How ICE and a data center turned a small Pittsburgh suburb into a civic battleground

Yaquelin Vasques grew nervous when her husband, Jose Acosta, told her he was taking a construction job near Springdale.

The couple had been taking precautions while Acosta, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras, awaited the outcome of his green card application.

“I was like, ‘Oh babe, I heard so many things from the Springdale area,’” said Vasques during a July interview at her home in Beaver County more than 30 miles away.

Springdale Borough was long a sleepy square-mile suburb dominated by a power plant, but over the last 12 months has become a local flashpoint for two of the nation’s most contentious issues: data centers and immigration enforcement.

Acosta was picked up by Springdale police around 9 a.m. on July 2 while seated in his parked truck outside a commercial job site in Harmar, according to Vasques. She tracked his phone to the Springdale Borough building, where she confronted an officer who said her husband had been arrested for a traffic violation and was being transported to ICE’s field office in Pittsburgh.

Acosta lived in the country since 2018 without incident other than a 2023 traffic stop, until now.

“If luck is on our side, he could be home in two, maybe three, years,” said the mother of three.

Yaquelin Vasques is raising her three children alone since her husband was detained in Harmar by ICE and Springdale Borough police on July 2. “I’m not the only one. There’s so many people going through it, too,” she said July 14 at her Beaver County home.

ICE spokesman Jason Koontz wrote in an email statement that ICE and Springdale police “were conducting field operations in the Springdale Borough area” when they apprehended Acosta in Harmar.

Acosta is one of several people arrested in joint operations involving Springdale police and ICE since the borough signed a formal task force agreement known as a 287(g) in November. That agreement, along with a contentious data center that’s set to be built a stone’s throw from family homes, have, since February, set off street protests, rallies outside the borough building and a forceful arrest of a resident at the public speaker’s lectern.

Amid the backlash, two community organizations, Indivisible Allegheny Valley and Save Allegheny Valley Environment (SAVE), have formed as the primary engines of opposition.

Springdale is one of 130 Allegheny County municipalities, tasked with handling streets, parks and public safety. While proponents say small government fosters responsiveness, the confluence of a data center and an immigration crackdown has tested the ability of a small town with largely volunteer leadership to keep its sense of community and preserve trust in its leadership amid divisive national currents.

Locals opposed to both ICE collaboration and the data center say the common thread is a lack of transparency and accountability in the town’s governance.

“In Springdale, to go from a place where there has not been a lot of activity to having all this organizing (around ICE and data centers) – I don’t know what the connection is, but I think there is one,” said resident Amy Sarno, who serves on the Allegheny Valley School Board and volunteers with the Indivisible chapter.

“Transparency and discussion have been severely lacking in our local council,” said resident Matt Lang.

Springdale officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment made by phone, email and in person.

Springdale faltered as deindustrialization swept through Western Pennsylvania, drawing down the population from a high of around 5,600 in 1960 to little more than 3,000 today. Though a few industrial mainstays including PPG and Greco Steel still churn out paint and construction materials, the Allegheny Valley river town has no bank or grocery store and the business corridor along Pittsburgh Street is dotted with empty storefronts.

Up the hill on Marion Avenue, the rustic timber homestead where environmental icon Rachel Carson began her life in 1907 captures the uneasy relationship between nature and industry that marked Springdale long before the issues of today.

Carson’s name is on the nearby riverfront park and a walking trail stretching 45 miles up the Allegheny Valley. Critics of the data center often invoke her legacy in their struggle against the New York-funded data center developer Dynamo DC.

Debbie Sigmund, the elected tax collector and an elder at Springdale United Presbyterian Church, said she thinks the town could do more to capitalize on Carson’s legacy. Sigmund, 67, helped form the Springdale Team of Active Residents (STAR) in 2008 when she felt her hometown had reached a low point.

“We were afraid,” she said. “The main street was sparse.”

STAR meets monthly in the church and works to beautify Springdale by planting trees, hanging veteran banners and supporting new businesses.

During a meeting in June, the committee discussed a grant opportunity to redevelop the main street, mused about whether a plucky restaurateur would ever take over the vacant Methodist church and heard a recent culinary school graduate share plans to open a bakery.

