‘Increased fear, anxiety and stress’: How ICE is impacting Centre County, immigrants
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- More than 2 dozen Centre County residents were arrested or detained in the past 12 months.
- Local immigrants report increased fear, anxiety and stress affecting daily activities.
- Penn State's international enrollment decreased 10.7% since 2022.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — better known as ICE — is not often visibly present in Centre County. Weekly confrontations between officers and the public do not play out over social media like they might in America’s biggest cities.
But the everyday fear and concern the local immigrant community harbors over ICE remains very real.
More than two dozen people in Centre County have been arrested and/or detained by ICE over the last 12 months and as recently as Saturday, when advocacy groups filmed an ICE operation in State College.
One nearby detainee at Moshannon Valley Processing Center told a local volunteer she felt so distanced from her family that she feared she was forgetting her children. A close family member of another detainee told others she was afraid to leave her house.
Centre County’s immigrant community — both documented and undocumented — has largely suffered in silence since ICE grew in size and power once President Donald Trump took office. While white U.S. citizens in small communities largely don’t have to live under the threat of ICE, it’s unavoidable for others.
Even local immigrants who are documented, like those with visas or green cards, have feared getting swept up and detained. (That fear is not unfounded, as there have been scattered cases of ICE even deporting people who claimed U.S. citizenship.) Others worry speaking out about ICE could land them in trouble, too, like the handful of protesters in Prairieland, Texas, who were sentenced to decades in prison after accusations of being an “antifa terror cell.”
“In our work, we’re seeing increased fear, anxiety and stress among clients regardless of their immigration status,” licensed counselor Jonathan Stube, owner of Centre Counseling & Wellness, told State College Borough Council in May. “... People are afraid to leave their homes except to go to work. Some are even afraid to come to therapy appointments, so thank goodness we have telehealth.”
Advocacy groups and community members have pushed State College Borough Council to pass an ordinance that protects local immigrants, a measure they’re expected to discuss during July 6’s meeting.
‘It’s everyone’ affected by ICE fears
Several immigrants declined to speak with the Centre Daily Times out of fear of retaliation, and one core member of the community-based ICE defense project Centre County Rapid Response Network asked to instead use a nickname for the same reason.
“Lomas,” the name chosen by the member, wanted to make clear that it wasn’t just undocumented immigrants living in fear. It’s naturalized U.S. citizens with brown skin. It’s Penn State international students. It’s family members of the undocumented.
“It’s everyone,” Lomas said. “It’s everyone that is an immigrant, regardless of immigration status. They’re expressing fears that we keep hearing.”
Some are afraid of losing their lawful status. Others are worried they could still be detained for months, like Mahmoud Khalil and Fabian Schmidt, despite their legal status. And even more are concerned for friends, family members and neighbors.
Evidence of that fear can be found in nooks and crannies across the county. Bridget Schell, executive director of the Mid-State Literacy Council, told the CDT they’ve experienced a noticeable enrollment decrease in English-as-a-Second-Language courses — and received more requests about individual tutoring over Zoom. One bilingual employee for State College Area School District said she served in an unofficial capacity as an interpreter for immigrant families wanting to speak with police — and, over the last 18 months, she said that most families now view that as an unnecessary risk.
Unmarked police cars have caused a flurry of concern and reports to the Rapid Response Network, who makes it a point to investigate every tip and inform the community if ICE is nearby. As a result, children are now texting their parents, asking if they’re safe.
“A typical teenager who was probably busy with sports or playing with friends is now having to worry about whether their mom or dad is going to make it safely home,” Lomas said, adding she’s heard such stories first-hand.
Turning points and calls for change
No public records or reliable estimates of Centre County’s undocumented population are readily available. But, based on the latest census data, the county has a foreign-born population of more than 13,000, with a majority in the State College area.
Trump has directed ICE to broaden its detention and enforcement, changing the calculus of fear around the country. In the past, immigrant arrests at courthouses and schools were largely constrained. But those restrictions have since loosened, as daily immigration arrests have more than quadrupled — from 255 a day under former President Joe Biden to more than 1,100 on average at the start of 2026.
Centre County has witnessed it first-hand. Last September, ICE officers detained a person on the fourth floor of the Centre County Courthouse. And, in March, a State College area man was taken into ICE custody while reportedly traveling to a court appearance.
Those incidents both happened within months of ICE arresting 24 people during a “targeted enforcement operation” on Interstate 99 and Route 220 near Bellefonte.
“We believe all of our neighbors deserve to be treated fairly and with dignity,” Christy Delafield, a volunteer with local group Keystone Indivisible, said in a written statement. “To that end, we are appalled by the way members of our community are currently being treated by ICE.
“The detention of construction workers on their way to the Mount Nittany Medical Center construction site was a turning point for many people in our area. The shock of that moment, and other actions like it, created a climate of fear that undermines the well-being of the entire Centre Region.”
Those acts have resulted in increased anxiety for immigrants traveling to doctor’s appointments, courthouse appearances, their children’s schools, food banks — all destinations that weren’t a worry in the past. Following the law doesn’t necessarily guarantee safety from ICE either.
According to the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, ICE had 60,311 people in detention in April — and 70.8% had no criminal conviction.
Penn State has already felt that impact. As international students wonder just how safe they might be from ICE or possible deportation — at least 22 had their lawful status temporarily revoked in 2025 — the university has seen a double-digit decrease (10.7%) in international enrollment since 2022.
One Rapid Response member told the CDT they talked with a student who found the process to return to the U.S. “terrifying.” Another expressed doubts over whether it was worth returning to the university. And one professor said many of those feelings weren’t just limited to international students.
“As a professor of Penn State, I’ve had a lot of engagement with students,” Jennifer Van Hook, who studies immigration, told Borough Council last month. “And they come to me and they want to meet with me and talk about their own circumstances.
“And many of these people are not immigrants themselves, but they have immigrants in their families who are afraid to come and visit their son or their daughter on campus — because, maybe, they have an immigration status that makes them vulnerable. We have a lot of students or post-docs or scholars who don’t want to come because they feel vulnerable in some way or form.”
There’s no easy, or simple, way to combat the Trump Administration’s policies involving ICE. The American Civil Liberties Union, alongside dozens of other groups, has called for real oversight of ICE and reining in enforcement tactics.
Democrats agreed with the ACLU’s calls to reduce ICE funding but, despite a funding delay, ICE received roughly a $70 billion infusion in early June. Locally, community members in the State College area have called for an ordinance that would formalize the borough’s policy not to assist ICE, with a protest planned July 6 before the council meeting where they’re expected to review one. Earlier this year, council voted to table an anti-ICE ordinance, with some council members voicing concern that it could end up having negative impacts on the local immigrant community.
Until things change, advocates say anxiety and fear will continue in State College and beyond. Many feel frightened and dehumanized.
Sophia Weidner, a State College area resident, carried a letter from the mother of a local family during a May council meeting. Because the family feared retaliation from ICE, she read the anonymous mother’s words instead — explaining how they emigrated from Latin America more than a decade ago in search of better cancer treatment.
“We live with the constant worry of being separated as a family, of not knowing if any given day could be our last together. Without a doubt, that is my greatest fear,” Weidner read from the mother’s letter.
“To be clear, it is not going back that hurts. It is how it could happen — the fear of inhumane treatment, abuse of authority and not being heard, of being seen as a problem instead of as a people with a story, with determination and with dignity.”
