Longtime workers with no criminal record caught up in Butler County's ICE deal, construction companies say

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests have spiked this year in Butler County, where the agency is working in partnership with the sheriff's office. But instead of deporting criminals, the construction industry says they're arresting longtime workers with no criminal record, disrupting home building and driving up costs. 

Deputies from the Butler County Sheriff's Office have joined ICE agents in arresting immigrants as part of what's called a 287(g) cooperation agreement.  

"If you're here illegally, you need to come to our country legally," said Butler County Sheriff Slupe. "For those that choose not to self-deport, enforcement is an opportunity to get these illegal immigrants back to their country."

Since November, the sheriff's deputies have assisted ICE in arresting 150 immigrants in Butler County — many of them taken from construction sites. Recently, representatives of those building and construction firms met with the sheriff complaining that longtime workers, some here as long as 10 or 20 years, are being detained and deported, disrupting the industry.

"Our industry relies on immigration labor," said Jim Eichenlaub, the Builders Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh's executive director, whom construction companies designated as their spokesperson. "Let them alone, let them work, let them be gainful contributors to our society." 

The construction companies working in Butler County declined to be interviewed but privately say ICE agents surveil job sites and randomly check papers of their workers, oftentimes following them home and pulling them over for alleged traffic infractions. They say ICE enforcement is highest in Butler County because of its partnership with Slupe, resulting in a climate of fear.

"There are raids coming onto construction sites, ICE enforcement teams coming onto the sites, pulling folks out of their job duties, checking papers," Eichenlaub said.

"Those who are even here legally are fearful of going out for fear that they're going to get swept up and detained," he added. 

To work with federal agents, the sheriff has designated 13 deputies, and the Department of Homeland Security pays his office $15,000 a quarter for each one — a total of $780,000 a year — which Slupe says goes to the purchase of information technology upgrades and new equipment like language translators.

In a statement to KDKA, the Department of Homeland Security said through these partnerships, "ICE is not arresting people here legally. We are targeting the worst of the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens. If we do encounter someone illegally in the country, we will arrest them. We do not pick and choose which laws to enforce."

According to KDKA's analysis of data from the Deportation Data Project, there have been 231 total ICE arrests in Butler County this year and last. Thirty are listed as convicted criminals, 23 are listed as having pending criminal charges, but 178 are listed just as immigration violations. 

Slupe concedes he has mixed feelings about arresting someone with no criminal record who has been working here for years.

"Yeah, I'm a human being," Slupe said. "I have feelings. I get it. But unfortunately, if they're here illegally, something needs to be made right." 

"I do empathize with them, I really do," he added. "But at the end of the day, Congress needs to work on a law better than what we have maybe."

The builders association supports something called the Dignity Act — a new bipartisan bill that would grant protection to workers who entered the country before the major influx during the Biden administration, whether they came in legally or not.

"If everyone's really serious about the affordability of housing, they have to consider that labor and immigration reform is a key component of that," Eichenlaub said. "It's extending our timeframes, it's driving up costs and it's disrupting the industry."

In working with ICE, Slupe concedes he sometimes has mixed feelings, but until the law changes, he says he will continue to help ICE enforce it.