SCRANTON — After months of debate about what Lackawanna County’s practical and moral posture should be as it relates to federal immigration enforcement, the county’s Democratic commissioners ultimately approved a policy Wednesday setting protocols for potential county interactions with federal immigration agents.
The version of the previously tabled policy proposal Commissioners Thom Welby and Bill Gaughan approved Wednesday over Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak’s objections frustrated some public speakers who wanted commissioners to take a harder line. They’ve specifically advocated for an ordinance Gaughan proposed in February seeking to explicitly prohibit county cooperation in federal immigration enforcement unless presented with a judicial warrant signed by a judge, something the approved policy doesn’t do.
But while Gaughan acknowledged the policy isn’t the one he originally envisioned, doesn’t go as far as he believes it should and doesn’t “create the bright-line rules” that many members of the public had endorsed, “it is also true that this policy is not nothing,” he said.
The policy does not attempt to bar the county or its employees from cooperating with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement or other agencies tasked with enforcing immigration law, but would establish procedures for employees to follow if ICE agents or other law enforcement officials appear at county facilities. It would effectively restrict working county employees from interacting with agents or officers without consulting a superior and the county solicitor.
The approved version also includes new language barring commissioners from entering into 287(g) agreements with ICE, language that was absent from an earlier version commissioners tabled April 1.
Those agreements grant designated state and local law enforcement personnel limited authority to enforce federal immigration law and perform duties otherwise reserved for federal immigration agents. While the policy applies to commissioners, county District Attorney Brian Gallagher and Sheriff Mark McAndrew, both independently elected county row officers, have said they won’t enter into such agreements on behalf of their offices either.
“It provides guidance, it creates a process, it ensures employees do not act on their own without legal oversight,” Gaughan said of the policy prior to the vote. “And in a situation where we previously had no framework at all, I think that that matters. So I will be supporting this policy — not because it’s perfect, because I don’t think it is — but because it is a step forward in the right direction and I believe that we can continue to improve it.”
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