U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio says local law enforcement in Beaver County is driving a surge of immigration detentions which is in turn taking away resources from local police departments.
“Local law enforcement should be focused on local public safety,” he added.
Deluzio, D-Aspinwall, made the comments at a press conference after releasing a report showing where immigration detentions have occurred in his district, clustered near municipalities where local police have so-called “287(g)” agreements to help ICE.
“Something is happening and it’s pretty clear to me it’s the presence of 287(g) agreements and the participation of local law enforcement that is driving this heavy enforcement in Beaver County,” Deluzio said.
Deluzio is calling for an investigation into whether ICE is using local law enforcement officials to conduct immigration detentions outside the jurisdictions in which they have authority. A majority of the detentions in northern Allegheny County for which ICE reported receiving help from local law enforcement occurred in municipalities that don’t have formal agreements with ICE, including Cheswick, Gibsonia, Carnegie, Harmar and Harwick.
Many of the reported hotspots neighbor towns — including Stowe, Robinson, Coraopolis and Springdale — where departments have had ICE agreements for at least some portion of the last 12 months.
“The question is obvious: Which local law enforcement agency was operating outside of its municipality?” Deluzio said. “There is only one Allegheny County municipality in my district with such an agreement, Springdale [Borough], and yet there are detentions or arrests in other parts of my district.”
Public Source has previously reported on instances when police from Springdale were assisting in detentions outside of the department’s boundaries. Legal experts told Public Source that this kind of help is likely legal, as long as officers are assisting federal agents with immigration enforcement rather than conducting routine law enforcement.
But Deluzio said the public has the right to know which police departments are taking resources away from their own jurisdictions to take part in immigration enforcement elsewhere. “All of us in Western Pennsylvania and across the country have the right to clear and complete information about what is happening in our neighborhoods,” he said.
Jaime Martinez, executive director of Frontline Dignity, said the rate of detentions in Deluzio’s congressional district has nearly doubled since 2025. Nearly all of these additional detentions are happening in Beaver County, he said, where they increased from 25 last year to 134 during the first seven months of the year. Frontline Dignity organizes communities and responds to immigration enforcement actions.
Allegheny County, by contrast, did not see an increase from 2025.
“The question we ask ourselves is: Who is exercising immigration enforcement authority in our communities, under what circumstances, and with what oversight?” Martinez said.
An official with ICE didn’t immediately respond to questions.
Local police helped ICE about half the time
Deluzio represents all of Beaver County and the northern parts of Allegheny County. A total of 209 immigrants were detained across the district between Jan. 1 and Aug. 6 – just under one per day. About half of the arrests were made with the help of local law enforcement.
More than two-thirds of the detentions occurred in Beaver County, even though its population is much smaller than the population of the areas he represents in Allegheny County.
Nine municipalities in Beaver County had agreements with ICE during the seven months of Deluzio’s study, while only three in Allegheny County did – although Stowe and Coraopolis have since ended their agreements. An additional three Beaver County municipalities have signed new agreements since August.
Tony Guy, Beaver County’s sheriff, has an agreement under which officers from the department can help ICE with detentions across the county. Guy told Public Source in an interview his department has not received any training or funding, and hasn’t accessed any ICE databases as a result of the agreement. “Although I signed a 287(g) agreement we haven’t executed on it,” he said.
The only action the sheriff’s office takes, Guy said, is helping to turn over immigrants who have been arrested. “That’s not changed since I’ve been here for 11 years,” he said. “There is no golly gee whiz wow news. Nothing has changed.”
“There are multiple law enforcement agencies in Beaver County that have executed 287(g) agreements that are actively cooperating and that’s where all of these are coming from,” he added. “I don’t have any numbers or figures.”
Guy failed to unseat Deluzio as his Republican challenger last week.
The data in Deluzio’s report isn’t entirely clear because ICE doesn’t say which police departments helped make a given arrest or whether the town listed is the municipality or the postal designation, which can be different. “This report highlights the real failures in ICE’s reporting of detentions,” Deluzio said.
Deluzio said the vast majority of immigrants who are being detained either have no conviction or pending charges (67%) and about nine out of 10 were not listed as a threat.
The data from his district, he said, shows that the Trump administration has been focusing on deportations rather than keeping communities safe, adding that last week’s election results are a repudiation of Trump’s immigration policies.
“The Trump Administration mass deportation regime is primarily targeting people who have committed no crimes, face no allegations of violence, and are lawfully pursuing their shot at the American Dream,” he said.
Oliver Morrison is the health and environment reporter at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at oliver@publicsource.org.
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