AMBRIDGE, PA - In recent years, the dying mill town of Ambridge has seen revival as Latino immigrants pour into the community. However, a recent raid by ICE working in conjunction with local police has angered many residents and raised important questions about how even small municipalities like Ambridge can resist Trump’s attack on immigrants.
In 2016, Trump held a rally in Ambridge. After Trump won Pennsylvania, Gabriel Trip writing for The New York Times in an article entitled “ A Pennsylvania Town in Decline and Despair Looks to Donald Trump” wrote that, “Ambridge, like much of Pennsylvania outside Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, eagerly enlisted in Trump Nation this year.” However, despite The New York Times claiming that Ambridge was “Trump Country,” Democrats won Ambridge by at least 10% in the last three elections, while surrounding Beaver County went overwhelmingly for Trump.
Ambridge’s resistance to their local police force cooperating with ICE raids shows how resistance to deportation is strong even in areas the mainstream media have cast as Trump Country.
Ambridge, named after the gigantic American Bridge Company steel mills, is nestled alongside the Ohio River about 45 minutes north of Pittsburgh in Beaver County. Since the American Bridge Company closed in the 1980s, the city has lost nearly 40% of its population, to approximately 7,000 today.
Nearly a third of the storefronts along Ambridge’s Merchant Street now sit vacant. But in recent years, two Latino supermarkets have opened, La Poblanita and Monroy Supermarket, as well as a Spanish-language bookstore, La Tienda, founded by Venezuelan refugees, and a Puerto Rican-owned barbershop, Blade Prestige.
A block away from Merchant Street sits the Church of the Savior, whose numbers had dwindled for many years, but now are growing as the church has added a Spanish-language service.
Nowadays, the streets of Ambridge hum with Reggaeton and people speaking in Spanish, something unheard of nearly a decade ago. Merchant Street even has its own outdoor taco stand where people pack the sidewalks. For the first time in decades, the town is starting to see new residents and a new sense of vibrancy.
In a recent local magazine article, city officials attributed the revival of Ambridge in part to the influx of Latino immigrants. Ambridge’s municipal manager, Mario N. Leone, Jr, was quoted as saying, “We always welcome the Hispanic community with open arms.”
The Borough of Ambridge even shared the article titled “The Latino Spirit Powering Growth in Ambridge” on the borough’s official Facebook page.
Two weeks after the article was published with the municipal manager’s comments about welcoming Latinos to Ambridge, ICE, with the assistance of the city’s police force, set up a roadblock on Merchant Street, checking everyone’s immigration status.
Word quickly spread among tight-knit communities in Ambridge. The Pittsburgh-area immigrants’ rights organization Casa San Jose sent a text flash to its 495-member immigrant defense group.
Ambridge resident “Chevi” Chiaravalloti is a 41-year-old immigrant originally from Bogotá, Colombia, who got the text message and immediately rushed to the scene. Dozens of immigrants’ rights defenders were on the sidewalk shouting messages of support to immigrants being detained and trying to inform them of their legal rights.
Chiaravalloti says that he was shocked by the way the local Ambridge police were treating the immigrants and protesters.
“The entire time, the police force was just mocking us,” says Chiaravalloti. “They were just laughing and making jokes.”
At one point, when protestors called the police “Nazis,” one cop posed and gave the Nazi salute to mock them.
Despite the presence of the protestors, the Ambridge police continued to pull over Latinos and check their IDs, and mock the protestors.
“‘You better take some caffeine, because what we're doing right now, we're gonna do this all night.’ And then he grins and walks away from us,” says Jamie Martinez, an organizer with the Pittsburgh-area immigrants rights organization Casa San Jose.
Immigrant rights protesters stood by defiantly, but were powerless to intervene as they watched multiple people fall into the trap and wind up detained by ICE. Martinez says he watched at least three times as Ambridge Police signaled ICE agents, sitting in cars behind them, to detain immigrants who could not produce ID.
At one point, a group of nuns from the Sisters of Saint Joseph showed up to support the immigrants and prayed a decade of the rosary.
“The decade of the rosary is a very familiar prayer for most Latino immigrants, who grew up in a Catholic household and several of the people being detained began to pray it as well,” says Martinez.
Now, in the aftermath of the raid, the community of Ambridge is struggling to deal with its effects.
“Everything was fine in Ambridge before this happened, like people were just going about their business and living their lives,” says “Chevi” Chiaravalloti. “Now everyone needs to always be wondering, like, ‘Oh, is that an unmarked police car? Like, what's happening here? Why’s that person get pulled over?’ It puts everyone on edge, and I think that it's frustrating for everyone.”
Casa San Jose has set up therapy groups for residents to deal with the trauma of the raid and process their feelings. They’ve also set up support systems for families who lost a breadwinner in the raids and are struggling to make ends meet.
Many Ambridge residents are responding by holding protests and asking questions. Particularly, why the police would cooperate with ICE in Ambridge, a city whose officials are on record welcoming the rejuvenation that Latinos brought to their area.
As ICE struggles to recruit enough agents to meet Trump’s deportation goals, they are relying heavily on local police departments to carry out the administration’s orders. Ambridge residents are demanding that their police force no longer participate.
Feeling the heat, local law enforcement has begun to backpedal. Beaver County District Attorney Matt Bible has said that the enforcement action was not an “ICE Raid,” but a local law enforcement operation aimed at rounding up individuals with outstanding warrants.
“The purpose of the operation was to round up any individuals with outstanding warrants, in addition to policing any general criminal activity,” wrote the district attorney in a public statement. “While federal agents from ICE were present, this was in no way an ‘ICE Raid.’ Federal agents were operating independently of the local agencies.”
Local Ambridge residents aren’t buying it.
“His message is a bit misleading and incomplete to many of us. I’m left with a lot more questions than answers,” Jason Hanks, a local high school teacher, wrote on Facebook. “Who decided that local law enforcement would cooperate with federal agents? If we don’t have a 287(g) agreement with ICE, why are we using local resources to assist them?”
Ambridge’s Congressman Chris Deluzio (D-PA) has also demanded that ICE answer questions about how the raid was conducted, but so far, they have stonewalled, claiming that ICE isn’t tracking how they conduct their own local operations.
“What a ridiculous load of crap it is to tell a Congressman’s office that you are not tracking any information about your own agency’s operations that local law enforcement addressed publicly, and local media covered,” Congressman Deluzio wrote in a stern letter that he circulated online.
For now, activists in Ambridge say that they are going to continue to put pressure on local law enforcement to end its cooperation with ICE.
The ICE raid in Ambridge that detained 10 people had been the largest ICE raid Western PA had ever seen. However, as I sat down to write my story Thursday night, ICE struck again, raiding two Emiliano’s Mexican restaurants in Cranberry and Gibsonia, where 16 immigrants were detained, making it the largest raid in Western PA so far. Within this climate of tension and fear, immigrants are resolute.
“It becomes a new norm for immigrants,” says Ambridge resident “Chevi” Chiaravalloti. “If anything, immigrants, they're very good at adjusting to their situation, their surroundings, and doing whatever is required of them to be able to be successful.”
If you spot an ICE raid in the Pittsburgh area, Casa San Jose recommends that you reach out to their hotline at (412) 736-7167
