AMBRIDGE, Pa. — More than 50 people gathered here Aug. 1 to protest a combined local police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation the night before, which led to the arrest of at least 10 people.
The police and county sheriffs “were going through bars, questioning people, checking for warrants and papers,” Lorianne Burgess told the Militant, and then they turned their focus “to a Hispanic grocery store where a family was picked up.” Burgess, who owns a bakery in Ambridge, just north of Pittsburgh, had called for a protest against the arrests on Facebook.
“I saw the cops, I thought at first it was a drug bust,” retired state worker and Ambridge resident Jack Royal told the Militant. He joined the protest after finding out about it that morning. This was the second action against the raid, one had been put together as the arrests took place.
Beaver County District Attorney Nathan Bible described the cop action as a “saturation operation.” Its purpose was to “round up any individuals with outstanding warrants,” he said. “While federal agents from ICE were present, this was in no way an ‘ICE raid.’”
“This was not public safety,” Monica Ruiz, executive director of Casa San José, an area-wide immigrant rights group, said in a statement. This was “a show of power meant to terrorize immigrant families.”
Tony Lane, the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, had gone to Ambridge to present the party’s campaign.
“As well as expressing our support for the protest,” Lane told the Militant, “we discussed with participants in the action the important steps being taking by unions in acting against deportations, and the need for a broader fight for amnesty for all undocumented workers to unify the working class.”
In recent weeks there have been a number of ICE operations targeting restaurants, apartment stores and ride-share workers in towns on the northern outskirts of Pittsburgh.