Did armed and masked ICE agents recently terrorize a U.S. citizen in Scranton?

Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Philadelphia Field Office Public Affairs Officer Jason P. Koontz won’t say.

Koontz won’t say if ICE didn’t swarm and terrify an innocent citizen, either.

Koontz will say the story “sounds made up.”

First reported on the Feb. 20 front page of the University of Scranton student newspaper The Aquinas, Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper columnist Chris Kelly repeated the unconfirmed tale in a Feb. 24 column.

Anyone fabricating an ICE attack account should suffer serious consequences. Publishing newspaper stories about a fake ICE attack would also be irresponsible and only add to the dangerous rumor mill that creates panic among immigrants and others who depend on truth.  Conversely, federal government officials misleading investigators or covering up a real ICE attack might warrant a criminal investigation.

Unfortunately, nobody connected to the Scranton news story but Koontz will address the alleged Scranton ICE brutality reported in The Aquinas that has a naturalized United States citizen and University of Scranton employee living in fear.

Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit University of Scranton President Joseph Marina’s assistant instructed me to contact the media office with my request to talk to Marina about the alleged ICE abuse of an immigrant university employee. Will Marina offer support to that employee and other immigrant workers who might worry they could be the next ICE targets? Will Marina demand an explanation from ICE? Will Marina determine if the story in the university newspaper is true?

Senior Director of University Communications Stan Zygmunt said in a Feb. 26 email that he received my telephone voicemail inquiry and “reached out to the moderator of The Aquinas and the student.”

“Matt Bufano from the University’s News and Media Relations Office will get back to you when we hear back from them. I gave Matt your email,” Zygmunt wrote.

Onetime newspaper reporter Bufano failed to contact me or respond to subsequent emails.

Zygmunt also said in his email, “We also received a note that you contacted the President’s Office. Father Marina is not available.” Zygmunt did not respond to a follow-up email asking why Marina was unavailable.

In a Monday, March 2, call to Marina’s office the woman who answered the phone refused to provide her name or an email address for Marina when I told her the media office was unresponsive, that I have questions and complaints for Marina and that the university’s credibility is at stake,

University of Scranton student newspaper editor-in-chief Samantha Sonnie, who wrote the Aquinas story, also failed to respond to emailed messages about her reporting. And Scranton Times-Tribune columnist Chris Kelly played it cute, refusing to provide a straight answer when I asked in a Feb. 28 Facebook message if he corroborated Sonnie’s story before he wrote his column for Scranton’s only daily newspaper. In a note at the end of his column Kelly saluted Sonnie “for breaking this important story.”

“Did you confirm the recent Scranton ICE incident you and Samantha Sonnie wrote about? Is the incident true? Did the incident happen?” I asked Kelly.

“Working on it,” Kelly wrote.  “Any advice?”

“I’m writing a column for The Scranton City News. You didn’t confirm the story before you wrote your published column?” I responded.

“So, no advice then?” Kelly said.

“I’m writing a column. You didn’t confirm the story before publication?” I asked.

“Thanks, Steve. Have a great day,” Kelly said.

Democratic congressional candidate and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti did not respond to emails asking if she will contact ICE and ask for a detailed explanation about the allegation, protect Scranton residents and visitors against aggressive ICE actions as described in the recent stories and if she will try to contact the alleged victim.

Scranton Police Chief Thomas Carroll also failed to respond to specific questions about the alleged ICE incident.

The only person officially connected to the chilling account of alleged ICE brutality willing to address this matter is ICE spokesman Koontz.

“This story is extremely vague and sounds made up. There is no way for me to even begin to check if this happened,” Koontz wrote in a Feb. 25 email.

“You know if you have a record or not of a stop in or around Scranton,” I replied. “Help me out here.”

“I would love to help you out, however there is no date, no route, no other information to identify the person or the action,” Koontz said.

Koontz is not wrong in his assessment.

Details about where the alleged ICE blitz allegedly occurred do not appear in Sonnie’s or Kelly’s journalism. Neither Sonnie nor Kelly provide a street name, exact time or date of the alleged “weekday” afternoon incident. Sonnie wrote she did not identify the alleged victim “who spoke about their experience on condition of anonymity.”

Protecting the identity of a confidential source is the norm among good journalists. But journalistic credibility depends on verifying and sharing as many other details as possible. Confirmation lends credence to the veracity of the story. Anything less raises more questions than answers.

Sonnie’s news story and Kelly‘s parroting of her “facts” provide extensive information allegedly provided by the alleged victim who tells a terrifying tale to Sonnie about how “multiple cars surrounded their vehicle as a traffic light turned green.”

The targeted person “believed” agents wearing bulletproof vests emblazoned with the letters ICE who did not identify themselves were kidnappers “like when they traffic women,” Sonnie wrote. Using force, the agents tried to open the front and rear doors, demanding the person get out of the car and threatening to smash the window, Sonnie wrote. Grabbing a gun, an agent said, “Don’t move” when the person reached for a phone to record the assault, Sonnie wrote.

Then the tense drama allegedly took a swift racist turn.

“I hear one in the back say ‘I think we got the wrong person,’ and the other one says ‘They all look the same, we gotta get this one,’” Sonnie wrote, quoting the alleged victim.

