among the suite of tactics — agents dressed in plainclothes, wearing little identification, jumping out of unmarked cars to grab people off the street — that have fueled immigration advocates’ use of terms like “kidnappings” and “abductions.”
Now Philadelphia lawmakers appear poised to pass legislation that would ban all officers operating in the city — including local police — from concealing their identitiesby wearing masks or conducting enforcement from unmarked cars.
The question is whether the city can make that rule stick.
Legal hurdles loom for municipalities and states attempting to regulate federal law enforcement. Local jurisdictions are generally prohibited from interfering with basic federal functions, and Trump administration officials say state- and city-level bans violate the constitutional provision that says federal law reigns supreme.
There are also practical concerns about enforcement. Violating the mask ban would be a civil infraction, meaning local police would be tasked with citing other law enforcement officers for covering their faces.
“No doubt this will be challenged,” said Stanley Brand, a distinguished fellow at Penn State Dickinson Law. “This ordinance will be a protracted and complicated legal slog.”
Councilmember Kendra Brooks speaks during a news conference at City Hall to announce a package of bills aimed at pushing back against ICE enforcement on Jan. 27.
Advocates for immigrants say that unmasking ICE agents is a safety issue, and that officers rarely identify themselves when asked, despite being required to carry badges.
Mask use can also spur impersonators, they say. At least four people in Philadelphia have been arrested for impersonating ICE officers in the last year.
“You see these people in your community with guns and vests and masks,” said Desi Bernette, a leader of MILPA, the Movement of Immigrant Leaders in Pennsylvania. “It’s very scary, and it’s not normal.”
Democrats in jurisdictions across America, including Congress and the Pennsylvania General Assembly, have introduced legislation to ban ICE agents from concealing their faces. California is the furthest along in implementing a mask prohibition, and a judge is currently weighing a challenge filed by the Trump administration.
Senate Democrats negotiating a budget deal in Washington have asked for a nationwide ban on ICE agents wearing masks in exchange for their votes to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
And polling shows getting rid of masks is popular. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 61% of Americans believe federal agents should not wear face coverings to conceal their identities while on duty.
ICE officials say agents should have the freedom to conceal their faces while operating in a hyperpartisan political environment.
Last year, ICE head Todd Lyons told CBS News that he was not a proponent of agents wearing masks, though he would allow it. Some officers, he said, have had private information published online, leading to death threats against them and their families.
“They could target [agents’] families,” Fetterman said in an interview on Fox News, “and they are organizing these people to put their names out there.”
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., participates in a debate on June 2, 2025, in Boston.
The Council authors of the Philadelphia bills say they are responding to constituents who are intimidated by ICE’s tactics, and they believe their legislation can withstand a legal challenge.
“Our goal is to make sure that our folks feel safe here in the city,” said City Councilmember Kendra Brooks. “We are here to protect Philadelphians, and if that means we eventually need to go to court, that’s what would need to happen.”
The constitutional limits on unmasking ICE
The bill introduced last week by Brooks and Councilmember Rue Landau is part of a package of seven pieces of legislation aimed at limiting how ICE operates in Philadelphia. The proposals would bar Philadelphia employees from sharing information with ICE and ban the agency from using city property to stage raids.
Fifteen of Council’s 17 members signed on to the package of legislation, meaning a version of it is likely to become law. Passing a bill in City Council requires nine votes, and overriding a mayoral veto takes 12. Mayor Cherelle L. Parker has said her team is reviewing the legislation, which can still be amended before it becomes law.
Anti-ICE activists demonstrate outside U.S. Sen. John Fetterman’s Philadelphia office, Jan. 27, calling for an end to federal immigration enforcement policies.
One of the two members who did not cosponsor the package was Councilmember Mike Driscoll, a Democrat who represents parts of Lower Northeast Philadelphia. He indicated that he had concerns about whether the “ICE Out” legislation would hold up in court.
Brooks said Council members worked with attorneys to ensure the legislation is “within our scope as legislators for this city to make sure that we protect our folks against these federal attacks.”
Brand, of Dickinson Law, said the legislation is a classic example of a conflict between two constitutional pillars: the clause that says federal law is supreme, and the 10th Amendment, which gives states powers that are not delegated to the federal government.
He said there is precedent that the states — or, in this case, cities — cannot interfere with laws enacted by Congress, such as immigration matters.
