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Residents flooded a Bucks County commissioners meeting Wednesday morning to give their thoughts on the agreement between Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran and U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement to collaborate with the agency on immigration enforcement.

Often heated, the meeting regularly erupted in cheers and jeers as supporters and opponents spoke at the podium. Many residents, such as Betsy Falconi, of Buckingham, came to speak out against the agreement and joined a rally of more than 100 people organized by Indivisible Bucks County and immigrant rights activists.

“I am just disgusted with what’s being done with no due process,” she told WHYY News shortly before the meeting. “I just can’t bear it.”

Others supported the sheriff and his decision.

Fran Hiller said that activists are “advocating for illegal aliens who have committed crimes. Do they not care about the safety of Bucks County residents?”

287(g) program

The agreement is part of the 287(g) program which was established by the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1996 and enables local officials to partner with ICE to assist them in immigration enforcement. Immigration enforcement is a power specifically designated to the federal government, which can’t force or coerce local governments to help, but local law enforcement can voluntarily participate.

Officers often receive specialized training from ICE and operate under ICE supervision, usually only retaining limited enforcement powers. Their functions can include identifying, processing and detaining individuals who are believed to be in the country unlawfully.

While it has always been somewhat controversial, news about legal residents being abducted and sent to foreign prisons without court hearings has generated concern from Bucks County residents on both sides of the partisan divide.

“I’m very concerned about the due process rights that stand a chance of very much being violated,” said Gard Holby. The Republican, who has served as a Bridgeton Township supervisor for 25 years, adds that he believes the issue is splitting communities. “I find it devastating to see the potential divisions between the two parties.”

He added that recent deportation efforts are “cruel.”

“We talk about sending people home, well they don’t have a home there,” he said.

Public safety and liability

Supporters of the 287(g) program argue that it promotes public safety by enabling local authorities to remove individuals who commit crimes and who are also in the country illegally.

Resident Peter Cox blamed former President Joe Biden for creating a problem he believes President Donald Trump is trying to fix.

“I don’t care what you think about ICE or what the president is doing, the last administration opened our borders and turned it into a wash,” he told the commissioners to the sound of booing from the crowd behind him. He added that many of those who entered the country “are running around this country, doing whatever they want to and breaking the law.”

Resident Kathleen Maguire said that the sheriff’s office already collaborates with ICE to “focus on those individuals who are actively involved in criminal behavior.”

“They’re not going house to house, going after people, taking parents away from children,” she said. “They’re looking at people who are here illegally and committing criminal behavior. Working with ICE is another way to enhance our public safety in the county.”

Critics, however, contend that the program can lead to racial profiling, erode trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement and divert local resources from other public safety priorities.

Agnes Morrison said that her “grandfather was a police officer” who engaged in “community policing.”

“He believed that the neighborhood you worked in, you made friends with the people because when you made friends with the people, they came to you, they saw you as somebody safe,” she said. “I’m deeply concerned about this 287(g) program that will hurt our immigrant community.”

Joe Frederick accused Harran of using immigrants “as pawns to further his political ambitions” and said that if he was truly concerned about public safety, he would do more to serve the 7,000 warrants currently outstanding.

“How many of these warrants are for dangerous criminals who will continue to inflict pain and suffering on the residents of our community?” he said. “The sheriff’s office has claimed it needs additional deputies to serve these warrants, so why would the sheriff be willing to give up a dozen or more of his deputies to make them de facto agents?”

Several others also said that the partnership could cost the county money as a result of increased liability and a loss in tourism. According to Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia, the agreement only provides for training and does not include liability coverage, adding that the county’s insurance has a deductible of $500,000 per incident.

“That’s a half-million dollars,” she said.

Rose Hanh Yuan, a Vietnamese immigrant who works in real estate, told the commissioners that new residents and visitors would stay away.

“I can say with confidence, if Bucks County becomes known as an ICE county, people will avoid moving here,” she said. “It would hurt our property values, deter business investment and push families away. Tourists, conference planners and future residents won’t see a welcoming, vibrant community — they’ll see a place defined by fear and exclusion.”

‘That won’t be us’

Harran, who was at the meeting, later refuted the criticisms. He said that his office would only alert ICE in cases where they come across someone who has a warrant for their arrest for a “serious” crime.

“We’re not talking about traffic violations, we’re not talking about public drunkenness, we’re talking about misdemeanors,” he told WHYY News. “And we’re not going on raids, we’re not going on calls and checking people’s immigration status or car stops or any of the other crazy stuff that people said.”

Regarding concerns people have expressed about ICE wrongfully detaining and deporting people who have a legal right to be in the country, he said he is confident “it will not happen here.”

He said that his department would “make sure these folks have an active warrant for their arrest” and that they would employ a “multiple check process here to ensure this person is in fact wanted by ICE and is illegally in this country.”

“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that this goes off without a hitch,” he said.

As for criticism about costs and liability, he says that law enforcement always comes with liability risks and that deporting people who would serve years in prison could actually save the county millions of dollars in the long run.

“So wouldn’t they rather us send them back to their country of origin, that way we don’t have to burden the expense?” he said. “So then they’ll say, ‘Well, it’s a humanitarian thing.’ Well, you can’t have it both ways. It’s either a cost savings or it’s not.”

Heidi Roux, executive director of Immigrant Rights Action who spoke at the rally, called that “narrow-minded,” and says that the sheriff isn’t taking into account the “potential high stakes liability in lawsuits.”

“We can see that the risk is just not worth the payoff,” she said, adding that the county would be better served by a “community policing model” that the agreement threatens to undermine.

“Building relationships and building trust between community and law enforcement is a critical piece to ensuring the safety of any community,” Roux said. “I think that the broader impact this will have on victims coming forward, on people reporting crime or just the trust that someone has in calling 911. This just negates all the work that was done in community building and relationship building between law enforcement and Bucks County residents.”