29-01-2025
It's a first among all Pennsylvania counties, but is ICE cooperation a good or a bad thing?
CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — In theory, nothing is different here — for an undocumented immigrant released from custody here after completing a sentence — from in any other county jail or prison in Pennsylvania.
Franklin County Jail has to release an inmate by 11:59 p.m. on the day that person completes their detention. If that person is an undocumented immigrant, facing potential deportation, they go free unless a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, officer happens to show up then.
In practice, there's now a greater chance that person will go directly from county corrections custody into ICE custody rather than possibly going free first, now that Franklin has become the first Pennsylvania county to join one of two ICE 'delegation of immigration authority' programs.
The program Franklin County's three commissioners (two Republicans and one Democrat) voted unanimously to join — the warrant service officer program — essentially deputizes corrections officers to act as temporary ICE officers and hold an otherwise-released inmate for up to three days before ICE takes physical custody of the person to process them for possible deportation.
'It's a safety net both for us — the county — and ICE,' Heather Franzoni, the jail's warden, said Wednesday. 'And I think it's just a good collaboration in order to keep the community safe.'
Counties in other states already cooperate similarly with ICE under the warrant service officer program or another program called the 'jail enforcement model.'
Franzoni described the program as a 'safe handoff' of people who — here or anywhere else — are already supposed to go directly into ICE custody (because ICE has placed 'detainers' on them) but sometimes instead go free because of a lack of ICE agents available to take custody of the inmate before the jail is required to release them.
Franzoni said the local cooperation was already in the works last summer, before the 2024 presidential election, meaning it would have begun whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris had taken office Jan. 20.
But ICE itself has been arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants more aggressively under now-President Trump, so some immigrant advocates are worry about any local efforts that facilitate the agency's work.
'What we can agree on is that we do want the violent criminals out of the country,' said Damaris Mazariegos, a U.S. citizen who immigrated to the Chambersburg area from Guatemala about 30 years ago, when she was a young child.
On the other hand, 'people who are already in there who have completed their sentence — you if it was somebody that was not an immigrant, people would be looking for for them to be released and welcomed back into society,' Mazariegos said, adding she worries about the treatment of the immigrants during their extended detentions 'as the hatred is building up for undocumented immigrants under this administration.'
Franzoni said guardrails are in place. The up to three additional days at the jail, she said, 'aren't going to look any different from' the rest of their detention.
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