“If I were betting, I would bet on the federal government,” Brand said.
But there is a gray area, he said, and that includes the fact that no law — or even regulation — says federal law enforcement agents must wear masks.
Kermit Roosevelt, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who is an expert on the Constitution and conflict of laws, said if there is no agency policy, that is “free space” for states and cities to regulate.
Roosevelt said Brooks’ legislation steers clear of other constitutional concerns because it applies to all police officers, not just federal agents.
“If they were trying to regulate only federal agents, the question would be, ‘Why aren’t you doing that to your own police officers?’” he said. “If you single out the federal government, it looks more like you’re trying to interfere with what the federal government is doing.”
Applying the law to local police
Experts say part of the backlash to ICE agents covering their faces is because Americans are not used to it. Local police, sheriff’s deputies, and state troopers all work largely without hiding their faces.
“Seeing law enforcement actions happening with federal agents in masks, that’s extremely jarring,” said Cris Ramon, an immigration consultant based in Washington. “Why are you operating outside of the boundaries of what every other law enforcement agency is doing?”
Protesters march up Eighth Street, toward the immigration offices, during the Philly stands with Minneapolis Ice Out For Good protest at Philadelphia City Hall on Jan. 23.
The Council legislation includes exceptions for officers wearing medical-grade masks, using protective equipment, or working undercover. It also allows facial coverings for religious purposes.
However, the federal government could still raise First Amendment concerns, said Shaakirrah R. Sanders, an associate dean at Penn State Dickinson Law.
The administration, she said, could argue that the city is only trying to regulate law enforcement officers and claim that would be discriminatory.
Sanders said defending the legislation could be “very costly” and the city should consider alternatives that fall more squarely within its authority. She pointed to efforts like New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s announcement that the state would create a database for residents to upload videos of ICE interacting with the public.
“It looks like the city wants to wield big legislative power,” Sanders said. “My alternative is more in the grassroots work, where you are the first ear for your citizens, not the regulator of the federal government.”
About 40 people were arrested after an activist group Thursday evening conducted a demonstration inside a Target store in South Philadelphia to demand that the company take a public stand against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions at the chain’s stores.
More than 100 demonstrators affiliated with No ICE Philly chanted “ICE out of Target now!” and played instruments inside the store near Snyder Avenue and I-95. Some shoppers joined the chanting.
Shortly before 6 p.m., the protesters were given their first warning by police to leave or be arrested. Dozens then left, but a group of 40 or so remained inside, seated on the floor. Around 6:15 p.m., police began making arrests without incident. Three remaining protesters were given citations and allowed to leave, police said.
The zip-tied detainees were led by police out of the store one by one to cheers from other protesters outside.
The demonstration and subsequent arrests did not deter shoppers from going about their business, entering and leaving the store.
A man dressed in a bear costume and wearing an action camera harnessed to his chest showed up and yelled at the activists inside the store, calling them “weirdos.” Police intervened to prevent an escalation.
Rabbi Linda Holtzman, 73, (right) a spokesperson for No ICE Philly, addresses the crowd during a demonstration inside a Target store in South Philadelphia, Feb. 5, 2026.
Benita Dixon, 66, accompanied by her granddaughter, was at the store to buy a Valentine’s Day present for her daughter when the protest broke out.
Dixon’s first reaction was to get a tighter grip on her granddaughter’s hand, but when chanting began, the pair joined in dancing with protesters.
“ICE has been going around killing people in Minnesota, and that’s not right,” Dixon said. “Many of my co-workers are coming into work carrying their passports because they are scared, so I’m glad we are protesting: No ICE in our streets.”
Across the country, protesters — including employees of the company — have been calling for Target to publicly oppose the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, the company’s home state, and deny ICE agents who do not have judicial warrants access to Target stores and parking lots.
Demonstrators from No ICE Philly protesting inside the Target store.
“Target does not have cooperative agreements with any immigration enforcement agency,” a company executive said in a memo to employees on Jan. 22, Business Insider reported.
A day after two ICE agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, where Target is headquartered, then-incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke cosigned a joint statement from the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce with dozens of other executives, “calling for an immediate de-escalation of tensions and for state, local and federal officials to work together to find real solutions.”
Pretti’s Jan. 24 killing in Minneapolis was the second in less than a month. On Jan. 7, an ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good.