ICE agents released the alleged victim when that person provided a “naturalization certificate” showing proof of U.S. citizenship that happened to be in the car, according to The Aquinas account.

In a Feb. 26, 2026, email to Koontz I wrote, “Either this reported ICE incident happened in Scranton, Pennsylvania or didn’t happen in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“A swift ICE internal investigation is warranted either way.

“If this incident happened as reported, ICE is guilty of reckless and incompetent behavior. If this happened, ICE officials are complicit in possibly illegal behavior that could warrant a federal, state or local criminal investigation.

“If the incident did not happen, Scranton Times-Tribune and University of Scranton media are complicit in spreading false stories that only compound the already false ICE rumor mill in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“A serious problem exists either way. Did this reported incident happen in Scranton, Pennsylvania? Will ICE investigate the reported allegation?”

Koontz failed to respond to my email.

So whom do we trust to tell the truth?

Lovebirds in the best sense of the breed, Helo and Kimmy live life as bold eagles flying together and defending their nest.

Don’t mess with eagles.

Even peaceful hunters know how to use their talons.

But one-percenter bikers like Helo can be sensitive too. Ask any brother in his motorcycle club and he’ll tell you Helo’s one righteous brother from his burly, bearded, chain-tattooed presence to his background as a 20-year Marine and elite survival training instructor. By the way, there’s no such thing as a retired or former Marine. You’re either a Marine or you’re not a Marine. Helo’s a Marine.

I never met the man in person.

I never met Kimmy, either.

Helo, who embraced his nickname from the helicopters he knows from top to bottom, was close to my late boyhood friend Sonny Drake. We connected online after Sonny’s funeral at the Indiantown Gap National Cemetery when Helo and about 75 other brothers from their club paid deep respect to a fallen leader in their tribal nation. Helo and I share an Appalachian mountain spiritual streak as well as a Germanic bloodline that makes us partial to pickled red beet eggs, Pennsylvania Dutch wet bottom shoofly pie and oompah band music.

A few weeks ago when I was recording a segment for an internet radio oldies music show as a favor for a friend I asked Helo if he had a song he wanted to hear. When he told me the name of the tune I taped the Saturday night episode and sent out the song as an old-fashioned dedication from Helo to Kimmy with love. I compared the relationship described in the 1971 song “Cotton Jenny” by Gordon Lightfoot to Helo’s relationship with Kimmy.

I drew poetic parallels between the warm lyrics and warm feelings Helo carries for Kimmy that fire his heart the way a wood stove heats a snug Perry County cabin on a snowy February night. I had sensed his powerful sentiment from words he regularly posts on Facebook about his personal blessings and good fortune. I got a little softie in me too.  Just don’t push your luck once you recognize my moonstruck side.

The on-air radio segment was a hit. But because of technical difficulties I had to delete from this website the nice little column I wrote about Helo and Kimmy and the song Helo dedicated to her. I felt bad and told him I’d rewrite the original column.

Then I lost my notes.

I was going to blame corrupt government cops for hacking my computer, stealing my work and trampling my First Amendment rights, but I’ll let that alone for now and face off against the government goons another day. Instead, I’ll stress the importance of loyalty, fighting for what you believe in, living a life loaded with love and appreciating what we have.

Wisdom comes with age if you’re lucky. We’re getting older, Helo and I. We’re lucky. We appreciate the down-home goodness we cradle in our lives brought about because of strong women guides much wiser than we are. A guy once told me I’d be living in a drainage ditch without Stephanie. Forty-five years later he’s still right.

Helo knows the feeling. We can still drink more moonshine than Stephanie and Kimmy, but because of these two sensible women we’re now smart enough to realize our past primitive “accomplishments,” as barbarically noble as they once seemed, only shorten our sweet time together on this sick, chaotic planet.

So together we fly, Helo and I. Close to our partners we glide more gently and slowly than we once did. Don’t mistake our tenderness for weakness, though. We still wing it.

Because that’s what eagles do.

“Violence in all forms is unacceptable,” said Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro during his keynote address on political violence in America at the 2025 Eradicate Hate Global Summit in Pittsburgh.

Read Shapiro’s inspirational quote again.

“Violence in all forms is unacceptable.”

Such powerful words to live by from a Democratic sharpie campaigning with all his might for his rumored bid to run as a candidate in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary should reassure us Shapiro is on the right side of might.

Yet Shapiro’s words reek of hypocrisy.

Violence in all forms is so unacceptable to Shapiro he stood by sheepishly as his Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, a personal Shapiro cabinet appointee, endorsed and encouraged the vicious, bloodthirsty exhibits of bare knuckle-dragging primitive violence that exploded at the savage February 7^th  gladiatorial spectacle billed as KnuckleMania VI held at the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia.

Not only did violence erupt inside the fighting ring but violence exploded outside the ring as well.

“Alleged violence,” said Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission Executive Director Ed Kunkle when I reached him on the phone Monday, Feb. 9. Kunkle hung up on me before I finished asking detailed follow-up questions about the KnuckleMania VI bare knuckle butchery

Before further embarrassing himself and the call for peace in Pennsylvania, Kunkle needs to check with Philadelphia police.

“On February 7, 2026, at approximately 9:30 pm, officers assigned to the Xfinity Mobile Arena, located at 3601 South Broad Street, were notified by venue security of a fight occurring within the crowd,” according to a Feb. 10 email from the Philadelphia Police Department Office of Media Relations/Public Affairs.

