SCRANTON — Raising moral concerns while warning against unchecked government enforcement power, Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan called Wednesday for a legal review of the county’s options and responsibilities with respect to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
Gaughan, a Democrat, specifically asked county Solicitor Paul James Walker for clear guidance on what duties and legal options county officials have when dealing with requests or inquiries from ICE and whether the law provides room to limit cooperation when ICE jeopardizes community trust and safety.
“Are we required to honor ICE detainers that are not backed by a judicial warrant?” Gaughan asked. “What information do our departments collect that ICE could try to pull, directly or indirectly? What policies can we adopt to minimize unnecessary collection of immigration-related data in the first place? What access, if any, should ICE have to county facilities and county property? If agents show up at a county building, what is the protocol? Who is authorized to speak? Who can deny access absent a warrant?
“I’d also like you, Attorney Walker, to research what other counties in Pennsylvania have done to protect immigrant residents from overreach while still complying with constitutional and legal obligations,” he continued. “Because, and I want to emphasize this, just because something is legal does not mean that it is right.”
Walker said he would conduct the review — something Democratic Commissioner Thom Welby and Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak said they support.
Gaughan’s call comes as tensions over aggressive ICE enforcement operations reach a fever pitch in parts of the country, particularly in and around Minneapolis following the fatal shooting there earlier this month of American citizen Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. The killing, which many ICE defenders maintain was an act of justified self-defense, prompted widespread protests by ICE critics and others who reject that claim and accuse the agency more broadly of racial profiling, intimidation and constitutional-rights violations.
It also renewed and refocused scrutiny of the agency’s tactics under President Donald Trump, who ran on a platform that included immigration crackdowns and mass deportations. But ICE’s street-level operations conducted by masked agents have been met with resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere, with video and news coverage of ICE activity and clashes with protesters galvanizing individuals on all sides of the American immigration debate.
“If we can believe what we see and hear, and I think we can, it’s totally out of order — it’s insane to see the way some people are treated,” Welby said after Wednesday’s commissioners meeting. “This is the United States of America. It’s not Communist Russia from the ’30s.”
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby looks on during the commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Chermak, the lone Republican commissioner, acknowledged the situation is “getting out of hand” and encouraged more and better communication between ICE and local and state officials, leaders and activists.
“They’ve got to get together and have a discussion,” he said. “You can’t have one side fighting the other side. … Nobody is right, nobody is wrong, it’s a disaster. It’s gotten way out of hand.”
Asked whether he thinks ICE “is going overboard,” Chermak said he’s not in a position to make that judgment.
“I couldn’t answer that question,” he said. “I’m not at that level. You listen to one side, you listen to the other side. Who’s right? They need to have the discussions with each other. As far as going overboard, I mean I don’t want to see anyone get shot. That’s awful. … Nobody deserves that.”
Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak looks on during the commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Having a legal opinion outlining the county’s responsibilities and rights with regard to potential ICE outreach, overtures or requests for information will be of practical benefit to the county and its department heads, Gaughan stressed.
He said an ICE official had already reached out to county 911 Director Al Kearney looking for information about an individual, though Gaughan didn’t have more specific information to provide about that outreach, and efforts to reach Kearney after Wednesday’s meeting were not immediately successful.
“But that kind of spurred me to say, ‘OK, if these guys are just reaching out to random people within our government, we don’t have a policy, I don’t believe, on how we would respond,’” Gaughan said. “I already think they’ve gone way overboard, but what’s the limit here? Like if they start asking (county Office of Youth and Family Services Director) Kerry Browning like ‘hey, (do) you have any kids that are illegals?’ It’s so outrageous, so, from a legal perspective, yes we need to follow the law, but what is the law? And what can we do and what information do we have to give up to these people?”
Beyond the high-profile crackdowns and clashes in Minneapolis, Gaughan also raised Wednesday the local example of a single father from Honduras living in Dunmore, Concepción Castro-Delcid, 44, whom ICE agents apprehended in late October as he was riding his bicycle to work. Agents subsequently took his elementary school-aged daughter into custody with deportation orders for the two.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on the 1700 block of North Webster Avenue in Dunmore on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)
That case came months after ICE took Nasario Damian Contreras, a Mexican-born restaurateur and respected member of the North Pocono community, into custody during a targeted enforcement operation in mid-July. An immigration judge in Philadelphia had ordered him removed from the United States in February 2023, according to ICE. His arrest prompted an outpouring of support from friends, neighbors, restaurant patrons and community members.
Gaughan, who buttressed his practical legal concerns with a moral critique of ICE, accused the agency of harassing, intimidating and profiling people, including American citizens, and of creating a culture of fear. County officials, he said, “have a moral obligation to seriously examine how we interact with federal enforcement actions by ICE that impact our residents regardless of immigration status.”
“To our immigrant residents in Lackawanna County, I want you to hear this clearly: You have rights, you have protections under the United States Constitution and you do not lose those rights because someone thinks you look like something else,” Gaughan said. “And to the broader public I want to be equally clear: When enforcement crosses the line into fear, when the Constitution is treated as optional, when people — not policies — become the casualties, that is something every citizen here should reject.”