A Target spokesperson said in an email that Fiddelke also sent a note to employees saying “the violence and loss of life in our community is incredibly painful” and that “we are doing everything we can to manage what’s in our control, always keeping the safety of our team and guests our top priority.”
Target, founded in 1962, operates 1,989 stores across the United States and generates net revenue of more than $100 billion annually.
The company was hit with a national boycott last year after it rolled back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives to fall in line with the policies of President Donald Trump.
No ICE Philly has led demonstrations against the agency and against the arrests of immigrants outside the city Criminal Justice Center.
Demonstrators from No ICE Philly protesting inside the store.
At the Target in South Philadelphia, Rabbi Linda Holtzman, 73, said the in-store protest is what people must do when neighbors are under attack.
“What ICE is doing, what they have been doing, is horrible, and we stand with the people of Minneapolis,” Holtzman said.
Protesting at the South Philadelphia Target is a way to tell the company that it must stand on the side of the people, Holtzman said.
“Target has become an ally to ICE, letting them come into their stores without a warrant,” Holtzman said. “That’s not the America I grew up in. Is that the country you want?”
Federal judges in Philadelphia have been unusually outspoken in recent weeks about what they call the “illegal” policy by ICE of mandating detention for nearly all undocumented immigrants — and have been sharply critical of the “unsound” arguments by government attorneys seeking to justify the approach.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III has overturned the government’s attempts to detain people in six cases over the last two months, writing in one opinion that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “continues to act contrary to law, to spend taxpayer money needlessly, and to waste the scarce resources of the judiciary.”
And U.S. District Judge Kai N. Scott became the latest jurist to equate the ongoing legal battle with the government to Greek mythology, saying she and her colleagues on the bench have been squaring off with the Justice Department in a manner similar to Heracles’ confrontation with Hydra, the serpentlike monster that grew two heads every time one was chopped off.
Although the region’s federal judges have “unanimously rejected” the government’s attempts to rationalize ICE detention of immigrants “without cause, without notice, and in clear violation” of federal law, Scott wrote, the government has continued to detain people in the same fashion day after day. And after each rejection, she wrote, “at least two more nearly identical” petitions seeking relief pop up on the court’s docket.
“The Court writes today with a newfound and personal appreciation of Heracles’ struggles,” she said.
District Judge Kai N. Scott’s Feb. 4, 2026 memo granting another habeas petition filed by an immigrant, and expressing frustration with the federal government’s arguments.
The judicial rebukes come as immigration authorities have continued sweeping the nation to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. The number of detained immigrants has exploded — as has the number of court petitions from people seeking immediate release, which are known as habeas petitions.
The enlarged legal workload has put a corresponding strain on the nation’s U.S. attorney’s offices, which typically defend ICE’s actions in federal court. Prosecutors from the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, for example, requested an extension in January to handle part of a class-action suit in order to deal with a surge in immigration release petitions.
“This Office continues to handle an unprecedented volume of emergent immigration habeas petitions, which we continue to prioritize because of the liberty interests at issue,” the letter said.
And in Minnesota this week, a federal prosecutor said she wished the judge would hold her in contempt so she could get some sleep in jail. Julie Le seemed exasperated when the judge pressed her on why the government had been ignoring his release orders.
“What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks,” Le said, according to a court transcript.
The issue at the center of each incident involves ICE’s mandatory detention policy. The policy was rolled out over the summer, and it requires that nearly all undocumented immigrants be held in custody as their cases wind through the country’s backlogged and complex immigration system.
That upended decades of government practice, which typically allowed people who entered the country illegally, but who were otherwise law-abiding, to at least receive a bond hearing and determine if they could remain in the community as their cases moved forward.
Jeanne Ottoson with Cooper River Indivisible attends an Immigrant rights groups rally outside the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to defend the New Jersey state ban on immigration-detention contracts on May 1, 2025.
Some of those detained as a result of the policy have filed habeas petitions, arguing that their detention violates the Constitution. And in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s federal court, judges have granted challenges to the policy at a near-universal rate.
Still, those decisions have been made on a case-by-case basis, with relief extended only to one petitioner at a time. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is based in New Orleans and is considered one of the country’s most conservative jurisdictions, heard a broader challenge to the policy. A divided 2-1 court ruled Friday that ICE can detain undocumented immigrants the agency is seeking to deport, even those who have been in the country for years.
