A legal memorandum by Lackawanna County’s top lawyer raises concerns about potential criminal charges if the county adopts a proposed policy on dealing with federal immigration enforcement agents, officials said.
The specific concerns are unknown because, for now, two commissioners blocked the memo’s release.
At a county commissioners meeting Wednesday, Commissioner Bill Gaughan said he and fellow commissioners Chris Chermak and Thom Welby received Solicitor Paul James Walker’s “confidential” memo 90 minutes before the meeting.
Gaughan, who has proposed a policy on the way county officials should deal with inquiring federal immigration agents, questioned the confidential label.
“I question why a policy analysis affecting the public should be treated as confidential when the policy itself will be and has been debated publicly,” Gaughan said. “I disagree with the suggestion that counties lack authority to establish policies governing how our own resources are used.”
Gaughan said the memo aggressively raises the possibility that county officials following his proposal could face prosecution for preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from doing their job.
“I am not aware currently of a single elected official in this country who has ever been criminally prosecuted simply for setting local policy boundaries or setting local policy boundaries on ICE cooperation,” Gaughan said. “And I don't believe that legal risk should stop policy debate, and I believe even the solicitor acknowledges that ICE cooperation is voluntary under federal law.”
With that, Gaughan made a motion to publicly release the memo.
Walker quickly challenged doing that.
“I would advise that we have internal discussions on that rather than take up a vote on that particular issue,” he said.
Welby and Chermak then refused to second Gaughan’s motion, blocking the memo’s immediate release.
After the meeting, Welby said the commissioners would debate the act and review the memo later.
What the debate is all about
The debate centers on Gaughan’s proposed Protect Our Neighbors Act. The act would prohibit:
- County agencies and employees from asking about the immigration status of someone seeking county help, unless required by law or court order.
- Conditioning county services or benefits on immigration status, unless required by state or federal law.
- County employees from detaining someone “based solely on an ICE detainer.” The act would require a valid arrest warrant signed by a judge.
- County participation in immigration enforcement operations.
Residents back the act
For the third meeting in a row, local residents passionately urged the commissioners to adopt Gaughan’s proposal.
Elizabeth Aguilar, a county resident for almost 30 years, said she was born in California after her parents fled civil war in El Salvador and entered the United States “illegally, as some people might want to call it.”
They worked “under-the-radar” jobs, and she grew up fearing their arrest.
“They would go to work, they would take us to church, they would drive us to school, go to the park. Every time we saw ICE (agents), it was just fear, and growing up with that fear was the worst thing,” Aguilar said. “It was just like a robbery of my childhood. But mostly I feared for my parents, because as a citizen of the United States, I knew that the only problem that would happen if they got taken away from me is that I would end up in foster care.”
Eventually, both parents became naturalized citizens and delight in voting, but now fear of ICE permeates local neighborhoods, she said.
“And it shouldn't be that way,” Aguilar said. “Children should not be afraid to go to school, and people should not be afraid to go to work.”
Alejandra Marroquin, a Guatemala native who’s lived in the county for 20 years, said history shows what happens “when humanity is ignored.”
The Holocaust “might have been prevented if more leaders had acted with moral courage instead of fear or indifference,” Marroquin said.
“Today, you have an opportunity to show that courage. You have the chance to learn from the past rather than repeat it. Unlike many refugees and immigrants, you are not powerless,” Marroquin said. “You have the ability and the responsibility to stand for compassion, dignity and justice. So today I am asking you to choose courage, to choose community and to choose to stand on the right side of history.”
In urging passage, Julie Schumacher Cohen, a Scranton resident for 16 years, shared a story of a local Latino family out shopping this past weekend.
“As they were going about their shopping, a man screamed at the mom, calling her an illegal and that he's going to call ICE on her,” Schumacher Cohen said. “He then tried to fight her husband, who stepped back as their middle school son got scared and started screaming for his dad to get away, afraid that their man that the man could have had a gun. Imagine the fear of this child seeing his parents harassed in this way.”
The same man yelled at another Latino woman in the same store, she said.
“This is the kind of racial profiling, bigotry and hatred that has been unleashed in our country and our communities,” she said. “The Protect Our Neighbors Act sends a different message, an important message, regionally, of upholding Constitutional and human rights of all residents, regardless of their immigration status. And it seeks to ensure public safety by leaving federal immigration enforcement to the federal government and maintaining trust between local government and their communities.”
Jessica McGuigan, a counselor, said ICE has a mandate to properly control immigration, but that’s not what’s happening. She called that “a gap.”
“We have watched legal permanent residents detained. We have watched American citizens, citizens wrongfully deported, and we have watched people who pose no threat, who had families and jobs and roots in this country removed,” she said. “(You know) why this ordinance matters? It's not because it dismantles anything. It's because of what it says, which is that our county employees will not be instruments of that gap. Our neighbors will not live in fear of the people who are paid to serve them.”
Cyrus Olsen, a University of Scranton professor who moved to Scranton almost 10 years ago from England, urged passage of the act to help his neighbors.
“Many of my neighbors who are now afraid to play basketball in the streets and who stay in their homes and are afraid as legitimate members of the community and in high schools and local schools are worried about what it might mean to play,” he said.
Not all back the act
Only one speaker offered support for ICE.
Teresa Ripley said she hadn’t heard anyone use the word “legal.”
“Legal is a very important term, and ... all immigrants should legal be legal,” Ripley said. “Things that we do in this country should be done legally. And sometimes, while we don't agree with what's legal, we have to respect the rule of law ... It's not an anarchist state. We're a nation of laws. We're also a nation of borders.”
As a descendant of immigrants, she said, “we came up from nothing and created a life in this country.
“And I respect everybody that comes to this country legally to have an opportunity to make a life for themselves and for their family and for their future generations,” she said.
But President Joe Biden’s administration pursued an open border policy that allowed millions of immigrants to enter the country, Ripley said.
“Many of them were good people. Many
of them were not, but the key was they were not vetted, like my grandfather was vetted,” Ripley said. “Every single one of you sitting in chairs, your grandparents were vetted, and at some point there had to be a legal process to become a citizen of the United States.”
Ripley said she disagrees “with abusing people ... or whatever these people are saying is going on.”
“It (deporting illegal immigrants) should be done humanely,” she said. “But the one thing I can say is that ICE should be respected, that city of Scranton police should be respected. All law enforcement should be respected.”
Welby, a former state representative, said he understands people want quick action, but proper reviews of legislation take time.
“There are issues with the ordinance as it was submitted that are serious, and we do have to look at them,” Welby said. “We can't just say, hey, we're not going to worry about that, and maybe it won't happen.”
Feedback from the “justice and law enforcement community” raised concerns about “potential criminal prosecution of employees, duplicating existing laws, creating conflicts, (a) lack (of) enforceability,” he said.
“Should some of ... the language in that be held to be not in compliance with federal law, it could expose us to legal challenges, financial burdens and operational inefficiencies,” he said.
Chermak agreed, saying he hasn’t even had a chance to read Walker’s memo.
“It has to be done right the first time as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “And we need to look at what we can do and what we legally can’t do ... Whatever we can do, we will discuss it and figure it out.”
