Bucks County sheriff signs agreement with ICE

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Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran has signed an agreement with Immigration Customs and Enforcement to collaborate with the agency in enforcing immigration law. The agreement is pending final ICE approval and is not yet in effect. Harran said he “expect[s]” it to be signed but does not yet know when that will be.

The agreement allows the local authority to ask any person about their immigration status, and the power to serve and execute warrants of arrest for immigration violations, among other provisions.

Harran told WHYY News on Wednesday that about a dozen sheriff deputies will receive training work with ICE as part of the “task force model” in the agency’s 287(g) program.

Harran said the collaboration will allow his office to access the ICE database and search for people who have arrest warrants in Bucks County or beyond.

“So if we come in contact with someone that has a warrant for their arrest, that means many times they’ve been through the criminal justice system or they failed to come to the criminal justice system, and a judge has issued a valid legal warrant for their arrest,” he said, “it is only those people that we will be checking the ICE database for, no one else.”

A spokesperson for the county said county commissioners have not seen the agreement and do not have a comment at this time.

If approved, Bucks County would become the second Pennsylvania county to actively participate in the federal agency’s task force model, after the sheriff’s office in Franklin County, in south-central Pennsylvania.

Partnerships between ICE and local agencies under the 287(g) program more than doubled in the first months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Many Pennsylvania counties who previously had detainer agreements with ICE ended them in 2014, after a federal judge ruled in favor of a U.S. citizen who was unlawfully detained by local law enforcement in Lehigh County on behalf of ICE in Galarza v. Szalczyk.

A 2022 report from the American Civil Liberties Union found “widespread” civil rights violations among more than 100 state and local law enforcement agencies who participated in ICE’s 287(g) program.

Harran said he was “not concerned” about the county committing a violation, and the office will “absolutely not” be detaining anyone on behalf of ICE who does not have an outstanding  warrant.

“Some of this is premature, because we have not went through the official training,” he said. “So once I go through that training, I’ll have a better understanding of it … I can tell you if it’s something that is not what I perceive it to be, then I will get out of it, and that will be the end of it.”

Heidi Roux, executive director of Doylestown-based Immigrant Rights Action, an immigrant rights advocacy organization, said the agreement will hurt public safety as “an additional unnecessary barrier” for immigrant community members who will feel less comfortable cooperating with law enforcement. She said she and other advocates are calling on the sheriff to rescind the agreement.

“I think that something that’s not talked about as much is that law enforcement and our immigrant community are both interested in identifying criminals,” she said. “But we’ve worked so hard to build this relationship with our immigrant community so they can come forward without fear to report and disclose crimes. That is completely going to be dismantled, that community building that has taken years to build, and that distrust of law enforcement will immediately take its place.”

Harran said he “understand[s]” those concerns, but reiterated that his office will not investigate law-abiding residents.

“We are not running individuals that are reporting crimes, witnesses of crimes, victims of crimes, in the area when a crime occurred,” he said. “We are only dealing with those people that have active warrants for their arrest that we come in contact with.”

He noted that the agreement itself states that local officers fall under the local office’s policies and procedures first and foremost, so his office’s policy would take precedence over any direction from ICE.

Foreign-born residents make up more than 10% of the county’s population, according to the most recent Census data, a figure that has nearly doubled in the past 25 years.

Roux said she is “shocked” that Harran decided to enter into the agreement with ICE while running for reelection this year.

“This is not a popular measure. This isn’t something that is community supported,” she said. “It actually goes directly against community building. I mean, do we want Washington, D.C. out of our small towns or not?”

Harran said he will not allow for federal interference and currently has an “open dialogue” with Immigration Rights Action and immigration attorneys. He said he offered to participate in a public forum on the issue.

“I’m not ICE,” he said. “I’m not the federal government. I’m the sheriff of Bucks County. That’s who I answer to, the people of Bucks County. My job is to make their lives a little safer. I’m going to use a tool that’s given to me to do that, but I’m going to do it responsibly.”