Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran is defending his efforts to have select deputies from his office work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On Thursday, April 24, Harran announced he applied to participate in the ICE 287 (g) “task force model.” If approved by ICE, the initiative would allow a “handful of trained deputies” within Harran’s office to utilize a federal immigration database. According to Harran, the database is only for immigrants who have been taken into custody based on existing criminal charges and outstanding warrants in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
“The program is strictly limited to individuals already within the criminal justice process and does not authorize our deputies to perform general immigration enforcement functions in the community or inquire about immigration status during routine interactions,” Harran wrote. “Crucially, we have and will continue to maintain open lines of communication with the immigrant community, faith leaders, and other community stakeholders to ensure the initiative’s purpose is clear and its effectiveness shared.”
On Thursday, Harran also took part in a panel discussion for NBC10 @Issue and “Battleground Politics with Lauren Mayk,” on the first 100 days of Donald Trump’s presidency. The panel included former Philadelphia councilmember Maria Quiñones-Sánchez, former U.S. Representative Patrick Murphy and Broad + Liberty columnist Guy Ciarrocchi.
During the discussion, Quiñones-Sánchez spoke out against local law enforcement working with ICE, which she referred to as a “very slippery slope.”
“Everybody wants dangerous people out. But when you’re not providing due process and you have limited resources…that’s very, very dangerous,” she said. “That’s not going to make us safer. When people are hiding. When undocumented folks cannot go to work safely and help the economies of Bucks County, Franklin County, you can go across Pennsylvania. Without those immigrants, some who are undocumented, Pennsylvania’s economy would crash. So we have to be really careful.”
Harran then defended his efforts to work with ICE, stating the taskforce would only go after those who committed crimes in the Bucks County region.
“What is so bad about making the arrests, which we do now, but now, afterwards, ship them out so they can’t commit crimes tomorrow? Because our courts, our judicial system, our prisons are packed,” Harran said. “They cannot hold the amount of people. So why not save the U.S. taxpayer dollar and ship them back to the country they came from? Only those people that have already been charged with a crime. I’m not talking about somebody owning a pizza shop or working a landscape company. That’s not who we’re talking about here.”
Quiñones-Sánchez continued to express her concerns about local law enforcement working with the federal government in immigration enforcement.
“It is about your officers spending local resources doing the federal [government’s] job,” she said. “And the feds have demonstrated, I mean they’re in court right now with judicial orders against it, that they’re not following what you say. The intent and what is actually happening are too different things and perception then becomes everybody’s reality.”
You can listen to the entire episode of “Battleground Politics” in the video embedded above, the audio player embedded below or wherever you get your podcasts.
Source: www.nbcphiladelphia.com…