{"id":286596,"date":"2026-09-15T16:56:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/286596\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T16:56:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T16:56:12","slug":"next-door-states-banned-ice-cop-deals-why-not-pa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/286596\/","title":{"rendered":"Next-door states banned ICE-cop deals. Why not Pa.?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the many things we won\u2019t forget about the Trump era is how much the family of POTUS 47 has enriched itself \u2014 not only the president but his children, including Donald Trump<\/a> Jr., who is said to be now worth at least $500 million, and growing. So it was no surprise when his second marriage to Palm Beach\u2019s Bettina Anderson in May was a lavish affair on two private islands in the Bahamas. What is a surprise \u2014 as we now know from some stunning work by a team of reporters from ProPublica<\/a> \u2014 is who paid: a very close associate of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. So, maybe the \u201cRussia, Russia, Russia\u201d folks were onto something?<\/p>\n

If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pa. Democrats are alarmed at the rapid growth of ICE-police deals. But can they stop them?<\/p>\n

The big, mostly under-the-radar story around the Donald Trump regime\u2019s relentless push to arrest and remove immigrants from the United States has been this year\u2019s explosion<\/a> of so-called 287(g) agreements. These allow local cops to act as immigration agents, working collaboratively with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.<\/p>\n

But if you look at a national map<\/a> to understand how these 287(g) agreements have spiked from just 135 when Trump retook office in January 2025 to more than 2,500 such pacts today, you\u2019ll notice that one state sticks out like a sore thumb.<\/p>\n

In Pennsylvania, amped-up promises of federal cash incentives have meant a soaring number of localities where local beat cops are now working with ICE to make arrests \u2014 up from just a handful at the start of the year to some 130 now<\/a>. Most 287(g) collaborators are in Trump-voting pockets of the Keystone State \u2014 northeast and south-central Pennsylvania, or out west near the Ohio border.<\/p>\n

But when you look at the rest of the northeastern United States, the 287(g) map is very sparse. That\u2019s partly because most local pols across the region agree with their constituents about opposing Trump\u2019s mass-deportation policies<\/a>, and in several states it\u2019s also the result of legislation that aims to ban the program altogether.<\/p>\n

In late August, New York enacted the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act<\/a> \u2014 backed and signed by its Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul \u2014 which calls on police departments and county sheriffs to terminate their 287(g) agreements, although several counties are still challenging<\/a> the measure in court. Maryland has a similar law<\/a> on the books, while New Jersey, which had long prevented such pacts under an attorney general\u2019s directive, also passed a law<\/a> this spring to codify the ban.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a growing number of Pennsylvania lawmakers who want to pass a similar law here, but there\u2019s one big problem: Republicans<\/a>. They control the state Senate in Harrisburg \u2014 currently by a 27-23 margin \u2014 and GOP lawmakers have no interest in rebuking the president on immigration policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we exist alone is because of our split legislature,\u201d state Rep. Heather Boyd, a Democrat who represents heavily immigrant Upper Darby<\/a> and adjacent parts of Delaware County<\/a>, told me. Last year, Boyd circulated proposed legislation<\/a> to ban 287(g) deals in Pennsylvania, and while dozens of Democrats<\/a> in Harrisburg are supportive, any move is on hold until a November election that could shift the balance of power. Boyd said lawmakers are wary of \u201cstarting any culture wars\u201d ahead of the vote.<\/p>\n

I pressed the office of Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a>, who\u2019s running for a second term and who is seen as a possible top contender<\/a> for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, for his position on reining in the 287(g) program here.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernor Shapiro has been clear that law enforcement should be focused on keeping Pennsylvanians safe \u2014 not sowing fear in communities or targeting people who are working hard, raising families, and contributing to our Commonwealth,\u201d his press secretary, Rosie Lapowsky, said. She noted that the governor has barred Pennsylvania State Police from any formal ICE collaboration<\/a>, and he would urge local police to take a similar stance.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cUltimately, however, these decisions rest with local law enforcement agencies. The governor does not have the unilateral authority to dictate whether individual sheriffs or police departments enter into these agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of those local law enforcement agencies have instead rushed to join 287(g), with ICE promising small-town departments<\/a> an initial $100,000 cash windfall and additional incentives for training officers to make arrests and to cover the cost of working overtime on the program.<\/p>\n

