Pennsylvania County Gets Rid of ‘Sanctuary’ Status Amid Fentanyl Crisis

Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations officers execute a criminal search warrant in Texas, in an August 2018 photo. ICE/via Reuters

Butler County, Pennsylvania, has terminated its “sanctuary” designation and will now cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when dealing with illegal immigrants as the area faces a fentanyl crisis and an uptick in trafficking crimes.

A sanctuary city or county doesn’t cooperate with ICE in its efforts to remove illegal immigrants, such as by refusing to hold illegal immigrants in custody in compliance with ICE detainers or not allowing ICE agents to gain access to those who are already in their custody.

On Feb. 21, the Butler County prison board adopted a policy authorizing it to accept ICE detainers accompanied by arrest warrants for illegal aliens in the region. The agency will offer a list of inmates to the county prison on a weekly basis. An ICE detainer will allow the agency to assume custody of an illegal immigrant who’s in Butler County prison.

The decision comes as the county sees fentanyl making up a large portion of overdose deaths in the region. A powerful synthetic opioid, Fentanyl is about 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine. In 2021, of the 66 overall overdose deaths in Butler County, 57 were attributed to fentanyl.

“Our crime is not just DUIs and retail theft anymore. We have drugs,” Richard Goldinger, Butler County District Attorney, told WTAE in Pittsburgh. “Again, that stuff has not come from citizens that are making fentanyl in Butler County. It’s being brought here.”

‘Overwhelmingly Positive’ Response

The response of the Butler County community to the decision to remove the “sanctuary county” designation has been “overwhelmingly positive,” state Rep. Stephenie Scialabba, a Republican who prepared the new policy, said in an interview with Fox News.

“You would never think of Butler County or Pennsylvania as a border state, but unfortunately it seems like borders don’t matter anymore,” she said. “So we are seeing an increase in fentanyl deaths and overdoses. We are seeing increases in drug trafficking, human trafficking.”

According to Scialabba, the issue arose from an “overcompensation” by the county in 2014, when a case came out of the 3rd Circuit of Pennsylvania that stated it’s illegal or unconstitutional to hold someone on an ICE detainer without a warrant.

The county subsequently “overcompensated with [its] prison board policies,” she said. The result was a policy that she said didn’t reflect the county or its practices.

Scialabba pointed out that illegal aliens come to Butler County thinking that it’s a safe place to commit crimes.

“It is not,” she said, according to WPXI. “It’s a safe place to live here and work here, and we welcome you. We want immigrants here, that’s what our country’s about. But you have to come here legally; you can’t come here and think we won’t cooperate with ICE.”

Fentanyl in the US

Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that there were 80,816 deaths from synthetic opioids in 2021, a majority of them from fentanyl. This made up 75 percent of the estimated 107,622 drug overdose deaths that year.

According to the 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment report by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, China is “the primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail and express consignment operations, as well as the main source for all fentanyl-related substances trafficked into the United States.”

Mexican cartels are increasingly importing fentanyl from China, pressing it into pills or mixing it with other pills to create fake versions of drugs such as Adderall, oxycodone, or Xanax. The drugs are then sold in the United States.

Just two criminal networks, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, are believed to supply most of the fentanyl in the United States.