“An officer responded to the location with a security staff member and observed multiple individuals actively fighting. Security personnel identified one individual who was to be ejected from the venue. While being escorted toward the exit, the individual stopped, refused to leave, and became increasingly aggressive.

“Despite multiple verbal commands to exit the venue, the individual charged toward the officer. The officer deployed his Taser, which was ineffective, and the individual continued to advance toward the officer and attempted to grab him.

“Additional officers began arriving, and the male fled the venue, exiting into the parking lot area and fleeing in an unknown direction.

“No arrest was made.”

Unconfirmed internet videos also highlight the arena mayhem Kunkle called “alleged violence.”

Despite Shapiro’s pious public statement opposing violence, why would the governor endorse state-sponsored bloodletting that endangers fans and fighters? Bare-knuckle carnage produces capital for Shapiro supporters to contribute to his gubernatorial re-election campaign and potential presidential bid. Electoral cash might also draw white male red meat voters to Pennsylvania’s most namby-pamby elected official who yearns to appeal to younger right-wing rednecks as well as “No Kings” pantywaist liberals.

Shapiro Press Secretary Rosie Lapowsky failed to respond to my questions about KnuckleMania VI so I don’t know if the governor attended the Feb. 7 fiasco his Department of State promoted through a fawning Feb. 5 press release.

“Considering KnuckleMania V exceeded high expectations, it’s an honor for SAC (state athletic commission) that the BKFC (Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship) decided to bring its showcase event back to Philadelphia in 2026,” the press release said, quoting Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, who attended last year’s event. “It was a boost to the local economy in 2025, and the same is expected this year as bare-knuckle fighting continues to draw larger audiences.”

Does Schmidt honestly believe the SAC’s partnership with BKFC is honorable public policy? When I asked Schmidt’s Office of Communications and Press Deputy Director Geoff Morrow when Schmidt would be available to answer my questions he responded in an email, “We’ve received your inquiries and will be in touch soon.”

Schmidt’s flunkies failed to be in touch at all.

I understand violence.

As a former bar bouncer, street fighter and international amateur boxer, I am ranked as a 4th degree aikijujutsu black belt who holds 2^nd and 3^rd degree black belts in two other martial arts as well as the traditional Japanese martial arts “Renshi” rank of “polished instructor.”

After graduating from the Pennsylvania State University in 1974 I also worked as a drug and alcohol counselor and part-time boxing instructor at the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill (SCIC). A 1989 riot wracked that same prison where an inmate and sparring partner of mine serving a life sentence for the vicious murder and rape of a teenager had years earlier earned a night out to spar an exhibition with the late boxing legend Muhammed Ali.

Shapiro’s Secretary of Corrections Dr. Laurel R. Harry who got her start at SCIC recently refused to answer my detailed written questions about approving a former professional mixed martial artist cage fighter to regularly visit several state prisons to meet and talk as a role model with inmates.

Although state officials long ago stopped state prison boxing programs, this mixed martial artist motivational speaker who has not publicly renounced violence as a sport and means to make money is welcome to clear security and “inspire” countless inmates, many of whom are killers and suffer personality disorders that can quickly turn violent.

Although mixed martial arts also embraces raw, brutal and life-threatening violence, state-sponsored bare knuckle fighting wallows in a deeper bloody gutter. Where does Shapiro think societal violence, including the specter of political violence Shapiro stresses every chance he gets, is nurtured if not among proponents of violence-fueled events such as the barbaric KnuckleMania? 

Is Shapiro’s supposedly heartfelt belief that “Violence in all forms is unacceptable” a purposeful lie? Is Shapiro so deviously cruel as to twist the moral code of non-violence he espouses and expects voters to accept and practice?

Ali floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

But when it comes to phony Pennsylvania political integrity, knucklehead Shapiro stands alone as the greatest of all time.

An extra-large King of NASCAR Richard Petty T-shirt and patterned green and black camouflage clothing added to the local color of the public meeting. Decent hard-working people concerned about the air, water and land filled the room that night more than a decade ago in Dimock Township in Susquehanna County. Both pro and con, we listened to business-suit-wearing natural gas executives and political hacks make their case for the benefits of continuing support for fracking in the Marcellus Shale region.

Of course these slick corporate hustlers spun their story to envision a magical cash pile from an already magical landscape where local residents hunted, fished, raced off-road vehicles and otherwise lived off natural splendor. But neighbor had already turned against neighbor as big business pillaged the land and gasbag bosses took the money and ran.

Expect similar deception in Tremont Township in Schuylkill County where federal government pirates work with free-market collaborators as they plunder the countryside and quality of life of people who deserve much better than a proposed Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center that will hold up to 7,500 prisoners.

Trust neither Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro nor Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser to help terminate this prison camp plan for the former Big Lots warehouse built on land the federal government has already purchased for approximately $119.5 million.

Not since smug millionaire robber barons and coal company marauders looted Schuylkill County in the last century has this hardcore county faced such an existential threat. Tradition still matters among generations of coal field dwellers with deep roots in the region, people who work to survive and raise their families in little towns like Tremont, Ravine, Pine Grove and Tower City. Survival is difficult for many of these people, particularly those who might not make on Social Security what they once did in full-time jobs.

