Immigration agents and local police arrested more than 40 people in two raids related to a Geisinger Medical Center construction site in Montour County during the last week, immigrant advocacy groups say.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested at least 41 people as they left the site on Sept. 2 about 5 p.m., according to an email forwarded by the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition on behalf of the Centre County Rapid Response Network.
The agents arrested at least one person Tuesday, the email says.
The workers are natives of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and other countries, the group says.
Efforts to obtain comment from an ICE spokesman were not immediately successful.
It is unknown if the agents had warrants or probable cause to make the arrests.
The construction project
Last year, a contractor for Geisinger began building an 11-story tower that’s part of an estimated $880 million expansion of the system’s medical center in Danville. The tower will include an emergency department double its current size, 192 patient rooms so all of the hospital’s rooms are private and a new operating suite.
Geisinger comments
A Geisinger spokesman issued a statement that says the system knows about the Sept. 2 “law enforcement activity.”
“The location of the activity was not on Geisinger property and appears to have involved workers from the Geisinger Medical Center tower construction project,” the statement says. “As with any large construction project, we hire a construction manager to oversee the project. It is their responsibility to make sure all workers on the project meet all federal and state work eligibility requirements."
Whiting-Turner, a Towson, Maryland-based company with dozens of offices nationwide, is the project’s general contractor.
Efforts to obtain comment from the company were not immediately successful.
Witness describes the arrests
The immigrant groups say eyewitnesses saw agents stop workers’ vehicles at Geisinger exits, followed workers from “the edges of Geisinger property to their homes” and set up “active checkpoints near highway entrances.”
The immigrant groups’ statement purports to quote at least one eyewitness.
“What happened last Wednesday is a direct attack on the hardworking immigrant community,” the witness says in the statement. “We are building the largest source for jobs in Danville — a project that will benefit many people — yet I cannot stop replaying the events in my mind. ICE monitored us with drones, watched our vehicles, and intercepted us on the roads. Alongside local police, they waited for us. With the support of local police, they used their power to intimidate us, to let us know we have no rights and that they will take anyone away they encounter.”
In the Tuesday raid, ICE flew drones, the groups say.
“There is no other way to describe what happened that day as no other than a manhunt,” the witness says. “Since then, my fellow co-workers are terrified, and no one wants to work.”
The group say Danville police participated in the raids.
A secretary for Danville Police Chief Greg Watson said he told her to refer questions from reporters to ICE.