The ruling covers only federal courts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and many legal experts expects the matter to ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
In Philadelphia, Scott’s expression of frustration came this week in response to the release petition of Franklin Leonidas Once Chillogallo. The 24-year-old from Ecuador came to the United States in 2020, lives with his partner and his 6-month-old twin daughters in Upper Darby, and works as a construction worker. He has no criminal history.
After ICE arrested Once Chillogallo outside his home on Jan. 13, he was held in the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center without the opportunity for an immigration judge to review his case.
Just as happened in the previous 90 cases, Scott rejected the argument that Once Chillogallo, an immigrant who has been in the country for years, was subject to the same bond rules as those who were caught entering without permission. The judge ordered Once Chillogallo’s release, which took place the following day, according to the court docket.
Inside the federal courthouse Thursday, judges held three hearings on arcane legal questions surrounding habeas petitions.
Dozens of other habeas petitions remain pending, court records show. In many that were recently decided, judges used terse or brusque language to point out that the government’s interpretation of the law has been repeatedly rejected.
“Across the board, there is frustration. There is frustration from attorneys. There is frustration from the judges,” said Kimberly Tomczak, an immigration attorney who represented Once Chillogallo. “Nothing seems to be changing on the immigration side in response to the flood of habeas grants across the nation.”
A Pennsylvania law prohibiting employment discrimination against people with criminal convictions has gotten a boost from a federal appeals court.
A three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that regardless of how a prospective employer learned about an applicant’s criminal background, Pennsylvania law prohibits rejecting the application as long as the crime was not related to the job for which they are applying.
The Jan. 28 ruling resolves a dispute in federal cases over the wording of a 1980 law that some employers argued applied only when the criminal information came from official files of state agencies.
The Third Circuitopinion came in the case of Rodney Phath, a Philadelphia resident who in 2023 applied to work as a truck driver at Central Transport’s Montgomery County facility. Phath had experience as a truck driver and held the needed license and credential.
He also had a 2008 criminal conviction for armed robbery, and had served six years in prison.
Phath told the Michigan-based trucking company during an interview about the conviction and was immediately rejected from the job.
The company didn’t deny that it rejected Phath because of his criminal background. The law prohibits employers using “information collected by criminal justice agencies,” Central Trucking argued, and did not apply because Phath disclosed his conviction himself.
Because the law bans employers from obtaining formal criminal records and using the information in them for hiring decisions,it did not apply when Phath self-disclosed his criminal background, the judge concluded.
Padova wasn’t the first judge to interpret the law literally, as applying only when an official file from a government agency sits on an employer’s desk — or at least in a computer desktop.
A Georgetown Law professor, Brian Wolfman, offered to assist in Phath’s appeal with his students.
The literal interpretation renders the law “meaningless,” the appeal argued, and creates a Catch 22. If an applicant with a criminal record discloses it, they are no longer protected. But if they don’t mention it when asked, they can be rejected for lying in the application process.
“If that’s true the act would have no force at all, and that can’t be right,” Wolfman said in an interview.
Phath won his appeal last week, with Third Circuit Judges Stephanos Bibas, Anthony Joseph Scirica, and D. Brooks Smith finding that the law prohibits prospective employers from using information that is included in a criminal history file regardless of how it came about.
The judge’s opinion could be appealed to an expanded panel of the court, which has the discretion to pick its cases. But if it stands it would be binding precedent in Pennsylvania’s federal court. The case now returns to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where it will head toward trial.
The attorney who represented Central Trucking in the appeal did not respond to a request for comment.
Phath’s lawsuit was filed in federal court because Central Trucking is based out of state. But Pennsylvania employees suing in-state employers won’t have the benefit of the binding ruling, although it can be cited in an effort to convince local judges.
The one in four Philadelphians who have a criminal record also are protected by the city’s Fair Chance Hiring Ordinance, which was updated in the fall.
The ordinance prohibits employers from considering a misdemeanor after four years from an arrest or release from incarceration, and seven years for a felony. Before that time period, it allows rejecting applicants based on the criminal history only if the employer can show a specific record leads to a specific risk related to that specific job.
Jamie Gullen, managing attorney of Community Legal Services’ employment unit, said the Philadelphia ordinance is one of the strongest in the country.