Sigmund said she tries to stay out of the prevailing “small-town politics” and declined to comment on the data center or other contentious issues.

Her late husband, father and grandfather had all worked in the Cheswick Generating Station before it shuttered in 2022. While some criticized the air pollution caused by the county’s last coal-burning power plant, Sigmund saw its closure as another blow to the community. The 50-acre site was bought in November by Dynamo DC.

Sigmund said her fight for Springdale can feel like a losing battle, though successes like the arrival of brewpub Leaning Cask some 10 years ago and the new bakery plans give her hope. She believes her town has lots of assets to capitalize on, and could better showcase its riverfront.

“River towns are struggling,” she said. “As long as we can keep the community the way it is, and take baby steps to make it better, that’s all that we can strive for.”

Lang, 32, bought his home in Springdale in 2024, before he knew of the data center plans. He said his choice was driven in part by the upward potential he saw in the town.

“They took down the power plant, there was talk of cleaning up the riverfront for recreation. That got me excited, too.”

Now the new homeowner is worried values could drop.

Lang began attending council meetings last fall to get to know his community and participate in civic efforts. After hearing about the data center plans during his second visit, he became involved in organizing small protests outside the borough building.

By the time council came to vote on the plans in December, the auditorium was regularly filled with residents questioning its value to the community.

More than a dozen speakers voiced worries about noise, pollution and its energy consumption, after which five of seven councilors cast yes votes amid boos and jeers.

Several members cast their votes reluctantly, saying they couldn’t oppose it without risking a costly lawsuit because the developer had met the zoning requirements.

“The community would not survive us being sued,” said Councilor Dolly Stephens before voting in support. “… We have things outlined, and if we don’t vote yes, we’ll lose all that and they’ll come in anyway.”

Brigitte Meyer, an attorney at PennFuture, said this is a common trap municipalities like Springdale find themselves in when a developer comes knocking with plans to build a data center. That’s in part because many small towns drafted their zoning laws long before the advent of AI platforms, and so they lack the provisions to regulate the vast industrial infrastructure powering them.

Meyer has developed a zoning template to help municipalities across Pennsylvania build their own ordinances, and Allegheny County’s sustainability office is working on its own version .

“Now it’s a race against the developers,” said Meyer, “and sometimes the developers are beating municipalities to the punch.”

Dynamo DC says the 652,300-square-foot facility will benefit the town of 3,000 by generating 80 to 100 permanent jobs and funneling millions in annual tax dollars into the borough and school district. The company adjusted the design plan to reduce the noise and improve the aesthetics.

“What we’ve been trying to do is show people that we are willing to make additional investments to mitigate sound,” Brian Regli, a consultant for Dynamo DC said during an interview at a data center open house event in June .

Regli declined an interview for this story.

Lang said he would be impressed if they make good on their pledge to recycle water rather than constantly drawing new supplies from the river.

Overall, though, he has unanswered questions on key issues, such as the number of generators, the level of noise and the source of power.

“If they could resolve a lot of the issues here, (the data center) could be a good addition,” he said. “Without those answers, I don’t feel comfortable having it move in next to us.”

As data center furor cooled after the December vote, angst over ICE activity boiled over following a February arrest.

Alleging a minor traffic violation, borough police arrested Randy Cordova Flores, who has no known criminal record, and turned him over to ICE.

Cordova Flores, a Peruvian man with an immigration case in process, spent four months in ICE’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center before his family launched a costly legal challenge that led to his release from the Clearfield County facility on bond. Flores has two kids in the Allegheny Valley School District, which encompasses Springdale, Cheswick and Harmar.

When Yaquelin Vasques learned her husband was in federal custody on the morning of July 2, she called Frontline Dignity, a local group that trains volunteers to respond to reported ICE arrests by documenting agents’ conduct and offering support to the detainee or their loved ones.

One of the volunteers who met her, Judah Marroquin from Springdale Township, two miles over, helped Vasques pick up her husband’s truck and drove with her to ICE’s South Side field office. Marroquin has two school-age kids with her Guatemalan husband, Carlos.

“I don’t feel alone,” Vasques said, speaking of support she’s received from people across the region since her husband’s arrest.