History matters little if at all to the ICE storm troopers. Neither does the hard labor that went into building little one-time coal towns where tradition is still worth fighting for and people hang on the best they can. Liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and independents must join forces to battle this armed and dangerous invasion.

The shale wars divided people into fierce camps. That long ago night at the meeting I watched pampered liberals mock working-class men and women who attended the gas meeting, people who lacked the formal education and sophistication some of the smug know-it-all “activists” possessed as they opposed the gas trucks and gas land workers that overran the environment and overworked the mountains. I also knew how some of the local rednecks snickered the second they smelled a lib in the room the way they boasted over cold bottles of beer they could smell a big-racked buck on the first day of deer season.

Pennsylvanians should have learned from our shared history that polarized us deeply.

Now is the time to push aside the Yuengling bottles and put away the college degrees. Shake hands with people on the other side and for whatever the reason stand together in opposition to the proposed Tremont Township ICE facility. The more of us who combat the detention camp the better the odds of stopping the federal government’s damaging plan. Whether you ride a dirt bike, four-wheeler or snowmobile through the mountains or study bugs and leaves as a student or professor, you must enlist to take down this disastrous plan to disrespect everything our ancestors worked to achieve.

My grandfather emigrated from rural Ireland to Scranton, worked underground for 45 years as a coal miner and died from Black Lung disease he contracted after inhaling toxic coal dust. My dad patrolled back roads near Tremont as a state trooper when I was a little boy and my family lived in nearby Lykens. My wife, Stephanie, was born in Lykens and grew up in Tower City. Her mother was an immigrant British war bride who met her father when he served as a captain in the 8^th Air Force in England, returning to his Tower City hometown after World War II to serve as the town dentist.

The coal region lives and breathes as our literal common ground. That’s why we join others who share common values, respect decency, fight ICE cops and defy all pompous politicians who disrespect and patronize tradition as quaint and foolish.

Coal crackers, and I use the term as a badge of honor, have always been smarter than they think. We the people vs. the politicians who belittle us share a genuine stake in the future of our hometowns, our state, our nation and our world. Coal fields activists such as “Black Jack” Kehoe and Mother Jones have been here before. Those of us who follow their strong spirits remain.

Underestimate us if you choose.

Go ahead.

Sell us short.

This sale won’t go as easy as you think.

Not good enough, Guv.

Don’t tell me you can’t.

You just won’t.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro is absolutely empowered to take varied aggressive action to combat and neutralize abuse by Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons.

But he refuses.

Instead Shapiro playacts leadership, preening, posturing and preparing to one day announce his bid for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. More and more feeling the heat on his religiously dull book tour, though, he now seems inclined to at least offer lip service.

Blowing bureaucratic kisses to decent, hardworking people doesn’t cut it.

But at least Shapiro’s press office finally responded to one of my regular emails, this time addressing questions about mounting concern in Tremont Township where taxpayers are outraged by future ICE plans for their community that could raise taxes and slash services throughout Schuylkill County.

Plans are already in motion to turn a now vacant warehouse into an ICE detention fortress that will imprison about 7,500 immigrant detainees. Local officials estimate the sale of the warehouse property will result in lost annual revenue of $222,000 for Schuylkill County, $555,000 for the Pine Grove Area School District and $196,000 for Tremont Twp.

On 2/3/2026 I sent questions about the furor to Rosie Lapowsky who had been promoted to the top job of press secretary since I last contacted her with specific questions she ignored.

I asked, “What is Gov. Josh Shapiro’s position on the proposed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ICE facility in Tremont? Does Shapiro support the move? Will he assist the DHS move into this community? Why hasn’t Shapiro issued a statement thus far?”

In an email instructing me to attribute the response to “spokesperson Kayla Anderson,” the statement signed not by a person but by “Governor’s Press Office” says:

“Governor Shapiro opposes the federal Department of Homeland Security establishing new detention facilities in Pennsylvania, a view shared by the local communities who would be burdened by these centers. While the state does not get advance notice of or approve these types of sales, our Administration is actively evaluating our options. The Governor continues to work across state government agencies to protect people’s rights and halt the incredible overreach of the federal government into our communities that is making people less safe.”

Despite my specific questions about a specific Pennsylvania locale “burdened by these centers,” Shapiro’s flacks fail to pinpoint Tremont Township, Schuylkill County or ICE in the statement. Shapiro’s flacks fail to detail the “options” they claim the “Administration is actively evaluating.” Nor do Shapiro’s flacks tell us exactly how Shapiro “continues to work across state government agencies,” how he plans “to protect people’s rights,” what exactly he will do in Schuylkill County or elsewhere in the state to “halt the incredible overreach of the federal government into our communities that is making people less safe.”

The most “incredible overreach” encroaching on Tremont Township residents’ rights occurs each day Shapiro fails to personally take action to combat ICE abuses with aggressive public policy he has the power to launch. Unlike strong Democratic governors in other states, Shapiro has refrained from cracking down on ICE and refuses to publicly support barring local law enforcement agencies from formally facilitating federal immigration arrests.