Her unit represents 2,000 people a year who face employment barriers because of a criminal record. The most effective way to prevent this type of discrimination is to seal criminal records, Gullen says.
The Clean Slate Act, which allows people with certain convictions to have their criminal records sealed by filing court petitions, has long waiting periods and doesn’t cover every offense. So Gullen was glad to see an appeals court acknowledge the barriers people with a criminal history face in the job market.
“Fair hiring laws are a really important piece of the puzzle,” the attorney said.
The family of a man who died in a Philadelphia jail last year contends in a lawsuit filed this week that jail staff did not offer him treatment for opioid withdrawal before his death.
Andrew Drury died in an intake cell at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Holmesburg on March 9, 2025. The lawsuit says he was in the cell for 36 hours, despite suffering from opioid withdrawal symptoms.
During that time, the suit says, Drury received no medical care, and jail staff did not alert medical personnel that he was going through withdrawal. Drury had a known opioid addiction and had suffered withdrawal symptoms at the jail in the past, according to the lawsuit. His cause of death was listed as “pending,” the lawsuit said.
Prison officials declined to comment Wednesday. A lawyer for Drury’s family did not return a request for comment. The lawsuit seeks general monetary damages from the city, the jail system, and the state attorney.
Several other families in recent years have sued Philadelphia jails, saying their relatives did not receive adequate medical care for drug-related issues.
In 2024, the family of Carmelo Gabriel Ocasio, 22, accused jail staff of ignoring his cellmate’s pleas for help when Ocasio fell unconscious, overdosed, and died after obtaining fentanyl and benzodiazepines at the jail in 2022.
The family settled with the city for $65,000; further details of the settlement were not made public.
In 2025, the family of Amanda Cahill sued the city, saying she overdosed on fentanylillicitly obtained whilein the jail after she was arrested in a Kensington sweep in 2024. The suit said she cried and begged for help, and fellow inmates tried to get the attention of correctional officers before she was found unresponsive in her cell.
A judge dismissed portions of the lawsuit in late December, but attorneys for Cahill’s family later refiled a complaint. Responding to the suit, lawyers for the city acknowledged staffing issues at the jails, but said the city could not have foreseen and did not cause Cahill’s death.
Between 2018 and July 2024, at least 25 people died in Philadelphia jails of accidents related to drug intoxication, a 2024 Inquirer analysis found. The city noted that summerthat the overdose death rate in Philadelphia jails was the same as the citywide rate, despite higher rates of addiction among incarcerated people.
Philadelphia’s jail system has been hailed as a national leader in offering medications for opioid addiction and provides buprenorphine, an opioid medication that curbs cravings, to inmates soon after arriving.
But staffing issues created backlogs that kept inmates from receiving longer-term care on time, and advocates said illicit drugs were readily available in the facilities, The Inquirer reported in 2024.
Staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.
The bus system serving 11,000 daily riders in Lehigh and Northampton Counties cut its service 5% last week, a result of the continuing uncertainty around state funding for mass transit.
LANTA did not eliminate any routes but has reduced the number of trips on 13 bus lines.
“If there’s no solution coming, we’ll have to make deeper cuts,” Owen O’Neil, executive director of LANTA, said in an interview.
Most of the state’s 33 smaller public transit systems did not get that big an assist and now are facing unpleasant belt-tightening choices amid rising costs and years of underfunding from Harrisburg.
LANTA is planning to raise fares in March.
But the agency was able to make smaller cuts than the 20% it had budgeted because the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation granted it $13 million to stabilize service over two years, O’Neil said.
With federal COVID-19 relief funds, LANTA was able to expand service to 11 popular new worksites in the fast-growing Lehigh Valley. It’s the third-largest system in Pennsylvania.
In the state budget unveiled Tuesday, Shapiro proposed increasing the share of sales tax revenue reserved for SEPTA and its fellow mass transit agencies, raising a projected $319 million a year.
If the idea is enacted, however, new money would not begin flowing until July 1, 2027 — the start of the 2028 fiscal year. The tax rate itself would stay the same but transit would get 6.1% of the revenue, up from 4.4%.
O’Neil said LANTA likely could wait that long if needed. But “we don’t have the stable source of funding,” he added. It would be difficult to continue to operate the expanded routes without one, O’Neil said.
“Our governor is not meeting the moment,” said Connor Descheemaker, statewide campaign manager of Transit for All PA!, a nonprofit advocacy group.
