About 50 demonstrators took their protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the street in downtown Bellefonte on Wednesday night.
The protesters marched in the roadway on West High Street for about 10 minutes of the hourlong rally, which ended without incident.
Organized by the People’s Defense Front and the Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity, the “Drive Out ICE” protest was spurred on in part by recent immigration enforcement action in Bellefonte. Local immigrant rights groups, including the protest organizers and the Centre County Rapid Response Network, reported that on March 4 a man was arrested by ICE at the Centre County Courthouse.
The groups said that the man, who one protest organizer described as a food industry worker who has lived in the county for a decade, entered the courthouse for a “routine appointment” when plain-clothes ICE agents surrounded the building from the front and back. They said agents also unsuccessfully chased the man’s friend who had come with him to the courthouse and was sitting in a nearby vehicle.
“The goal tonight really was to show that people in Centre County, especially in Bellefonte, working people do not stand with ICE, strongly stand against the kidnapping that happened of one of our community members two weeks ago, and that we will fight back,” a protest organizer said. “We won’t sit back and take it. We are fighting against that; people here stand against that.”
Demonstrators stood in front of the courthouse for about 30 minutes starting at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, holding signs, chanting and listening to a few short speeches. They then filed behind banner-holders and began marching west on High Street as several participants split off to block cross-traffic, which was light.
After about five minutes, two Bellefonte police cruisers arrived and trailed behind the group. An officer told the group via loudspeaker to leave the roadway at least twice, but the march carried on through the Spring Street and Water Street intersections.
The protest stopped at the waterfront lot across from Talleyrand Park, and demonstrators remained there for another 20 minutes, again chanting, listening to remarks from organizers and jeering the nearby police officers, who they accused of being ICE enablers.
Two Bellefonte cruisers and a Spring Township police vehicle remained on Dunlop and High Streets, but officers did not interact with the protesters.
Organizers pointed out that other immigration enforcement activity has taken place in Centre County over the past year, most notably in August when two dozen construction workers were taken into custody by federal agents during traffic stops while they were on their way to a job site at Mount Nittany Medical Center.
A representative of the People’s Defense Front said his group now organizes about 50 patrols a week to monitor for ICE activity.
“They’re in neighborhoods, they’re in workplaces, and what they are meant to do is to deter ICE, stop ICE, to send a message: If you want to come in here and kidnap one of our workers, we’re going to fight back,” he said. “… We’re going to fight back and we’re going to stop them and we’re not going to let anybody else get taken.”
