Sheriff Fred Harran is bringing Trump-style politics to Bucks County, his critics warn. How did he get there?

Bucks County Sheriff Fred Harran has had a lot to say in recent months — whether or not other county officials are interested in listening.

One of the most prominent Republican officials in Philadelphia’s collar counties, the first-term sheriff has spent months publicly clashing with the Democratic-led Bucks County Board of Commissioners in the only Philadelphia area county that voted for President Donald Trump.

He wore a lapel mic to record himself as he urged the board to approve a new school resource officer (the board rejected the request), he bypassed the board to push for salary increases for deputies (board members say the raises violated agreements with the union), and he made Bucks County the only department in the area to apply for a controversial program that enables local law enforcement to work closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the ACLU of Pennsylvania is suing).

Harran insists his actions aren‘t politically motivated, that his primary goal in every decision is the public safety of Bucks residents. But he is also up for reelection in one of Pennsylvania’s most critical battleground counties and is convinced that his political opponents won’t work with him because they see him as a threat.

“People want to complain, people like to fight, people like to have something to complain about especially in Bucks County where the law enforcement, the police department, the 900-plus cops in Bucks County do a phenomenal job,” Harran said. “And people just want to be with the national narrative of the lunatic left.”

Harran spent decades as a police officer and eventual public safety director in Bensalem Township, after studying theater and political science at Arcadia University, known as Beaver College at the time. He was known for community outreach efforts in the Lower Bucks township, establishing programs that were groundbreaking for the time. But he faced backlash in 2018 when he tried and failed to sign the township up for a controversial program allowing deputies to more closely collaborate with ICE during Trump’s first presidency.

Democrats are convinced Harran is motivated by electoral politics. At a Democratic National Committee event earlier this year, Democratic Commissioner Diane Marseglia warned voters against reelecting “a sheriff who is mimicking Trump.”

Marseglia, who worked with Harran to launch a mental health co-responders program in Bensalem, said she considered the sheriff a friend until about a year ago. Now, she doesn’t recognize him.

“He looked at Donald Trump and has seen that aggressive, kind of cantankerous, not very nice style that worked and got him into office last November and he has decided that that’s what he’s going to mimic,” she said in an interview. “There’s a part of me that just thinks he lacks political experience and acumen.”

The backlash was steep when news broke in April that Harran applied to join the controversial ICE 287(g) program.

Residents flooded the next county board meeting intent on stopping the collaboration with federal immigration enforcement as others declared their support.

Within weeks the board approved a resolution declaring it had sole power to enter into an agreement with ICE.

For some, the episode evinced deja vu.

Seven years ago, Harran proposed that Bensalem join the same program. After pushback, Republican Bensalem Mayor Joe DiGirolamo told advocates the township wouldn’t participate in the program.

“If you saw the kind of community reaction that you had in Bensalem, why would you expect something different at the county level?” said Democrat Ed Tokmajian, who served on the Bensalem Township Council at the time and voted against Harran’s appointment as public safety director

Harran said in an interview he wasn’t expecting blowback at the county level and blamed the media for reporting on the program too early when policies and procedures weren’t yet in place.

The program, he insists, has been mischaracterized. While 287(g) allows local officers to act as ICE agents, Harran says that wouldn’t happen in Bucks and that the program would focus on referring undocumented individuals arrested for crimes to federal authorities.

The proposal continues to spark fear and outrage in the county.

“Bensalem takes pride in our immigrant population, then and now,” said Joyce Hadley, the former chair of the Bucks County Human Relations Council who fought the program in 2018. “We could not understand why Mr. Harran would want to bring in anything that would subject the immigrant population to scrutiny, to give them fear. No one could understand what his intention was.”

“Now here we are again,” said Hadley, who now chairs the Human Relations Commission.

Harran’s Democratic opponent, attorney Danny Ceisler, was quick to jump on the backlash — issuing statements opposing the program and slamming Harran as the race shifts from a local context to one Ceisler says will be a referendum on Trump in Bucks County.

“He’s always been this kind of bizarre hard-liner on immigration,” Ceisler said, referencing Harran’s trips to the southern border and early support of Trump.

“Crime resulting from illegal immigrants is not a major issue in Bucks County,” Ceisler said.

Harran has been defiant, blaming the backlash on media coverage. On the conservative-leaning Delaware Valley Journal’s podcast he called the ACLU “lunatics” for threatening a suit against him.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Harran said he had offered to call representatives of the Bucks County NAACP and other groups before referring a detainee to ICE and review that individual’s criminal background with them. The groups, he said, declined.

“People are saying 287(g) for me is political. Really? I wanted this crap brought upon me?” Harran said. Most egregious, he’s said, have been criticisms he views as antisemitic.

Harran, who is Jewish, said he’s been compared to Nazis because of his support for the program.

One of those comparisons, he said, came when Democratic Commissioner Bob Harvie, who is running for Congress, noted parallels between the lead-up to World War II and the politics of today at the end of a meeting that centered on 287(g), which fell on Victory in Europe Day.