Last week, I reported from Schuylkill County<\/a> in east-central Pennsylvania, where some 14 law-enforcement agencies have raced to adopt 287(g), more than any other county in the state. Since the spring, local cops there have arrested about 100 immigrants at highway stops or by assisting ICE in jobsite raids. The blitz has prompted rising complaints about alleged racial profiling, the handcuffing of U.S. citizens, and a sense of fear that permeates a growing Latino community in Pennsylvania coal country.<\/p>\n

Statistics obtained from the Department of Homeland Security by advocates show that local police in Pennsylvania have arrested and turned over to ICE more than 1,200 immigrants this year <\/a>\u2014 ranking the state 4th in the nation on a list where the other leading states are all south of the Mason-Dixon line.<\/p>\n

In Washington, some of the state\u2019s Democratic House members say they\u2019re fed up with a lack of transparency over who is being detained and how the 287(g) program is working here. Last week, four of them \u2014 Reps. Mary Gay Scanlon and Madeleine Dean<\/a> from the Philadelphia suburbs and Chris Deluzio and Summer Lee from western Pennsylvania \u2014 sent a letter to ICE\u2019s acting director David Venturella<\/a> demanding information on why the agency\u2019s data lacks any specific details about which departments are making arrests, which is required by law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unacceptable to me that ICE is hiding information from Pennsylvanians about who ICE is working with in their mass deportation regime,\u201d Deluzio \u2014 viewed as a potential 2028 primary challenger<\/a> to embattled Sen. John Fetterman<\/a> \u2014 told me in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n

Deluzio also summed up the growing unease by many over the speedy growth of 287(g) in the state. \u201cLet\u2019s keep local law enforcement focused on local public safety, rather than enlisting them in extreme federal immigration enforcement that has ripped away American liberties and targeted so many law-abiding families,\u201d he said. Indeed, 287(g) data guru Andrew Thrasher<\/a> has reported that a whopping 70% of the immigrants arrested in Pennsylvania under the program have no criminal record or pending charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople in my community are getting smashed off the streets,\u201d said Boyd, the Upper Darby lawmaker. That Delco township is about to vote<\/a> on a local ordinance to restrict its cops from collaborating or sharing data with ICE.<\/p>\n

Statewide, Boyd says she\u2019s one of about 50 House Democrats in a Welcoming Pennsylvania Caucus with an extensive list of proposed bills<\/a> that would not only bar 287(g) but look to expand opportunities for noncitizens to do things like obtaining driver\u2019s licenses or gain professional certification. But any serious action hinges on November, when Democrats are hoping<\/a> a blue wave at the ballot box will flip at least three more Senate seats and create a trifecta for their party in Harrisburg. <\/p>\n

\u201cEven if we can\u2019t stop ICE from picking them up on the streets, we have to protect their rights,\u201d Boyd said. \u201cAnd right now, their are barriers to that in the state of Pennsylvania.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yo, do this!<\/p>\n

The issue of wrongful convictions is back in the news here in Philadelphia \u2014 but for all the wrong reasons. Some reckless and seemingly wrongheaded moves<\/a> by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner<\/a> and his underlings have the vultures who\u2019ve always opposed criminal justice reform circling. The shame is that the real crisis around wrongful conviction is the thousands of mostly Black and brown folks who remain behind bars for crimes they did not commit. I cannot say enough about a book<\/a> that came out earlier this year from the Brown University (yay!) sociologist Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve called Crime Fictions: How Racist Lies Built a System of Mass Wrongful Conviction. She mines the most outrageous prosecutions \u2014 often of young Black teens and boys \u2014 to make a compelling argument that wrongful convictions aren\u2019t a flaw in the criminal justice system. They are the system.<\/p>\n

If timing is everything, then you\u2019ve got to hand it to my freshman dorm pal at Brown who became Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, David Corn. On the heels of ProPublica\u2019s bombshell reporting<\/a> on ties between the Trump family and Vladimir Putin, Corn is out Tuesday with his newest book: How Russia Won \u2013 Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America<\/a>. It promises a raft of new information about Russia\u2019s efforts to meddle in U.S. elections in 2020 and 2024, the ongoing close links between Team Trump and Team Putin, and how the current president\u2019s pro-Russian slant has changed the world.<\/p>\n