Vasques said she wants answers about why Springdale was operating two municipalities over in Harmar.

Koontz, the ICE spokesperson, said the Springdale-ICE task force “encountered a black Jeep that failed to properly signal a turn,” and initiated a vehicle stop when they apprehended Acosta in Harmar. He was taken into custody shortly after the occupants “exited the vehicle and absconded into a wooded area nearby,” Koontz wrote.

Koontz did not respond to additional questions about the Springdale department’s jurisdiction outside the borough or about the scope of its ICE partnership.

Springdale Police Chief Derek Dayoub did not respond to requests for an interview made by phone and in person.

David Harris, a professor of law specializing in public safety, said Springdale police would not have jurisdiction to work in a neighboring municipality unless the two forces have a clear agreement in place. He said Springdale police may be able to claim they were simply assisting ICE, which as a federal agency has jurisdiction in any municipality.

“If they were simply picking people for regular routine criminal law enforcement, it would be a problem,” Harris said. “You have to ask some very fine questions about what Springdale was doing there.”

Local police departments that partner with ICE can qualify for a range of financial incentives once they are “operational.” Springdale did not return any receipts or records of such benefits in response to a Right-to-Know Law request Public Source filed in February. Butler County’s sheriff department, for example, had billed the federal agency nearly $200,000 for assisting with 71 arrests as of March.

During a July 21 meeting, Springdale Borough Councilor Joe Kern said in response to resident questions that council does not receive regular updates or reports about the police’s partnership with ICE.

“As far as I know, ICE isn’t actively patrolling Springdale Borough,” he said.

On July 23, a Public Source reporter saw Springdale police officers and ICE agents removing two men from a white van on Freeport Road in Harmar, handcuffing them and leading them to Springdale police vehicles.

Harmar Police Chief Jason Domaratz said his department doesn’t have an agreement with ICE, and will only respond if he’s called in for assistance.

“I don’t get involved in the BS,” he said.

Domaratz said Springdale’s agreement with ICE gives them the right to operate in Harmar when assisting with federal detentions.

“Do I like it? No,” he said. “My guys aren’t even allowed to leave the town. If they need to eat something and we don’t have it in the town, they have to bring it in a brown bag.”

Marroquin didn’t get involved in local politics until the Cordova Flores arrest earlier this year. Though her husband now has American citizenship, Marroquin, who is white, fears it won’t shield him from all trouble with immigration agents, and the couple has agreed he won’t drive through Springdale while the 287(g) is in place.

Protests erupted in the weeks after Cordova Flores’ arrest, including one that prompted a passing ICE supporter to stop his car and confront protester Ian Hill, of Springdale, who was holding a stick. The ICE supporter punched a different protester. Video from the incident published by TribLIVE shows Hill neither striking nor being struck.

Hill was charged with simple assault nearly three months after the incident.

Hill was also charged with terroristic threats for statements he posted on social media. All the charges were later dropped.

Days before Hill was charged and jailed, Springdale police forcefully arrested resident William “Danny” Rosenmund from the speaker’s podium during an April 21 public meeting. Rosenmund, a regular public speaker, had repeatedly questioned Springdale’s agreement with ICE since it was brokered in late 2025 and criticized borough officials for authorizing it without a public vote.

Harris said he isn’t versed enough to say whether the law would require a vote in public.

“What seems to me is clear is that it should have been public anyway,” he said, pointing to the need to build trust with residents given the heightened scrutiny over immigration enforcement since President Donald Trump’s second term.

“Police work has to have the community’s support,” he added.

Rosenmund was speaking about policing issues and criticizing what he described as a lack of transparency when he was pulled from the podium and taken to the ground by Springdale officers. Rosenmund faces seven criminal charges, including resisting arrest and two felony charges of aggravated assault. His hearing was deferred when prosecutors discovered video refuting the borough’s claim he spoke beyond his allotted three minutes.

Norman DeLay tried to speak at a Springdale council meeting.

DeLay, 57, said he moved to Cheswick for a peaceful life after a long military career that led him into “every major U.S. conflict since the Panama invasion” in 1989.

