SCRANTON \u2014 After months of debate about what Lackawanna County\u2019s practical and moral posture should be as it relates to federal immigration enforcement, the county\u2019s Democratic commissioners ultimately approved a policy Wednesday setting protocols for potential county interactions with federal immigration agents.<\/p>\n
The version of the previously tabled policy proposal Commissioners Thom Welby and Bill Gaughan approved Wednesday over Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak\u2019s objections frustrated some public speakers who wanted commissioners to take a harder line. They\u2019ve 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\u2019t do.<\/p>\n
But while Gaughan acknowledged the policy isn\u2019t the one he originally envisioned, doesn\u2019t go as far as he believes it should and doesn\u2019t \u201ccreate the bright-line rules\u201d that many members of the public had endorsed, \u201cit is also true that this policy is not nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t enter into such agreements on behalf of their offices either.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt provides guidance, it creates a process, it ensures employees do not act on their own without legal oversight,\u201d Gaughan said of the policy prior to the vote. \u201cAnd in a situation where we previously had no framework at all, I think that that matters. So I will be supporting this policy \u2014 not because it\u2019s perfect, because I don\u2019t think it is \u2014 but because it is a step forward in the right direction and I believe that we can continue to improve it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 After months of debate about what Lackawanna County\u2019s practical and moral posture should be as it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-166720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166720","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=166720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}