According to a 2/4/2026 Washington Post article, “At least eight other states have already either prohibited or set restrictions against local police and sheriff’s offices entering into what are known as 287(g) partnerships, which enable those agencies to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement take into custody people they say are in the country illegally. New Mexico, New York, Hawaii and Virginia are considering similar bans during their 2026 state legislative sessions.”

Maryland is also currently considering a ban.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) also took additional steps to distance state law enforcement agencies from federal immigration operations, ordering the end of partnership agreements and condemning federal operations in other states as undermining public confidence, according to a 2/5/2026 Washington Post article.

As in these other states with courageous governors who actually lead, a Pennsylvania ban against 287 (g) would immediately sever ICE agreements between sheriff’s offices such as the current 287 (g) partnership in Schuylkill County, police departments and rabid district attorneys such as Republican bullyboy Sam Sanguedolce in Luzerne County who has agreed to a 287 (g) partnership.

Like their Democratic Party boss Shapiro, most Democrats in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and Senate, including all members of the lackluster Northeastern Pennsylvania contingent led by punchy State Sen. Marty Flynn, have failed to offer specific action-packed suggestions to fight back against ICE wrecking ball enforcement.

Shapiro’s vague response to my questions about safeguarding former coal patch communities in Tremont Township, Tremont Borough, Pine Grove, Joliett, Reinerton and elsewhere in this hardcore hunk of hard coal country is as flimsy as a threadbare flannel hunting shirt. Not only is Shapiro wretched presidential material, he’s not even good ol’ Schuylkill County commissioner material.

A Pennsylvania Dutch saying tells us a city dog wants to run out the door but a country dog stays on the porch because he’s not fenced in. Don’t fence in Tremont, Governor. America’s better off when good people breathe free.

We also need more bite and less bark.

Too bad our Blue Dog governor won’t hunt.

Distant and icy, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti remains publicly silent about recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol killings in Minneapolis.

Aloof reserve from this Democratic congressional candidate in Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District and too-cool-for-her-own-good opportunistic public servant should come as no surprise.

In a 28/22news.com television interview one year ago Cognetti even distanced herself from the noble national sanctuary city movement that helps protect immigrant rights. Sanctuary policies clearly define how local or state government shares information and assistance with ICE or other federal immigration law officers.

“It’s important to note too that Scranton is not a sanctuary city, Lackawanna County is not a sanctuary county so if ICE comes in with lawful warrants, they will execute those warrants,” Cognetti said.

Now the 45-year-old third term mayor refuses to answer any of my questions about ICE. So has Christopher Hughes, a timid one-time rookie newspaper columnist and Cognetti’s City Hall public relations flack. Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll and Cognetti’s congressional campaign manager Anna Korman also have ignored my questions about how Cognetti’s administration handles ICE requests for information or how she will combat an ICE invasion of the city she is paid to represent.

Cognetti’s abrupt turnaround occurred as soon as I started asking questions about her unwavering support for American-financed Israeli genocide. Die-hard Democratic cheerleader Cognetti embraced former President Joe Biden and other loyalist members of her party as they emboldened the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. A January 22, 2026 article in the Jewish Insider reaffirmed Cognetti’s firm allegiance to Israel and even her desire to visit the tiny authoritarian nation.

I supported Cognetti’s first run for mayor in 2019, writing news columns that encouraged her campaign. She once even privately asked me for advice. I believed her promise to fight corruption and truly expected her to stand on sound principle. But Cognetti devolved to steadfastly advocate cruel and murderous aggression against Palestinian civilians that included men, women and children, bloody carnage deemed genocide by numerous international human rights scholars.

Now Cognetti stands in icy silence as ICE and Border Patrol agents brutalize American men, women and children and run amok across the nation.

In a June 10, 2025 email Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll said, “ICE operates independently of SPD when they work in Scranton.” Carroll’s statement was in response to my email asking whether the Scranton Police Department assisted ICE in a May 15, 2025 arrest in the South Side of the city.

Law enforcement agents had located Mexican citizen Higinio Mendez-Salazar after his previously having been removed from the United States, according to a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office in the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania State Police assisted in making that arrest, according to the release.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro regularly stresses that state police he commands do not directly assist ICE. Immigrant rights groups accuse the Democrat and coy unannounced presidential candidate of arming ICE by providing ICE with data that endangers lives and human rights, including state police officers using their own discretion when dealing with ICE.

Cognetti will need to depend on Shapiro, his influence and fundraising ability in her bid to unseat Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA). The headline on the Jewish Insider article reads “Paige Cognetti running in Josh Shapiro’s footsteps in key Pa. swing district.”

Chief Carroll did not, however, respond to my follow-up question and June 10, 2025 email about the Scranton ICE arrest in which I asked “Did any SPD officer respond to the scene for any reason?”

Nor did PR flak Hughes respond when I asked in a November 2, 2025 email which I also sent to Carroll, “Has Mayor Paige Cognetti instructed Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll to order Scranton police officers to cooperate with federal ICE enforcement activities within the city limits?”

I asked, “Do Scranton police cooperate with ICE in any way?  If so, how? Does a written city policy exist that spells out how city police should deal with ICE enforcement in the city? If so, please provide that policy. Have Scranton police officers accompanied or assisted ICE agents on any ICE enforcement action in the city? If so, where and when?”

