Commissioner Bill Gaughan pushed to deliberate on a proposed ‘Protect Your Neighbors Ordinance,’ aiming to define the county’s role in federal immigration.<\/p>\n
SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 Clarity about Lackawanna County\u2019s role in assisting or not assisting in federal immigration actions will be up for discussion between county commissioners after a motion was accepted to review the potential ‘Protect Your Neighbors Ordinance.’<\/p>\n
“This is model legislation that I have collaborated with in the last few days with the Community Justice Project and the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition,” said Commissioner Bill Gaughan. He brought the ordinance forward at Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n
Some of the legislative proposal would prevent any county office or employee from disclosing a person\u2019s citizenship or immigration status to immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
It also clarifies the difference between county and federal responsibilities when it comes to immigration actions.<\/p>\n
The decision to approve the work session comes after nearly two dozen community members expressed their feelings about immigration enforcement and the country\u2019s immigrant history.<\/p>\n
“We cannot repeat the failures of our past. History has already shown us the harm caused by exploiting, displacing, criminalizing, and dehumanizing Black, Brown, Jewish, immigrant, and Indigenous communities,” said Jenny Gonzalez of Scranton.<\/p>\n
“And it\u2019s a story where we have a choice about which direction we go\u2014to be welcoming or to be bigots,” said Rabbi Daniel Swartz of Scranton.<\/p>\n
Speakers also emphasized that members of refugee and immigrant communities should not have to live in fear.<\/p>\n
“So I think when you listen to all this, it shouldn\u2019t be seen as noise, as people just coming to express frustrations,” said Ushu Mukelo of Scranton. “As leaders, you do have the responsibility to make sure that people feel safe, and everything else can follow after that.”<\/p>\n
The next commissioner work session is scheduled for February 11. From there, the potential ordinance would be up for public comment before a vote is held.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commissioner Bill Gaughan pushed to deliberate on a proposed ‘Protect Your Neighbors Ordinance,’ aiming to define the county’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-105353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}