![\"Lackawanna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/STT-L-COMMISSIONERS-0122-05.jpg\")
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby looks on during the commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\nSCRANTON \u2014 Raising moral concerns while warning against unchecked government enforcement power, Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan called Wednesday for a legal review of the county\u2019s options and responsibilities with respect to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.<\/p>\n
Gaughan, a Democrat, specifically asked county Solicitor Paul James Walker for clear guidance on what duties and legal options county officials have when dealing with requests or inquiries from ICE and whether the law provides room to limit cooperation when ICE jeopardizes community trust and safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre we required to honor ICE detainers that are not backed by a judicial warrant?\u201d Gaughan asked. \u201cWhat information do our departments collect that ICE could try to pull, directly or indirectly? What policies can we adopt to minimize unnecessary collection of immigration-related data in the first place? What access, if any, should ICE have to county facilities and county property? If agents show up at a county building, what is the protocol? Who is authorized to speak? Who can deny access absent a warrant?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d also like you, Attorney Walker, to research what other counties in Pennsylvania have done to protect immigrant residents from overreach while still complying with constitutional and legal obligations,\u201d he continued. \u201cBecause, and I want to emphasize this, just because something is legal does not mean that it is right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walker said he would conduct the review \u2014 something Democratic Commissioner Thom Welby and Republican Commissioner Chris Chermak said they support.<\/p>\n
Gaughan\u2019s call comes as tensions over aggressive ICE enforcement operations reach a fever pitch in parts of the country, particularly in and around Minneapolis following the fatal shooting there earlier this month of American citizen Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. The killing, which many ICE defenders maintain was an act of justified self-defense, prompted widespread protests by ICE critics and others who reject that claim and accuse the agency more broadly of racial profiling, intimidation and constitutional-rights violations.<\/p>\n
It also renewed and refocused scrutiny of the agency\u2019s tactics under President Donald Trump, who ran on a platform that included immigration crackdowns and mass deportations. But ICE\u2019s street-level operations conducted by masked agents have been met with resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere, with video and news coverage of ICE activity and clashes with protesters galvanizing individuals on all sides of the American immigration debate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we can believe what we see and hear, and I think we can, it\u2019s totally out of order \u2014 it\u2019s insane to see the way some people are treated,\u201d Welby said after Wednesday\u2019s commissioners meeting. \u201cThis is the United States of America. It\u2019s not Communist Russia from the \u201930s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lackawanna County Commissioner Thom Welby looks on during the commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\n
Chermak, the lone Republican commissioner, acknowledged the situation is \u201cgetting out of hand\u201d and encouraged more and better communication between ICE and local and state officials, leaders and activists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve got to get together and have a discussion,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have one side fighting the other side. \u2026 Nobody is right, nobody is wrong, it\u2019s a disaster. It\u2019s gotten way out of hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether he thinks ICE \u201cis going overboard,\u201d Chermak said he\u2019s not in a position to make that judgment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t answer that question,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not at that level. You listen to one side, you listen to the other side. Who\u2019s right? They need to have the discussions with each other. As far as going overboard, I mean I don\u2019t want to see anyone get shot. That\u2019s awful. \u2026 Nobody deserves that.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Lackawanna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/STT-L-COMMISSIONERS-0122-03.jpg\")
Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak looks on during the commissioners meeting at the county government center in Scranton Wednesday, January 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG \/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)<\/p>\n
Having a legal opinion outlining the county\u2019s responsibilities and rights with regard to potential ICE outreach, overtures or requests for information will be of practical benefit to the county and its department heads, Gaughan stressed.<\/p>\n
He said an ICE official had already reached out to county 911 Director Al Kearney looking for information about an individual, though Gaughan didn\u2019t have more specific information to provide about that outreach, and efforts to reach Kearney after Wednesday\u2019s meeting were not immediately successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that kind of spurred me to say, \u2018OK, if these guys are just reaching out to random people within our government, we don\u2019t have a policy, I don\u2019t believe, on how we would respond,\u2019\u201d Gaughan said. \u201cI already think they\u2019ve gone way overboard, but what\u2019s the limit here? Like if they start asking (county Office of Youth and Family Services Director) Kerry Browning like \u2018hey, (do) you have any kids that are illegals?\u2019 It\u2019s so outrageous, so, from a legal perspective, yes we need to follow the law, but what is the law? And what can we do and what information do we have to give up to these people?\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond the high-profile crackdowns and clashes in Minneapolis, Gaughan also raised Wednesday the local example of a single father from Honduras living in Dunmore, Concepci\u00f3n Castro-Delcid, 44, whom ICE agents apprehended in late October as he was riding his bicycle to work. Agents subsequently took his elementary school-aged daughter into custody with deportation orders for the two.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/STT-L-DUNMOREICE-1031-1-e1761837691439.jpg\")
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on the 1700 block of North Webster Avenue in Dunmore on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (SUBMITTED PHOTO)<\/p>\n
That case came months after ICE took Nasario Damian Contreras, a Mexican-born restaurateur and respected member of the North Pocono community, into custody during a targeted enforcement operation in mid-July. An immigration judge in Philadelphia had ordered him removed from the United States in February 2023, according to ICE. His arrest prompted an outpouring of support from friends, neighbors, restaurant patrons and community members.<\/p>\n
Gaughan, who buttressed his practical legal concerns with a moral critique of ICE, accused the agency of harassing, intimidating and profiling people, including American citizens, and of creating a culture of fear. County officials, he said, \u201chave a moral obligation to seriously examine how we interact with federal enforcement actions by ICE that impact our residents regardless of immigration status.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo our immigrant residents in Lackawanna County, I want you to hear this clearly: You have rights, you have protections under the United States Constitution and you do not lose those rights because someone thinks you look like something else,\u201d Gaughan said. \u201cAnd to the broader public I want to be equally clear: When enforcement crosses the line into fear, when the Constitution is treated as optional, when people \u2014 not policies \u2014 become the casualties, that is something every citizen here should reject.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 Raising moral concerns while warning against unchecked government enforcement power, Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan called…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,139,28,178,180,179,729],"class_list":["post-92876","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","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92876","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=92876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}