Dems challenging Bucks’s DA and sheriff blast ICE policy at protest

LANGHORNE — At the edge of the rainy, crammed parking lot outside Republican U.S. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick’s district office, just before a grassy slope dipping down to Route 332, a man wearing a paper crown sat under a tent with loudspeakers booming songs like Warren Zevon’s “Disorder in the House” and Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.” 

Other tents were staffed by the Bucks County Democratic Committee and other left-wing nonprofits, including the event’s principal organizer, Indivisible Bucks County. Their station offered an activity: “Decorate a crown.” But kids didn’t flock to it, as few children came to Saturday’s “No Kings” protest. Hundreds of nearly all-white, largely older activists came to bewail President Donald Trump’s deeds, branding him a wannabe monarch.

The throngs gathering in Langhorne, Quakertown, and cities across America took special note of Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts. Denunciations of his administration’s expanded deportations and arrests became violent in Los Angeles last week, though no rioting occurred in Bucks this weekend. Early arrivers descended the hill by the road waving American flags (it was Flag Day) and held signs bearing messages like “NO KINGS IN AMERICA,” “No DICKtators! United against Tyranny Since 1776,” “HATE WILL NOT MAKE US GREAT,” “WORST PRESIDENT EVER,” and “THE PROPER VIBE IS RAGE.”

But once Democratic candidates took to the podium, Trump received what seemed like just half their rage that afternoon, with the moderate Fitzpatrick and other local Republican officeholders getting heaps of hostility. Sheriff candidate Danny Ceisler, a Democrat hoping to unseat Republican incumbent Fred Harran spoke first. District Attorney candidate Joe Khan, a Democrat eyeing incumbent Republican Jennifer Schorn’s seat, made concluding remarks.

Their pitch: Elect us to end the county’s cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Harran initiated the partnership this spring via the federal 287(g) program whereby sheriff’s deputies will assist ICE in enforcing immigration law against serious criminal offenders. The American Civil Liberties Union, which was represented at Saturday’s events, is suing the sheriff to stop implementation. 

“We have a sheriff here in Bucks County who is not representing your interests, who wants to partner with ICE to round up our neighbors, to use your deputies — your tax dollars — to round up our friends, our neighbors, the people who are keeping this economy running,” said Ceisler, speaking into a bullhorn after his microphone started cutting out. “Ladies and gentlemen, the only people I want to round up and the only people I’m going to are not the vulnerable but the people who prey on the vulnerable! That is who I’m gonna focus on!”

Ceisler, an Army veteran and media strategist, linked his opponent with Trump, a counterintuitive tactic in a county the president (barely) won last year, partly on the immigration issue. On the other hand, Trump’s public approval has sunk in national polls while data from the May primary show an energized Democratic base in Bucks.

“When I was 18 years old, I raised my right hand and I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies foreign and domestic!” he declared, joined on those last two words by many attendees. “And I’ll tell ya, I sure as hell didn’t swear to one man, to any particular person, to a tyrant, to a king! I swore to defend our Constitution!”

The man he hopes to replace found his rival’s remarks hollow, given 287(g)’s focus on those facing criminal charges well beyond immigration violations.

“It’s funny because I heard Danny Ceisler say one time, if he ever became sheriff — which is not going to be the case — he would only cooperate with ICE on people who have committed crimes [and] who have had their due process,” Harran said later that day. “Well, that’s what I’m doing; that’s what I’ve been doing; that’s what I’ve said to the public I’m doing. We are not ‘rounding up neighbors.’” 

The sheriff called 287(g) a reasonable instrument to apprehend dangerous people who also breached immigration laws. He deemed coordination between federal and local authorities on this issue proper.

“The commander in chief is the president of the United States,” he said. “To go against the commander in chief is treason, so I don’t get what [Ceisler’s] thinking there. I don’t get to make the rules that I want to follow; I follow the rules that are set before me by Congress and by local officials who create the laws.” 

Harran suggested Ceisler recognize the White House’s authority on immigration enforcement irrespective of which party occupies it and what its policy priorities are.

“Because Joe Biden became president [in 2021], I didn’t go crying and everything else,” he said. “That’s the hand that’s dealt, that’s who the people picked, and I would support that. Now Donald Trump is the president of the United States, and I will do what’s legal and within my authority to protect the citizens of Bucks County.” 

Khan ended the event with declamations against 287(g) and related matters. He proclaimed himself “angry about what’s happening in our country,” recalled his own father finding America welcoming as an Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, and blasted Trump’s decision to send federal troops to subdue riots in Los Angeles. 

“I thought long and hard after the November election on what I can do as a parent, as an American, and I looked here locally to see what was happening in our government,” he said. “And I saw a District Attorney — who like the last six, seven, eight district attorneys going back 60 years, is a lifelong Republican — to see if she was standing up for the Constitution, to see if she was standing up against the tyranny, against the fascism, if she was standing up for the rule of law. Do you think we’ve heard anything from our district attorney about what’s happening in this country?”

After the event, Schorn said she would rather prioritize what’s happening in the county prosecutor’s office, her actual remit.

“I think he’s quite frankly clueless as to the role of the district attorney,” she said. “The district attorney is not a political activist. It demands impartiality and it demands a steadfast commitment to justice, not this political activism to assert his own ideologies or to use whatever’s happening in the political landscape to advance his agenda.”

The district attorney noted that Khan, a former county solicitor and a partner at the politically powerful Curtin & Heefner law firm, has never prosecuted a case in Bucks County.

“To me [this event] just kind of signifies how inexperienced he is,” she said, calling the idea of him as district attorney “frightening.” “If he’s using his campaign as a way to be a political activist, what would he do if he ever were in the seat?”

Throughout the event, speakers excoriated Fitzpatrick, who couldn’t be reached for comment, painting him as an enabler of Trump’s work on immigration and other issues. 

Prothonotary candidate Donna Petrecco, who is seeking incumbent Republican Coleen Christian’s job and who went to high school with Fitzpatrick, judged the congressman a do-nothing. He faces a reelection challenge from County Commissioner Bob Harvie (D) who did not speak at the rally. 

“[Fitzpatrick’s] gotten away with pretending to be bipartisan, but the truth is he votes with the MAGA [Make America Great Again] agenda every time,” she said. 

Fitzpatrick’s record of votes and co-sponsorships says otherwise. He shares prime sponsorship with Democrats on numerous House bills and in recent months opposed Trump on Ukraine and public-employee unions among other concerns. According to an analysis of Trump’s first term by the data-crunching site FiveThirtyEight, Fitzpatrick voted Trump’s preferred position a mere 61.8 percent of the time.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which has prioritized Fitzpatrick’s reelection given the district’s split partisan breakdown, verbally thrashed the protesters.

“While liberal rioters burn the flag and cheer on criminal illegal immigrants, left-wing crybabies are melting down over patriotism and strength,” NRCC spokesperson Maureen O’Toole told The Independence. “[Left-wing financier] George Soros can bankroll all the America-hating protests he wants. We’ll keep celebrating the greatest country in history.”

Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence, where this article was first published.