“Adjusting the sales tax allocation does not meet the structural deficit facing a single one of Pennsylvania’s public transportation systems,” they said.
Postponing a change for 18 months gives lawmakers and the governor a longer runway to reach agreement on a stable, recurring source of money for transit — either via Shapiro’s proposal or through a new revenue stream.
SEPTA, which got $394 million from the state-sanctioned flex of capital dollars last year, has said it is not considering major service cuts or fare increases this year.
Executives figure that SEPTA can provide current levels of service until summer 2027.
The transit agency estimates that it would get $183 million in the first year if the governor’s Tuesday proposal is enacted, said Erik Johanson, SEPTA’s chief financial officer.
With a local match of $27 million, “the difference between what the governor is proposing and how much we need is getting closer and closer to being sufficient,” Johanson said.
Yet there has been no proposal to replace the capital money that the transit agency and PRT essentially borrowed against.
“Those dollars are gone, and they have to be replenished,” he said.
Descheemaker’s group estimates that seven smaller transit systems, including in the State College area, will have to cut service or raise fares if no solution is in the offing.
“It’s disappointing that we continue to hear about transit as if it is something that only affects Philadelphia and a little bit of Pittsburgh,” Descheemaker said.
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker often says she isn’t a fan of “Monday-morning quarterbacks” and “expert AOPs” — her shorthand for so-called articulators of problems who don’t offer solutions.
The mayor acknowledged residents’ exasperation at a news conference at the Pelbano Recreation Center in Northeast Philadelphia on Wednesday, her first appearance dedicated to the city’s snow response since Jan. 26, the day after the storm walloped the region.
“For anyone who is frustrated right now about the ice, about the ability for all of the streets to be fully cleared, I want you to know that I understand,” she said. “Everybody can Monday-morning quarterback. … That’s cool. We can’t stop people from feeling the way they feel. But let me tell you something: We were prepared.”
Parker said the city deployed 1,000 workers and 800 pieces of snow-removal equipment to deal with the emergency.
“We don’t promise to be perfect, Philadelphia,” she said. “We promise to go to war with the status quo and to fix things, to be doers. … We’re going to continue doing everything that we can to make sure all of this work is done.”
A pedestrian walks past a large pile of snow and ice along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway days after a fierce winter storm dropped up to 9 inches of snow and sleet, with freezing temperatures leaving large banks of ice and snow on streets and sidewalks in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 2, 2026.
Snowstorms are infamous for their ability to undermine constituents’ faith in their mayors. Over the years, they have been credited with ending political careers in Denver, New York, Chicago, and Seattle.
The risk of political fallout could be heightened for Parker, who campaigned on a promise to upgrade city services. When Parker ceremonially dropped the puck at Tuesday night’s Flyers game, she was greeted with boos from many fans at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
“Parker has pitched herself as the can-do mayor. ‘I’m not gonna deal with ideology. I’ve got principles, but I’m here to get the job done,’” said Randall M. Miller, a political historian and professor emeritus at St. Joseph’s University. “There’s that expectation you’re going to get this thing done.”
But Miller said the mobility issues associated with snow removal have unique psychological effects for constituents.
“You’re cold, you’re miserable, and you’re trapped. You’re looking around like, ‘Who is confining me?’” Miller said. “You get angry at the mayor because the mayor said, ‘I’m here to provide public services,’ and public service isn’t being provided.”
Fred Scheuren shovels snow at 12th Street, near Waverly Street, in Center City, Philadelphia, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026.
The circumstances of this year’s winter weather emergency could also give Parker some breathing room. Municipal leaders in Pittsburgh, New York, Washington, D.C., and Providence, R.I., are all feeling the heat amid the polar temperatures, thanks to an unusually persistent cold snap that has hampered snow-removal operations.
A slight reprieve in the weather this week, with highs peaking above freezing Tuesday and Wednesday, could help the city’s cleanup efforts. But officials warned Wednesday that temperatures are forecast to fall again by the end of the week.
“It’s not hyperbole to consider that we’re still under emergency conditions,” Dominick Mireles, who leads the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management, said Wednesday.
Lessons from past Philly storms
By some measures, the city threw more resources at the latest storm than in the past, but got fewer returns.
