State College’s Borough Council president on Monday reiterated the longstanding policy of borough police not to participate in Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.
The remark came after recent ICE activity in Centre County, including in the State College Police Department service area, and a call during public comment on Monday night for the council to take up an immigrant protection ordinance.
“As you all know, there have been concerns locally,” said Cricket Hunter, a volunteer with the Centre County Rapid Response Network, an organization that monitors local ICE activity and advocates for immigrant rights. “People have been taken, neighbors have been taken. And not only does that affect those particular families, but it has a chilling effect on the participation of everybody who’s here.”
CCRN also recently received a false report that included an AI-generated image purporting to show ICE agents at a downtown State College restaurant.
“That was not real, but it is a way of targeting members of our community and business owners in our community,” she said. “Even though it was not real, and it had been circulating on campus, that’s when it came to us this sentence, and we were able to investigate it and get the word out.”
An ordinance making clear that State College police do not participate in immigration enforcement, Hunter said, will help build trust.
“If they’re afraid to engage with law enforcement as witnesses, as complainants, or as people who need help, then our community is the poorer for it,” she said.
Council President Evan Myers later in the meeting reconfirmed that borough police do not take part in ICE activity.
“This council has taken stand after stand to protect our immigrants and will continue to do so in any way, that we can,” Myers said. “Our police department has policies of not participating with ICE in any kind of activity because of the very things that we heard tonight about making sure that the police can enforce the law and that members of our community can rely on the police, our community policing, to protect them. And if they don’t feel safe talking to our police force, then they won’t be protected. …And we don’t enforce federal law, just like we wouldn’t expect ICE to give out speeding tickets, although you never know.”
Borough Council in February tabled a proposed resolution calling for “timely and meaningful reform” to ICE, in part because several council members expressed concerns that it could bring unwanted attention and harm to the people it meant to support, particularly without substantive action to support it.
On March 25, ICE arrested an individual on East College Avenue in College Township, which is serviced by State College police. Advocacy groups said a witness reported seeing a State College police officer at the scene, but the borough department issued a statement saying it “had no prior knowledge that ICE agents planned to place this individual into custody, nor did the SCPD participate in or was requested to participate in the incident.”
Now-retired State College Police Chief John Gardner previously explained on multiple occasions since 2017 that the department’s policy is that it does not take an active role in immigration enforcement. It complies with warrants and judicial orders, and assists outside law enforcement in criminal investigations, he said, but immigration enforcement is typically a civil administrative matter that is the responsibility of federal agencies. The department also does not ask victims or witnesses about their immigration status.
