Agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday morning arrested 17 employees of a construction company working on the remediation of the Five 10 Flats in South Side Bethlehem, where a fire five weeks ago displaced all 135 residents and businesses.
According to a statement from an ICE spokesperson, ICE Homeland Security Investigations Allentown and Enforcement and Removal Operations Philadelphia conducted a “worksite enforcement operation” at the apartment building. Seventeen employees were “encountered, interviewed and arrested for immigration violations and subsequently detained pending removal proceedings,” per the statement.
No further information will be released at this time, the statement said.
According to a city news release, police received a “courtesy notification” from the Department of Homeland Security just before 7 a.m. that agents were actively searching for an individual on the 500 block of East Third Street related to an “immigration violation and criminal investigation.”
Bethlehem police and EMS responded to the scene after federal agents reported that one person was suffering from a medical emergency, the release said. City police did not participate in the arrest or detention of anyone at the scene this morning, the release added. The police department said it was not aware of any federal arrest warrants related to the incident.
“We found out about those arrests in real time, and we have not been kept in the loop at all throughout the day,” Mayor J. William Reynolds said.
He said he found out that ICE arrested 17 employees after СŷƵ reached out to ask for the city’s statement about the arrests.
“As far as the city of Bethlehem is concerned, every department in the city, including our police department, will continue to treat every citizen with compassion, dignity and offer every service without consideration to how long residents have called our city home,” he added.
Five 10 Flats is the site of ongoing work to repair damage from a May 2 rooftop fire that displaced all 135 residents and several first-floor businesses.
ICE’s Worksite Enforcement Program “investigates both criminal and administrative violations of employers and employees in businesses throughout the Unites States and overseas,” according to a 2018 post on the ICE website.
Such enforcement occurred under previous administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term, but were paused in 2021 under the Biden administration. The Trump administration has increased immigration enforcement, including workplace raids, in his second term.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said late last month that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should make at least 3,000 arrests a day, The Associated Press reported. The agency made an average of 656 arrests a day Jan. 20 to May 19.
Paul Davis Restoration Experts, a national construction company, is handling the remediation of 510 Flats. It did not respond to requests for comment.
John Callahan, director of business development for Peron Development, which built 510 Flats, did not return a phone call requesting comment.
Mia Hess, a Bethlehem resident who lives near Five 10 Flats, said she witnessed multiple people being handcuffed and led into a vehicle shortly after 7:15 a.m. She said the people whom she saw being handcuffed appeared to be part of the crew repairing the building.
“It was honestly shocking and kind of like, I don’t know, scary to see in my own community,” Hess said. “I mean, I walk past that apartment every single day. And I talk to them, I say hi to them every day when I’m walking my dog, and so it was just crazy to see.”
Hess shared videos that depict several men sitting on the ground in front of agents wearing Homeland Security Investigations and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement uniforms and show one handcuffed person being led into a vehicle by a law enforcement officer.
Jerone Darden, who lives in the same neighborhood, said he was walking to work that morning when he saw what he called the “tail end” of the enforcement action, and His video shows a man in handcuffs and shackles standing with federal agents next to an unmarked white van. He said he saw at least two people in the van.
“It was a pretty quick and short interaction that I observed, once again, I caught the tail end of it, it seemed, and really I just regret not being there from the beginning,” Darden said in an interview.
Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at liweber@mcall.com. Reporter Elizabeth DeOrnellas can be reached at edeornellas@mcall.com.
