In three rural Pennsylvania, in which President Donald Trump won by over 20 percentage points, local leaders woke up on Friday with a surprise: they were placed on List of the US Internal Security Department From local governments incompatible with the federal immigration law, their federal funds are currently threatened.
These poviats controlled by GOP have never had the so -called sanctuary policy surrounding immigration. In fact, the only policy of the “sanctuary”, which some of them were implemented in response to the initiatives of the sanctuary in another place that aim to confirm their loyalty to federal government, when democratic areas promised to break it.
In Montour, Central Pennsylvania, which was listed on the DHS list on Thursday, the commissioners took a resolution in 2021. “Sanctuary of the County”. Clarion County, Western Pennsylvania, about 37,000 inhabitants, who also created a list of internal security, adopted a resolution calling as “Sanctuary unwinds of the corrections” In 2021, he doubles for the rights to weapons and refusing to enforce any law limiting access to weapons.
But the support of poviats for Trump, who conducted a campaign on his immigration policy, and local governments conducted by GOP did not stop them from the internal security grille.
The Trump administration has been threatening for months that it will suspend federal funds on the part of state and local authorities, which oppose federal executive orders, because Trump fills its aggressive immigration program. The list of towns, which, according to the government, is threatened with the loss of federal dollars, was released on Thursday and included 16 cities and poviat of Pennsylvania, many of which Democrats controlled by Democrats, including Philadelphia, as well as the entire state of New Jersey. The federal government has not established a definition of what makes up the sanctuary, and many local democratic leaders claim that they are in line with the federal immigration law and will cooperate with ICE if you are asked.
But local officials in Pennsylvania’s rural counties claim that they believe that their markings as “jurisdictions of the sanctuary” are a mistake and insisted that they observe the federal immigration law.
“We are almost certainly on the list by mistake and I think that in the near future you will see our name,” said Christopher Gabriel, a lawyer of Clarion.
These counties have He fought with the allegations of being the jurisdictions of the sanctuary Over the years, local officials have said that after adding them to the often recirculated national list of cities, a sanctuary developed by the anti -immigration group.
Officials from Clarion and Montour said that they were added to the list of poviats of the Sanctuary from the right -wing Think Tank Studies for Immigration Studies, probably because of previous versions of local prison policies, which required a signed order to stop someone on behalf of immigration in the US and enforcing exact exact.
Officials said that these policies have been updated in recent years. For example, in Montour, Polityka has been prescribed to explain that the prison of the unit will notify ICE when the order will not be present for someone who wants to stop, so that the poviat prison could transfer care, if necessary, the commissioner of Montour Rebecca Dressler, commissioner of the Ferrial County, said in -mail.
They said that both poviats were able to remove themselves from the CIS list, but not without a lot of headache and false information spinning around their community, that local law enforcement authorities were directed to not observe internal security officials.
Braxton White, a lonely democratic commissioner at the Clarion’s three-person management board, said that DHS should have been looking at the election map to realize the rural county of Pennsylvania, which was supported by Trump 76-24, does not support the policy of the city of Sanctaury, he said.
“There is no way that the unit voting at Trump at this level support the policy of the sanctuary,” said White. “There is no universe in which Clarion’s county would choose people for this.”
White, who joined the Council of Commissioners of Clarion Ferriers in 2024, said that in the last a year and a half he spent most of his time on the board, responding to fears that the unit has a sanctuary policy and feeds illegal immigrants from ICE.
Adams County, another GOP-Stronghold, in which Gettysburg is the seat of the poviat, was also mentioned this week on the DHS list. Local officials did not answer the requests for comment on Friday.
William McKenna, the sheriff of Montour, said that his department recently applied for the 287 (G) federal program through the Internal Security Department for better cooperation with ICE. He confirmed that his county would cooperate with ICE on demand, although within 11 years as a sheriff, he saw the agency passing through the rural county.
“The law is a law. On both sides there are things that not everyone likes,” said William McKenna, a sheriff of Montour. “We must follow the rights we have. This helps to make a civilized society.”