On December 5, 2025, I wrote in an email to Carroll, “Does the Scranton Police Department maintain a formal written agreement with Homeland Security and/or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)? If so, will you please email me a copy? If not, what is your informal arrangement? I’m writing immigration columns for The Scranton City News and want to stay up to date.”

In a December 10, 2025 email to Carroll I wrote, “Is there a reason why you’re no longer responding to my press questions? Did Mayor Cognetti instruct you to ignore my questions?”

Carroll did not respond.

I asked PR man Hughes in a January 23, 2026 email if Cognetti had instructed him not to respond to my questions, a copy of which I sent to Cognetti.  Neither Hughes nor Cognetti responded.

In a brief cell phone call congressional campaign manager Anna Korman said she answered my call at an untimely time to talk but at least provided her email. Korman, a George Washington University graduate, has worked in various political positions over the past five years, including the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia.

In a January 26, 2026 email to Korman I asked, “What does Paige think about the latest Minneapolis ICE killing?” In a January 27, 2026 email to Korman I asked, “Does Paige Cognetti support defunding ICE? If so why? If not, why not?”

Korman did not respond to those emails or to seven other emailed questions about Cognetti’s position on ICE and other matters. In one of my last emails to Korman I asked, “Has Mayor Paige Cognetti instructed her police chief Tom Carroll to cooperate with ICE requests for information from the police department? How does Cognetti plan to combat an ICE invasion of the city she represents while she is running for Congress?”

What do Cognetti and her minions fear?

What information are they hiding?

Why am I blackballed as a decades-long state and national award-winning journalist by the mayor of the city to which my paternal grandfather emigrated from Ireland to work underground for 45 years as a coal miner? My grandfather died from Black Lung disease after breathing toxic coal dust the way countless vulnerable immigrants still die a hundred years later from pesticides and other abuses at the hands of brutal corporate bosses and political connivers.

Harvard Business School graduate Paige Cognetti trades in an exclusive marketplace made up of elite politically-connected and privileged insiders. Jewish Insider reported, “Cognetti, who launched her bid last September, has since raised more than $1.1 million, garnering over $640,000 in donations last quarter, her campaign recently announced.”

Cognetti is a favored darling in a clannish, arrogant and vindictive Democratic Party that disrespects truth. Without truth trustworthiness ceases to exist. Without integrity born of honor, no political candidate is worth our votes.

Chameleon Paige Cognetti is not worth our votes.

Dumped carelessly on its side in an East Gibson Street snow bank, the child’s bike lay abandoned for days. Before it fell somebody at least leaned the blue Huffy Rock It kid’s bike against a tree. My first thought was that some Hill Section hooligan stole the bike and ditched it when an impromptu joyride ended.

Even as a 74-year-old I could relate to how the bicycle’s owner must have felt.

A thief stole my English bike when I was 10, riding away from the side street outside our rented corner house where I left my three-speed with the handlebar shifter on the sidewalk before parking it on the back porch for the night. When I went outside and realized the bike was missing, I raced up and down several streets desperately looking for my bike to no avail. Days later police found the bike undamaged in another town miles away, a happy ending from a bygone time when cops would spend time looking for a kid’s lost bike with a baseball card attached  with a clothespin to the back fork to hit the spokes and make a flapping sound like an imaginary motorcycle engine.

The bike in the snow pile looked to be in decent shape.

My plan was to take a picture on my phone and email the photo to Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll. He could then dispatch an officer to pick up the bike and check to see if anybody reported a bike stolen. If so, we could reunite the bike with its owner and all live happily ever after.

But I was concerned the chief would ignore my inquiry as he has ignored several recent emails about whether the police department maintains a working relationship with ICE. Carroll used to respond to my emails until I started asking questions neither he nor congressional candidate and his boss Mayor Paige Cognetti want to answer.  In my last email I asked Carroll if Cognetti ordered him not to respond to my questions. The chief ignored that email too.

I also thought about calling 911 but wondered if an emergency call might be inappropriate in a city where serious crime including murder can increasingly erupt at any moment and require immediate attention.

But when I was taking a picture of the bike a woman spoke to me through the screen in her ground floor apartment window, telling me I could have the bike if I wanted it because her landlord put the bike out with the garbage. Sanitation workers had picked up the garbage the day before and left the bike.

Maybe the landlord thought a scrap metal hunter would take the bike. In this city too many hardworking people scour neighborhood streets for other people’s castoffs. They need furniture or money to pay heating, food, child care and other bills, especially in a cold winter like the one we’re experiencing.

If the deserted bike worked, and I don’t know it did, why didn’t the landlord take the bicycle to a place that accepts bikes and even makes small repairs, fixing broken bikes for kids who need them? Why hadn’t some well-meaning city cop placed the bike into the trunk of a squad car and dropped it off at such a place?

While on patrol in 1957 my Pennsylvania State Police trooper father once encountered several small children crying because their family goat had died. Within days Shamus had a new goat sitting beside him in the patrol car as he drove in uniform to the farm to drop off the animal. Now laughing children named the goat Corby, Not only did these Black boys and girls have a new goat but a stellar impression of white police as well.

I might have picked up the bike if I weren’t hobbling around waiting for a new hip. Maybe guilt provoked me to write this column in the first place. So why didn’t somebody else do a good deed and help turn what many people consider junk into a gift?

Ask the apartment building landlord.

Ask Chief Carroll.