Ask me anything<\/p>\n

Question: What happens when [House Speaker Mike] Johnson refuses to seat newly elected Dems in January? \u2014 David Minckler (@audivita.bsky.social) via Bluesky<\/p>\n

Answer: Suddenly, Jan. 3 \u2014 the date that the 120th U.S. Congress begins, and new members who won their November elections are to be sworn in \u2014 has become the new Jan. 6. Summer vacations are over and the body politic is focused on the looming midterms, and \u2014 more importantly \u2014 with polls showing the Democrats on track to retake one and possibly both chambers. So there\u2019s been a surge of speculation <\/a>that the Trump-allied Johnson will do what former vice president Mike Pence would not do on Jan. 6, 2021, and somehow fail to certify Democratic winners. That\u2019s based on an assumption that Trump\u2019s election-meddling tactics like stopping mail-in voting \u2014 blocked on Monday<\/a> by the Supreme Court \u2014 won\u2019t work, yet Team MAGA will attempt to undo the election after the fact, as was tried unsuccessfully in 2020-21. Lawfare has published the most detailed analysis<\/a> of a so-called \u201crogue clerk\u201d theory in which Johnson appoints a MAGA loyalist to serve as House clerk with the understanding that some Democratic wins won\u2019t be certified. Its article notes that such a gimmick is unlikely to pass muster in the courts, but that won\u2019t necessarily stop Trump and the GOP from trying. My only guidance is: Fasten your seat belts.<\/p>\n

What you\u2019re saying about…<\/p>\n

It turns out that readers of the newsletter aren\u2019t eager to join the punditocracy. Only a few of you responded to last week\u2019s question about the chances of a Democratic-led Senate in 2027, and one of them was to give me a verbal tongue-lashing for even asking this. (Frequent writer Daniel Fleisher called it \u201ca pointless exercise in predicting the unpredictable.\u201d) That said, Cathy King has her eye on Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, her home state, writing that \u201dhe seems to be following (Zohran) Mamdani\u2019s playbook.” Meanwhile, in Iowa, Mary Chilton thinks the Dems\u2019 Josh Turek has a real shot in a state won three times by Donald Trump, noting that farmers are up in arms \u201cover the data center issue, imported beef, water pollution and the soaring cancer rates…\u201d<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcee This week\u2019s question: Suddenly, everyone is talking about one thing: the Silicon Valley whistleblowers saying there\u2019s not a trivial chance that a swarm of angry artificial-intelligence agents could wipe out humankind<\/a> by the end of the decade. Are you worried by this, or do you think that Big AI is deflecting here, to draw attention away from other issues like data-center opposition or the stock-market bubble? Please email me your answer<\/a> and put the exact phrase \u201cthe AI threat\u201d in the subject line.<\/p>\n

Backstory on that *other* thing that could kill humanity <\/p>\n

This weekend, a Bluesky post went super viral<\/a> almost the second that its author, a scientist named David Ho, hit the button to post it. \u201cI resigned from ExxonMobil today.\u201d he wrote. \u201cI spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a safe bet that many of the 13,000 people who liked Ho\u2019s post truly believed they were sharing the words of a brave whistleblower \u2014 but instead the post was satire from a leading climate scientist<\/a> based at the University of Hawai\u02bbi at M\u0101noa. Ho would never work for a Big Oil giant. He was trying instead to mimic \u2014 and thus make a point about \u2014 the recent posts from Silicon Valley whistleblowers that triggered the new freakout over whether AI robots are a threat to human existence<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Climate change is a threat to society, and it\u2019s even closer to reality. Maybe we should freak out about that?<\/p>\n

Ho absolutely has a point. Just before his post, it was announced that August had been tied for the hottest month ever recorded <\/a>in the history of the planet. That doesn\u2019t come without consequences. In the Himalayas between Nepal and Tibet, a glacier and the adjacent bedrock of mountains at 17,000 feet abruptly collapsed<\/a> in a region plagued by higher-than-normal temperatures, sending a 150-foot-high cocktail of floodwater and debris down a populated valley at 100 mph. At least 1,386 were killed, and thousands more remain missing. Here in the U.S., a summer of record heat<\/a> triggered wildfires across the Pacific Northwest.<\/p>\n

