ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Lehigh County’s executive is proposing a policy that would prohibit county employees from cooperating with U.S.\u00a0Immigration and\u00a0Customs Enforcement unless required constitutionally to do so.<\/p>\n
The proposal was unveiled at the Lehigh County Government Center Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n
Lehigh County Executive Josh Siegel says the ICE non-cooperation policy should send a clear message that interacting with county government is safe, secure, and reliable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The county policy would also prohibit the agency from using any county-owned facility as a staging area for operations,\u00a0Siegel said in a\u00a0news release. Agents also would not have access to nonpublic areas of county buildings unless they have a judicial warrant,\u00a0Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Siegel said ICE requests to employees would be referred to supervisors and then to the county\u2019s legal department to ensure they adhere to the law. It would not interfere with legal ICE actions, according to Siegel.<\/p>\n
Employees who do not comply with the policy would be subject to discipline, up to and including termination, Siegel said.<\/p>\n
Siegel expressed concerns about ICE receiving $85 billion in funding from the federal government and an increase in hiring.<\/p>\n
He is calling tactics ICE has used brutal, barbaric, and oppressive.<\/p>\n
Siegel says this proposed policy is about upholding constitutional balance.<\/p>\n
In the news release, Siegel said\u00a0the policy will be introduced at the June 24 meeting of the\u00a0Lehigh County Board of Commissioners.<\/p>\n
He tells us no county employee should be forced to work with ICE outside of constitutionally permissible and lawful means.<\/p>\n
Siegel referenced a 2014 lawsuit where he says the county was sued for unlawfully detaining a person.<\/p>\n
“This is about protecting county taxpayers from liability,”\u00a0Siegel said.<\/p>\n
“It is about protecting the moral and ethical reputation of Lehigh County and assuring everyone who calls this county home that we will serve you regardless of your status and we will protect you regardless of who you are and we should feel safe and secure contacting county authorities.”<\/p>\n
Siegel says to his knowledge, no county employees have collaborated with ICE.<\/p>\n
He says the proposal is about getting out in front of that.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Republican Congressman Ryan Mackenzie is calling this a politically driven policy that will only make victims and communities less safe.<\/p>\n
The statement says in part:<\/p>\n
“He is now trying to silence county employees and preclude them from cooperating with federal law enforcement agents whose work isn’t confined to immigration, but also includes human trafficking, sex trafficking and gang-related activity.”<\/p>\n
We have reached out to ICE for comment and have not heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. – Lehigh County’s executive is proposing a policy that would prohibit county employees from cooperating with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,433],"class_list":["post-220750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehigh-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220750","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=220750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}