Ask Mayor Cognetti.

Ask Scranton’s beautiful people Gen XYZers who pose taking selfies before altars of The Office themed murals that now define and defy the honorable hardscrabble history of our city.

Ask yourself if the New Year’s idiom “out with the old, in with the new” guarantees good cheer.

Because as Father Time marches on, one lone blue bicycle still lays forgotten against a tree in a dirty snow bank, twisted like the bright memory of a once new little bike that sparkled.

Bathed in orange sunshine and perched on a wooden boat dock railing overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway in Clearwater Beach, Florida, the seagull smoothed her feathers, cocked her head and stared at me.

“I know, Margot,” I said. “I know.”

My editor and manager Stephanie to whom I am married grinned at me from across the patio table.

“Yes, yes,” I said. “You planting the seed in my head sprouted a fruitful wild orchard of overgrown madness.”

As Harry Nillsson sang, “She put de lime in de coconut.”

I drank ’em bot’ up.

About 2 1/2 years after wrapping up a whirlwind 50-chapter novel called Swan Dive! published as a free serialization on my website, the time had come to again plunge deep into Gulf Coast culture and soar. My publisher Lee Sebastiani at Avventura Press, Stephanie and I decided to take this freaky subtropical tale of intrigue to new heights with a major rewrite, update and publication as a polished new paperback available everywhere books are sold.

Margot, who plays an important part in the adventure, showed up to greet me the week before Christmas at Frenchy’s Oasis Motel where Stephanie and I hide out whenever we can and eat grouper and the famous fish spread at Frenchy’s Saltwater Café right across the street. Stephanie, Margot, a diverse cast of characters and an increasingly mean society helped make up my mind to rise again.

The plot took shape as I drank Nicaraguan rum and fresh sweet orange juice on the patio outside our retro efficiency and started taking notes in a used reporter’s notebook. Like the misfit I am and proud to be, I welcomed my role as an outlaw wordslinger ready, willing and able to create original stories tattooed with my indelible personal brand.

Turning 75 this year I take everything personally and am sick of listening to well-meaning people ask if I’m retired. Not everyone can or wants to be a cultural desperado. But the best of us are outlaws, one-percenters who let our freak flags fly. People like us know even good people drown in the mainstream. Instead we soar, gliding high above routine the way my characters do in Swan Dive! No matter your age, my novels offer the wings that propel you airborne. If you need to kiss the sky, I invite you to lift off with us and ascend on a head trip designed to help free your mind.

Set in Clearwater Beach Swan Dive! tells the tale of old-timer Sam Bennett, a grizzled and lovable eccentric who writes poetry, lives alone in a seedy room, drinks martinis ‘til his face starts to bleed and wants to fly like the seagulls he loves more than people. Will he or won’t he fly? Can he possibly embrace his dreams?

Meanwhile back-to-back killer hurricanes hammer the Tampa Bay area while RayRay’s Elbow Room beach bar owner RayRay Gagliardi wields a mean hockey stick in a brawl. Russian mobster real estate developers poison the environment. ICE freezes humanity. A Black Afghanistan combat vet hunts a white ex-cop from Philly for familial revenge. And smooth-talking twin AI chatbots try to destroy the world one best friend at a time. Swan Dive! alerts society to potential deadly consequences that might define America’s future.

We’re tentatively planning an autumn launch in Clearwater Beach and a funky barnstorming book tour to Key West and back, a route Margot herself has traveled on vacation with her eye-patch-wearing pirate parrot boyfriend Dillon. But that’s another flighty yarn that packs birds-of-a-feather into the pages of Swan Dive!

So prepare for take-off.

Get ready to fly!

Inflated with cold December air a white plastic bag from the ice cream store blew across the barren asphalt parking lot like a lone holiday balloon adrift in a ghostly parade.

Inside the Asian Taste restaurant aromatic smells of sizzling Chinese food filled the room. Sitting alone at a table for two, an Asian man licked both chop sticks at the same time and placed containers from his take-out order into a brown bag to toss in the garbage can.

“Very good,” he told the woman owner who was raised near Hong Kong, one of three people including her husband who run the business.

“Thank you,” she said between cooking and taking orders on the phone and in person.

A caramel-colored couple sat tucked into a corner table, the woman wearing a black skull cap tight over her ears, the man neat in a track suit and red sneakers, sharing a plate of steaming dumplings. Talking quietly between bites they listened to each other as they speared plump pieces of white dough with plastic forks.

Then there’s me, Mr. Tofu, the name the woman behind the counter says she will always remember because she knows my consistent spicy bean curd order by heart even before I get there on Friday night. Tonight, though, I arrive unannounced a day early because I just got back from Clearwater Beach, Florida.

For the past week I drank cold fresh orange juice and rum in my bathing suit by the Frenchy’s Oasis Motel swimming pool or on the patio outside our room overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway brimming with glistening lights, luxury boats, hungry pelicans and a sleek blue-gray dolphin Stephanie and I named Harrietta. I got a sun tan, ate grilled grouper burgers every day and told my outlaw tales at Frenchy’s Saltwater Café with RayRay, Canadian Mike, KK and Chris, old friends we’ve known there for decades.

Now I’m home in Scranton sharing dinner with strangers at nightfall on Christmas Day.

