Allegheny County Council is set to consider a bill that would widely prohibit county employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. But council members said during a committee meeting last Thursday that they are largely in the dark as to how much interaction county employees currently have with ICE and other federal agencies.
With scheduled votes looming later this month, council members mulled ways to get better information from county agencies. One member, Alex Rose, said “we have not been getting very straight answers” from various parts of county government.
Rose asked the council’s chief of staff how to exercise subpoena power to get information. Members discussed accessing security camera footage from the courthouse to see if ICE agents have been present and whether county law enforcement has interacted with them.
“I think there is a real need to talk about it in specific terms as opposed to abstract terms,” before voting on the bill, said Councilor DeWitt Walton…