The sheriff issued a statement slamming Harvie for his comments and, in an interview, returned to that moment as an example of the animosity and disrespect he says he’s received from Harvie.

Harvie and Marseglia, in a May statement, insisted Harvie’s comments had nothing to do with Harran but that if the sheriff saw himself in those words it “says more about him and his intentions than it does about Commissioner Harvie.” Harvie did not agree to be interviewed.

Tensions between the commissioners and Harran predate the fight over working with ICE and have often played out in public meetings.

Harran says everything since he’s become sheriff has been a fight — including disputes over budget, staff, and school resource officers. He suspects Democrats view him as a political threat.

“You gotta ask yourself why are these people against me when I’m doing all this good stuff,” he said.

In January, Harran went past the commissioners to the county salary board to approve raises for deputies in the midst of contract negotiations.

Months later, Marseglia read a letter from union representatives during a June meeting criticizing that process. Harran yelled from the side of the room, asking who had signed the letter and accusing the Democrat of lying and holding the union hostage during negotiations.

Harvie yelled back at Harran to be quiet.

“Until you sit here you can sit there and listen to me,” Harvie said.

Harran said the commissioners fight him rather than supporting law enforcement.

“They sit up there like king and queen of Bucks County,” Harran said.

Marseglia says the sheriff too often steps out of his lane.

Harran, she said, is trying to expand the role of sheriff rather than focusing on existing responsibilities like clearing outstanding warrants. When Harran came into the job there were more than 7,000 outstanding warrants in Bucks County. That number is now below 5,000, Harran said, after his office worked to clear warrants. Some of those cases, Marseglia noted, were transferred to the county probation office.

“I think that Fred has a lot of ideas and it’s hard for him to stay in a lane,” Marseglia said. “Being of a different political party, I guess he thinks he doesn’t have to listen.”

To Harran, this work to push the envelope and expand the role of the sheriff’s office is what voters elected him to do, and it’s what he did in Bensalem.

“I don’t want to hear the nonsense, well that’s not his lane,’” he said. “Don’t tell me what’s in my job description and what’s not. My job description is what the people want and what I can do to keep this county safe.”

When Harran was just weeks into his job as a police officer in Bensalem in the 1980s, he responded to a call where a person threw human feces at him. He crouched behind his patrol car wondering what he had gotten himself into. And it wasn’t lost on him that, had he mistook the feces for a weapon when the subject reached into his pants, he might have shot at him.

The incident was a driving factor when he worked with Marseglia to establish a mental health co-responders in Bensalem — the first in the county.

“I was way out of my lane as a police chief,” he said.

Then, Harran was known for being community-centered. He worked with an organization to put police officers in an ice cream truck at events. He established a partnership with the Bucks County NAACP to improve hiring practices in the department, and allowed residents to report complaints of police misconduct directly to the NAACP or religious leaders.

“The work never stops with him, he’s very proactive and innovative,” said Michelle Benitez, a current Bensalem council member who worked with Harran on community boards.

Bill Wiegman, the former police chief in Lower Southampton who led the Bucks County Fraternal Order of Police and the county police chiefs association, credits Harran’s leadership in negotiations with improved relationships between Bucks County police and the NAACP.

“The relationship definitely has improved because we didn’t have that relationship like we have now,” Wiegman said.

“There’s still some contention, obviously, but it’s nothing like it could have been.”

Karen Downer, who led the NAACP of Bucks County at the time, said she and Harran developed a productive working relationship that improved interactions between police and the Black community despite knowing they’d never agree on politics.

“It was a lot to really overcome, I think, within the Black community. I’m not saying everything reached a point where everything was perfect and wonderful,” Downer said.

The NAACP of Bucks County, now under different leadership, has been a forceful opponent to Harran’s 287(g) efforts, signing onto the ACLU lawsuit challenging the partnership. In a statement in May the organization said the effort would put immigrants at risk and worsen racial profiling.

Harran has pointed to his work with the community as proof that he is a moderate candidate, willing to talk to anyone. He said he faced internal pushback for the co-responders program and was accused of instituting DEI when he pursued more diverse hiring practices.

All of this, he argued, was in pursuit of law enforcement goals, not attention or accolades.

But his opponents paint the sheriff as a politician constantly seeking attention.

“He’s all for making a big splash in the press and getting his face in front of the camera,” said Jesse Sloane, a Democrat who served on Bensalem’s council when Harran was there and voted against Harran’s promotion to public safety director. Sloane is running for Bensalem township council this year.

State Sen. Steve Santarsiero called the sheriff’s focus on immigration a “stunt” and his decision to start a podcast fueled more critiques.

“I think he wants a position in the Trump Administration, a show on Discovery [Channel], or some sort of fame, “ said Laura Rose, an immigration activist with Indivisible Bucks County.

Initially asked about Democrats’ comparisons between himself and the president, Harran laughed, quipping that he wished he had Trump’s bank account. He acknowledged similarities in rhetoric because “I don’t hold back” but said the suggestion prompted reflection about how his statements may come across.

“I’m not Donald Trump, I’m Fred Harran,” he said. “I have a little bit of everyone else.”