A woman who sat in her car for the past 20 minutes walked into the restaurant to pick up the order she called in. Ten minutes later an Indian man walked in. The woman in charge seemed to know his order, too.

At the table closest to the window a mother with chestnut hair pulled back and unlaced sneakers, a father in a hooded camouflage sweatshirt and a child with bushy blond hair ate from white take-out containers. The baby looked like his mother. Sitting on daddy’s lap wearing no shoes or socks, his little feet dangled no bigger than egg rolls. Wriggling tiny toes glistening red from the winter chill, he laughed as mommy and daddy talked with words that will help shape their future forever.

Did Santa Claus leave gifts for this baby this morning? Where will this young family stay tonight? Where will they stay tomorrow? I had no reason to believe they’re homeless but also had no reason to believe they’re not sleeping in their car. Unlike the woman behind the counter who will always know Mr. Tofu’s order, I’ll never know if this mother, father and child ever find “room at the inn” in a rich society usually too busy for people like them.

What I did know as I left the Chinese restaurant carrying take-out was that a bright sliver of moon hung low in the darkening sky, a thin waxing crescent looming above our earthly hope that wise people on our planet will truly labor to provide a healthy and happy new year for us all.

Our lost immigrant child will spend the holiday with her father in a dangerous land she never really knew. Yet, the impact of her angelic sprit lives in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, among friends who love her in the town she called home for most of her life.

Now living in Honduras with her father Concepción, who goes by Carlos, 11-year-old Allison struggles to fend off homesickness after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents teamed up with Dunmore police to seize her at her elementary school on October 29.

An ICE spokesman in Philadelphia ignored my request for information to track the U.S. government deportation itinerary for her and her father. Dunmore Police Chief Sal Marchese said he didn’t want to talk about his officers wasting local resources by doing ICE work and ended our phone call. Mayor Max Conway and Councilman William Trip O’Malley dismissed my repeated requests for help stressing Allison’s plight. Dunmore resident and State Sen. Marty Flynn also ignored my written questions about the ICE raid that trapped Allison and her father.

While these privileged Dunmore fathers and descendants of immigrants prepare to celebrate the comforts of a lavish small-town Christmas with their families, a little girl who lived in a rented Dunmore house for most of her life aches for a “room” in a concrete block structure in one of the most violent parts of a corrupt, crime-ridden Latin American nation.

Carlos sent a Dunmore friend a photo of the small living space he’s building out of cinderblocks. The friend said she communicates with Carlos almost daily via text message.

“I want him to know he is not forgotten,” she said.

She has also spoken with Allison.

“She was crying,” the friend said.

“They are staying with relatives until their place is ready. For now she has some young cousins who have befriended her,” the friend said. “Allison is still trying to adjust to life in Honduras but has no choice but to adapt. She begins school in February. She cannot read in Spanish because she started school here in kindergarten and reads English only. Dad wants to make sure she learns but remains fluent in English.”

Teachers at Allison’s old school are pooling money to send for Christmas, said the friend who first met Allison while walking her dog.

“She started coming over to the house to pet my dog,” she said.

As Halloween approached Allison grew excited, the friend said. She told Allison she could pick out a costume online and wear it to trick or treat at her house. Allison chose to dress like Little Red Riding Hood. Perhaps it’s melodramatic to say, but this blameless child had no idea how ferocious the big bad wolf at the door would be. Little did Allison know that civic “leaders” like Conway, O’Malley, Marchese and Flynn, men who wield the power to pressure the government, would abandon her.  Allison never showed up on Halloween to pick up her costume the friend later donated to the Dunmore student theater.

The grim Dunmore ICE operation was no fairy tale.

Nor is the hellhole where U.S. government officials banished Allison and her father.

News reports about the area where Allison and her father live paint a grisly picture, particularly for women and girls who face MS-13 and 18th Street gang members who control the region, drug trafficking shoot-outs, countless guns and massive political corruption.

According to a 2019 New York Times story, a woman from the town where Allison now lives was “gang-raped not once but twice in her 38 years. When she was 13, someone drugged her drink at a wedding and she was discovered a dozen hours later in a garbage dump, naked, unconscious, bound at the feet and hands, teeth marks and bruises all over her body. She became pregnant with her now 23-year-old daughter. She says the police never investigated anyone at the wedding to determine who kidnapped her.” Another girl who was gang-raped and murdered was 14. Another young woman was skinned before she was killed.

According to the Women’s Refugee Commission, in 2023 Honduras had one of the highest femicide (killing women for being women) rates in the world—7.2 per 100,000 women. Rape is reported nearly every hour. For countless women and girls fleeing Honduras is not about seeking a better life. It is the only way to stay alive.

While campaigning in 2023 President Donald Trump promised to deport only dangerous criminals, including rapists and murderers. Instead the overwhelming majority of deportees have no criminal record. And Trump recently pardoned the former Honduran president who was serving a 45-year federal prison sentence on cocaine trafficking charges. He is now free.

Neither Carlos nor Allison committed a crime in the United States. Living here as undocumented immigrants is a civil violation of law, not a criminal offense. This hard-working father who once diligently pursued the American Dream and his innocent daughter are now prisoners in a deadly country she only knew for the first few years of her life.

A life sentence in Honduras is often a very short stay.

Dunmore felt much more like home, especially at Christmas.