After the legendary blizzard of Jan. 7, 1996, then-Mayor Ed Rendell deployed more than 540 snowplows, dump trucks, and other vehicles to clear away the record 30.7 inches of snow that fell over two days, according to an Inquirer report from that year. Officials bragged at the time that the fleet eclipsed the 300 vehicles marshaled by former Mayor W. Wilson Goode Sr. for the last major blizzard, in 1987.
Four days after the 1996 storm, the city said it hauled away 50,000 tons of snow, including truckloads famously dumped directly into the Delaware River and the Schuylkill. Officials also said that day that about 71% of roadways were passable, including around half of all side streets.
In February 2003, the city got walloped with 19 inches of snow, followed by days of subfreezing temperatures. Four days after that storm, the city said it had cleared 75% to 80% of city streets.
In 2016, Mayor Jim Kenney used 10,000 tons of salt and 1,600 city workers to clear away 22.5 inches of snow, clearing 92% of residential streets by day four — with a major assist from warmer temperatures a few days after the storm.
The 800 pieces of snow-removal equipment Parker cited that were used in the most recent storm are far more than even in the blizzard of 1996. She also said the city brought in a snow-melting machine from Chicago, saying workers had melted about 4.7 million pounds of snow, while scattering 30,000 tons of salt.
The result: More than a week after the end of the snowfall, about 85% of city streets had been “treated,” which includes salting, plowing, or both, according to the city.
Heavy equipment clearing snow along S. Broad Street at Dickinson Street, Philadelphia, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026.
But mobility nonetheless remains limited in much of the city, and officials pointed to the lingering icy conditions.
The prolonged freeze is “not unheard of, but it is unusual, and that stresses and makes the potential for a lot of not-great things to happen,” Mireles said. “It’s affecting the snow-fighting operation.”
An analysis of city plowing data shows that after the conclusion of the storm on Jan. 25, vehicles reached about 70% of city streets by the end of Monday. As the snow hardened, activity slowed by about a third on Jan. 27. Some parts of the city — including neighborhood-size chunks of South Philly — saw little plowing until five days after the storm or longer.
The psychology of snow
One reason voters punish mayors more harshly for failing to remove snow than for other problems is because of its omnipresence, from getting around the city to small talk about the weather, Miller said.
Even trash-collection problems tend not to get under residents’ skin to the same degree because they don’t shut the city down, he said.
“You are furious, and it’s day in, day out,” Miller said. “You’re constantly reminded.”
Trisha Swed walks with her dog Alberta Einstein at North 30th Street and Girard Avenue in Brewerytown on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026 in Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, 9.3 inches of snow fell, the most in a decade.
Parker has turned to private contractors to help with the snow-removal operation. And at Wednesday’s news conference, she touted the city’s efforts to deploy 300 “same-day pay and work” laborers earning $25 per hour to help manually clear streets and sidewalks.
Those moves drew criticism Wednesday from the city’s largest union for municipal workers, District Council 33 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers, which went on strike for higher wages last summer.
“District Council 33 is deeply concerned by the City’s decision to bring in outside laborers for snow‐removal operations without any consultation or collaboration with our union,” DC 33 president Greg Boulware said in a statement. “Our members deserve better, and the residents of Philadelphia deserve a snow‐removal strategy rooted in safety, foresight, and respect for the workforce that keeps this city running.”
Miller said those efforts show the city is doing everything it can to clear the city’s streets and sidewalks.
“There’s been a great effort to try to deal with it, but Philadelphia is a very difficult place to manage in terms of snow because it’s got so many older streets,” he said.
Man with shovel clearing snow from small park on Main Street in Manayunk on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026.
But, he said, hearing about the city’s efforts is cold comfort to residents struggling to navigate their neighborhoods.
“The major thoroughfares, they’ve done a pretty good job. But folks are concerned with their neighborhoods. They’re not concerned with if they go down to Fourth and Market,” he said. “Once you start to hear those kinds of complaints, it’s hard to contain it.”
Parker said complaints will not deter her team. “Whenever we’ve been dealing with something challenging in government … there are some people who are expert articulators for problems,” she said.
Her staff, she said, “is not a team of expert AOPs.”
“This is a team of subject-matter experts who are doers and they are fixers, and we don’t cry,” she said. “Our job won’t be done until every street in the city of Philadelphia is walkable.”
Staff writers Ximena Conde and Anna Orso contributed to this article.
