Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
A disturbing innovation of President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s deportation dragnet has replaced confrontational invasions of big cities like Minneapolis and Los Angeles with a quieter and, unfortunately, more effective crackdown in the nation\u2019s least visible corners<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s coal country is among the unlikely targets of this latest wave of mass detentions, facilitated by the small-town police departments that are supposed to be keeping the region safe.<\/p>\n Too many law enforcement agencies in Schuylkill<\/a> County are doing much the opposite, instead creating a climate of fear with apparently race-based immigration raids and checkpoints. As The Inquirer\u2019s Will Bunch reported, a mountain of federal money has enticed the region\u2019s police departments to serve as foot soldiers for the Trump administration\u2019s roundup<\/a>.<\/p>\n These Faustian bargains have made Pennsylvania the most prolific such collaborator outside the South.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: In Pa. coal country, local police join with ICE to bring arrests, fear | Will Bunch<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s another form of the federal oppression that Americans in the Twin Cities and beyond have opposed at great risk. Gov. Josh Shapiro<\/a> and the state\u2019s lawmakers should also do everything in their power to counter an extraordinary assault on their constituents.<\/p>\n Under what\u2019s known as the 287(g) program, U.S. Immigration<\/a> and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has set aside about a quarter-billion dollars<\/a> from an unprecedented congressional windfall to help it deputize state and local law enforcement agencies. Fourteen departments in Northeastern Pennsylvania\u2019s Schuylkill County have collected more than $1.5 million of that for cars and equipment in exchange for their help arresting more than 100 people for detention and deportation.<\/p>\n As with the nationwide dragnet, and in contrast to the Trump campaign\u2019s promise to target immigrants who commit serious crimes, the Pennsylvania arrests have largely affected people presenting no known danger to their communities. More than two-thirds of those arrested by the state\u2019s law enforcement agencies under the federal program had no criminal record. And judging by the stories of natural-born citizens caught in the coal region surge, some of them didn\u2019t have an immigration record, either. That\u2019s also in keeping with ICE\u2019s practice of sweeping up citizens<\/a> and legal residents along with undocumented people based on little more than their complexions.<\/p>\n ICE arrests reached an administration peak of nearly 50,000 people<\/a> nationwide in July, substantially more than were detained during the headline-grabbing clashes in Minneapolis last winter, when federal officers killed two protesters. The proportion of those arrested with no criminal record has steadily climbed to a majority<\/a> during that period as the administration has canceled protections for hundreds of thousands of refugees and ramped up arrests of people with pending applications for legal status.<\/p>\n The 287(g) program has also swelled the number of arrests, particularly by law enforcement agencies in Southern states like Texas and Florida. Pennsylvania ranks fourth nationwide, with more than 1,200 such arrests this year, largely in small towns like Schuylkill Haven, a borough of just 5,000 that saw 59 immigration arrests in the span of a few months.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Four people killed by ICE agents. A lawless administration. It won\u2019t stop unless voters act. | Editorial<\/a><\/p>\n This is in stark contrast<\/a> with neighboring New York<\/a> and Maryland<\/a>, both of which have outlawed such collaborations between ICE and their police departments. \u201cIn Maryland, we defend constitutional rights and constitutional policing,\u201d Gov. Wes Moore said, \u201cand we will not allow untrained, unqualified and unaccountable ICE agents to deputize our law enforcement officers.\u201d<\/p>\n While Pennsylvania Democrats<\/a> have proposed similar legislation<\/a>, the state\u2019s Republican-controlled Senate makes its enactment unlikely \u2014 though local cooperation with a deeply unpopular administration could motivate a few more voters to cast ballots for Democrats in the coming legislative elections. A Shapiro spokesperson emphasized that while his administration limits state police collaboration with ICE, police and sheriff\u2019s policies \u201crest with local law enforcement agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n Pennsylvania\u2019s purple political cast certainly puts more limits on Shapiro than some of his blue-state counterparts have to contend with. But it\u2019s worth noting that when the federal government tried to expand its capacity to lock up immigrants with new detention centers in Schuylkill and Berks Counties, Shapiro vowed to \u201cuse every tool<\/a>\u201d at his disposal to block them \u2014 and ultimately succeeded<\/a> by denying the proposed facilities access to water and sewer services.<\/p>\n The governor and his legislative allies should be equally determined and resourceful in thwarting the policies that fill such prisons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min A disturbing innovation of President Donald Trump\u2019s deportation dragnet has replaced confrontational invasions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120901,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-291521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-287g-schuylkill-county-immigration-profiling-arrests","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291521","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=291521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}