Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran is mad.
He is mad that the last Bucks County Commissioners meeting was packed with opponents of his newly minted ICE 287(g) “task force model” partnership.
He is mad that local, and national media, is pointing out that this partnership sanctions his participating deputies to act as de facto ICE agents and allows them “to challenge people on the street about their immigration status — and possibly arrest them.”
He’s mad at local critics of this program, which includes groups like the Bucks County NAACP – who says 287(g) is “a dangerous program that targets immigrants, worsens racial profiling and undermines public.”
And Harran is also mad at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania for pointing out in a letter that his ICE partnership violates the Pennsylvania Constitution and the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Act because it lacks approval by the Bucks County Commissioners – the county’s “governing body.” And he’s mad they are going file a lawsuit over it.
So what did he do?
He went on a local right-wing MAGA podcast to lash out, accusing Bucks County’s critics of the program of being “liars,” and ACLU PA of being “lunatics.”
“When your response to criticism is to call people ‘lunatics,’ you’ve already lost the argument,” said Democratic sheriff candidate Danny Ceisler.
Indeed.
Moreso, Heidi Roux, executive director of Bucks County’s Immigrants Rights action, said this type of outburst against local critics, which includes herself, is unwarranted.
“These were poor word choices. 287(g) is just bad policy that will have unintended consequences and unnecessary risks for Bucks County,” Roux told the Bucks County Beacon.
Sheriff Harran would have to be living in a MAGA media cocoon to not recognize how this program has led to abuses – for years – and that this is why so many people oppose it. You could go back to fellow Republican Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign in Arizona, when in 2011 a Department of Justice investigation concluded that Maricopa County sheriff “engaged in a pattern and practice of constitutional violations” and “racial profiling” while participating in this 287(g) program. This prompted the Obama administration to suspend the program.
“This is the type of policy that invites abuse of power. It’s also a huge step backwards regarding work that’s been done to build trust between law enforcement and communities of color,” said Kevin Leven, co-leader of the Bucks County Anti-Racism Coalition, and another local critic.
Now, recent coverage that reports ICE abuses won’t be found in right-wing media outlets like Delaware Valley Journal or Broad + Liberty, where Harran likely turns to for news. But for everyone else without a right-wing junk media diet, they are plentiful.
Take The Associated Press for example. The AP reported that ICE deported a “4-year-old — who is suffering from a rare form of cancer.” And this child was a U.S. citizen.
Or take this video from April of an ICE agent smashing the car window of an immigrant seeking asylum.
Even the libertarian CATO Institute is raising the alarm about how “ICE agents routinely mask up when seizing people,” like when masked ICE agents arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka last week for exercising his First Amendment rights outside of an immigration detention center in New Jersey.
I could go on, and on.
It might be good for Harran to read about these ICE abuses so he can understand why so many Bucks County residents he is supposed to serve oppose the aggressive 287(g) “task force model” he signed up for. It also might be good for him to make public these so-called policies he claims to have prohibiting his deputies from sweeps, random checks, and board enforcement, like the 287(g) “task force model” he signed up for empowers them to do. We can’t find them and he won’t answer requests from one of our reporters to produce them.
READ: Bucks County Commissioners Meeting Packed with Residents Fired Up Over Sheriff’s ICE Agreement
Unfortunately, Harran didn’t stop with the “liars” and “lunatics” insults. Harran also claimed on the right-wing podcast that Democratic Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie has “hatred for me.” This is part of his disingenuous accusation that Harvie’s comments at the last commissioners’ meeting were antisemitic, targeted him because he is Jewish, and that he deserves an apology as a result.
Here’s what Harvie said that triggered Harran:
“For someone who’s spent a lot of time studying World War II, there are definite parallels that I see happening. Not nearly as great as what happened in 1920s Germany, 1930s Germany, but certainly not too far away from being in the same ballpark. And it’s concerning. It’s something that all of us should be more focused on.”
Watch the video of Harvie’s commentary clipped by Levittown Now to get the full context.
This was not antisemitism.
Harran’s Democratic opponent Ceisler, who is also Jewish and whose grandfather helped liberate Nazi concentration camps during WWII, accused Harran of “shamelessly exploit[ing] our shared religion and the memory of the Holocaust in a political stunt.” The intent, Ceisler told the Bucks County Beacon, was clear: to deflect legitimate criticism of Harran’s recent enrollment in ICE’s 287(g) “task force model.”
Shame on Harran.
If the sheriff can’t accept legitimate criticism without running to friendly right-wing media to moan about it, maybe he’s not the right person for the job.