Robots didn\u2019t do this. Humans did. Maybe that\u2019s why humans \u2014 at least the ones that are running Donald Trump\u2019s America \u2014 are reacting so differently to the danger of AI than the way they\u2019re dealing, or not dealing, with the lethal pollution from burning fossil fuels. In the case of artificial intelligence, even tech leaders like Anthropic\u2019s Dario Amodei, whose firm makes the Claude program, have urged a slowdown<\/a> until we better understand the risk from rogue AI agents.<\/p>\n

But in the case of climate change, willful ignorance rules the day. The latest outrage from a Trump regime that\u2019s expensively killing off wind farms<\/a> while racing to extract as much fossil fuel as possible? The now ironically named U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is repealing the rule<\/a> that limits greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants that burn coal or natural gas. A president who spent his summer sweltering on the golf course continues to insist<\/a> that climate science is \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one last irony here. Increasingly, the biggest new sources of climate-altering pollution are the massive data centers that power AI. An Amazon data center proposed for Pecos County, Texas, would likely become the world\u2019s largest source of carbon dioxide<\/a> if it opens, spewing out 33 tons from natural gas generators every year. Slowing down the AI arms race would also help the planet. Artificial or not, that would be intelligence.<\/p>\n

What I wrote on this date in 2019<\/p>\n

Joe Biden<\/a> performing badly in a presidential debate? Say it ain\u2019t so, Joe. We all remember what happened on that 2024 stage in Atlanta (\u201cThe night the lights went out in Georgia,\u201d I called that one)<\/a> but I was almost as unimpressed with the future 46th president during a Democratic primary debate on this date seven years ago. That put me at odds with the punditocracy. I wrote: \u201cThe cable TV news show that both channels and is most revered by Washington\u2019s elites \u2014 MSNBC\u2019s Morning Joe \u2014 is at times so over the top in its bias toward Barack Obama\u2019s former wingman that it could be renamed Morning Joe Biden.\u201d Read the rest from Sept. 15, 2019: \u201dElite D.C. pundits love moderation, low taxes on the rich … and Joe Biden. They just don\u2019t get it<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Recommended Inquirer reading<\/p>\n

Summertime is over, and the living is no longer easy. I published my month-long investigation<\/a> into local cops collaborating with ICE under the controversial 287(g) program in semi-rural Schuylkill County, northwest of Philly. I found U.S. citizens handcuffed, families hiding behind blanket-covered windows, and a community wrestling with what it means for neighbors to be treated as suspects. Over the weekend, I delved into the astonishing $850 million<\/a> or so that Trump World has raised in campaign contributions since his reelection \u2014 despite the fact he\u2019s barred from seeking office again. You don\u2019t think he has a scheme to pocket the excess cash, do you?<\/p>\n

Dante only had Nine Circles of Hell<\/a>, but the downward spiral of Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman seems to be never ending. It\u2019s one thing to profoundly disagree<\/a> on a political and moral issue such as the war crimes of Israel\u2019s right-wing government in Gaza, but recent reporting suggests things are far, far worse in Fettermanland. No senator \u2014 regardless of how much their ideology has flipflopped \u2014 should be blowing off their home-state constituents<\/a>, or clocking out of committee hearings after five minutes. The Democratic senator\u2019s surprise video<\/a> appearance at the midterm mini-convention of Donald Trump\u2019s GOP, introducing his new best buddy, Republican Sen. Dave McCormick<\/a>, did nothing to dispel the sense of utter betrayal among liberal voters who now see his winning 2022 campaign as a big lie. The next two years will be crazy as Democrats line up to primary Fetterman<\/a>, amid rumors the hoodie-clad politico might run as an independent or even change parties. The only sure thing is that The Inquirer will be there for every move. Join us. Subscribe!<\/a><\/p>\n

By submitting your written, visual, and\/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer\u2019s Terms of Use<\/a>, including the grant of rights in Section 10.<\/p>\n

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Go beyond the column with an email from me delving into the latest headlines, plus insight into what I\u2019m reading, watching, and listening to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the many things we won\u2019t forget about the Trump era is how much the family of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[119325,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-286596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-287g-pennsylvania-legislation-banning-collaboration-police-ice","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286596","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=286596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}