The answer is maybe, because it’s happening in Bucks County Pennsylvania which is 2,000 miles from the Mexico border, and not close to Canada, nor even too close to the coastline.
BUCKS COUNTY BEACON Exclusive: Sheriff Fred Harran Enlists Bucks County in Trump’s Nationwide Immigration Crackdown The Bucks County Sheriff’s office has an application pending to participate in ICE’s 287(g) “task force model”, which essentially makes local law enforcement officers de facto ICE agents. by Cyril Mychalejko | April 22, 2025 Roughly 2,000 miles away from the Mexico border, Bucks County will soon officially become the next battlefield in the Trump administration’s war on undocumented immigrants. Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran has applied for his office to participate in ICE’s 287(g) “task force model” partnership, a program described as a “force multiplier” as it trains and then deputizes local law enforcement officers to act as de facto ICE agents as they perform their day-to-day duties. “The final paperwork is in Washington. I got off the phone with ICE an hour ago,” Harran told the Beacon Tuesday morning. “It’s completed on my end and we’re waiting on the final signature.” The approval is imminent.
Political Research Associates have a map of sheriffs who’ve been known to be into this sort of thing: https://politicalresearch.org/sheriffs-map/
I think we need to review what sheriffs have been doing already, like the Rwandan genocide style neighborhood checkpoints stopping people who supposedly “look like immigrants” and asking for their papers I guess.
What is FAIR? The Insurgence: Sheriffs—Season 1, Episode 4 Cloee Cooper Political Research Associates October 24, 2024 CLOEE: This is Stefanía Arteaga, an immigrant rights leader from North Carolina. Stefania: It wasn’t until spring break of my senior year of high school. I remember this vividly because I just remember crying and sobbing profusely. Stefania: I got a call from my mom… It was just.. terrible because I had seen checkpoints before, um, but I had never had an understanding until that point of what the checkpoints actually meant. CLOEE: We usually think of check-points associated with militarized zones, or border-crossings. The check-point Stefania was referring to was inside of a town — sheriff’s deputies stopping people from driving from one neighborhood to another, just for looking like an immigrant. Just think, far right sheriffs like the ones we’ve heard about, with the power to arrest and detain people they think are immigrants. Stefania: Sheriff’s deputies on this two lane road right outside of a park and rec field just stopping people and asking them for identification and a driver’s license… and of course, the immigrant community in East Charlotte, which is heavily Latino, nobody had those documentations.
And it’s eerie how casually checkpoints are mentioned in a proposed anti mask ban bill, just assuming that people should be stopped and identified at random in public and expected to remove a medical mask. What’s next? Just having people stop you at random and asking you to take off your knit hat in the middle of winter? Who thinks this is rational or needed? It seems unAmerican frankly.
Some of these county sheriffs have been deputizing vigilantes, just rando pals who are members of the public.
AP – A New York county with one of the nation’s largest police forces is deputizing armed residents – By PHILIP MARCELO Updated 3:09 PM EST, June 11, 2024 Nassau County officials posted a notice in March seeking private citizens with gun licenses to serve as provisional special deputy sheriffs who could assist in the “protection of human life and property during an emergency.” Twenty-five have completed training in recent weeks, but locals who have been rallying against the scheme question the need for the unit and have raised concerns about the potential for overpolicing after departments across the country cracked down on protests against the Israel-Hamas war. Democrats, who are the minority in the county legislature, and some community advocates say they worry Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman — a Republican and staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump — could call up the deputies to quell political dissent, a charge he strongly denies. Critics also contend that emergencies require a different type of volunteer.
This was all happening without much fuss being made about it apparently. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Nobody really reported on when Ivan Raiklin, with ties to Republican movers and shakers, said there were actual plans for county level officials to deputize ex military anti-vaxxers with axes to grind for “livestreamed swatting raids” on people on shitlists – he specified this would be happening no matter who won the presidential election.
I’ve not gotten any straight answers, or any response at all from local officials I’ve written to about this. I just saw Mayor Cognetti of Scranton PA in the news in late January was totally downplaying people’s concerns about these issues. I have not seen any public backpedaling on Paige Cognetti’s part either, considering the distinct unprecedented and disturbing crisis unfolding ever since. The mayor is running for reelection.
