Bucks County sheriff cuts off ICE partnership, claims it poses danger to community

Bucks County Sheriff Danny Ceisler announced the end of the formal partnership on Wednesday, where he claimed, “After careful evaluation, I have determined that the certain public safety costs of this ICE partnership are greatly outweighed by any potential public safety benefits that this partnership may offer,” Ceisler said. “That is why this morning I signed an order terminating the 287(g) partnership between the Bucks County Sheriff’s Office and ICE.”

https://twitter.com/tpostmillennial/status/2011902543710871769

In April, former Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran announced that the county would partner with ICE under the 287(g) agreement, which allows for law enforcement to be deputized to carry out immigration enforcement.

“The 287(g) program dates back to the Clinton administration but has been far more widely used during the Trump administration, particularly during the second Trump administration, as a method to assist in the administration’s stated goals of deporting over one million men, women and children per year,” Ceisler added.

The program, Ceisler added, “allows officers to stop, interrogate and detain anybody who they believe is in the country without current authorization.” Harran, when he announced the partnership last year, said it was common sense, that deputies would frequently arrest people on criminal charges who were in the country illegally.

Ceisler claimed that he got information from immigration leaders who said that Hispanics in the community were not calling the police out of fear for immigration enforcement, per NBC 10.

“They feared that local law enforcement responding to a crime they reported would take them too,” the sheriff said. Bucks County is considered one of the large battleground areas in Pennsylvania, and was won by Trump in the 2024 election.