The boundary line separating Cheswick and Springdale runs along South Duquesne Avenue, the quiet cul-de-sac where DeLay lives with his wife and daughters. On the Cheswick side, a row of neat ranch homes perch behind trimmed green lawns. On the Springdale side sits the 50-acre lot now slated for the data center.

DeLay’s time as an Army Ranger brought on post-traumatic stress disorder that’s sometimes triggered by fireworks and other loud noises. From his porch, though, he takes comfort in the wildlife that graze and flitter through the former industrial site where a quilt of grassy undergrowth has returned since the power plant’s demolition. He and his daughters have pet names for the deer — Thelma and Louise — and the three crows — Huey, Lewy and Dewy — that stop by most evenings.

“It’s something that you don’t want to lose, you know?”

DeLay said he went to a council meeting last fall to voice his opposition to the plans, but was told he couldn’t speak because he’s not a Springdale resident.

Now he’s looking to uproot his family and settle in rural Tennessee.

“I moved here because I have PTSD,” he said. “…I’m hoping to be out of here before they build it.”

Tyler Bonatesta, 31, bought his parents’ former home in Cheswick with plans to raise a family there.

“I imagined being outside with our kid,” he said. “We had a large yard. You could catch a baseball outside.”

Like DeLay, he was concerned when he heard about the data center and attempted to speak at council but was turned away.

“It’s crazy to me that we couldn’t have any say in it,” Bonatesta said.

Bonatesta said his biggest concerns were with the noise and the possible health consequences of living near a data center. He said he couldn’t be sure what the actual impacts would be until the center is online, but by that point it could be too late.

“It’s too big of a risk and we’re essentially being forced out of our home.”

After the vote in December, he and his wife, Danielle, decided to put their house on the market, and they accepted an offer in July.

“All of these impacts are regional, but the authority is municipal,” said Courtney Ehrlichman, executive director of CONNECT. “Those things don’t stop at the borough line, but the public comment does … You can live 400 feet from a project and have no standing or live a mile away and be able to speak.”

CONNECT is a nonprofit that builds collaboration between Pittsburgh and 41 other Allegheny County municipalities.

Ehrlichman said the participation gap isn’t the fault of any municipality specifically but pointed to a regional problem with the emergence of data centers that create new challenges for older zoning codes.

“If the decision-making unit is smaller than the impact zone, there’s always someone who is left out of the room.”

As a volunteer firefighter at Frazer VFD, DeLay said he’s routinely called to emergency scenes in Springdale through their mutual aid agreement. This is just one example of how the communities are intertwined, he said.

“It’s kind of like a three-legged stool,” DeLay said of Springdale, Cheswick and Harmar. “You’re not gonna be able to stand with just two legs.”

As the first approved data center plan in Allegheny County, the Springdale project has drawn interest and concern from across the region. The SAVE group meets weekly at From Italy, a pizza shop tucked away on the town’s eastern tip painted in green, white and orange blocks. The meetings, where around 30 regulars gather most weeks, have attracted researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and a former Upper Burrell commissioner concerned about the data center planned in his township. One of the leaders, Tom Bailey, lives across the river in Penn Hills.

“I do hope that by being vocal, we can help other communities prepare for data centers or fight against them if need be,” Lang said.

Since the council approval in December, SAVE has turned to Allegheny County, which must approve a land development plan for the data center and grant it various permits.

“I don’t think they thought that Springdale would fight back,” said Cathy Mager, a lifelong Springdale resident and a SAVE member who hopes to find a way to thwart the data center before construction begins.

The 15 or so residents at Springdale council’s July 21 meeting were split about evenly among SAVE and Indivisible members. Marroquin, who attended, said Indivisible Allegheny Valley was founded to protest the 287(g) agreement and support locals who may feel at risk from ICE, but her strategy has shifted toward better governance, which she said underscores all their efforts.

“We are going to try to do things not just for the vulnerable community, but just for the community as a whole,” she said.

One speaker, Brittany Jackson, said a lack of clarity around ICE and policing made her feel unsafe as a person of color.

“We want transparency,” Jackson said. ”I don’t feel safe because I don’t know what is going on.”

Two others asked the borough to livestream meetings so more people can tune in.

“It’s 2026. If we’re gonna be doing transparency and putting everything online, a livestream is really easy to do,” said Kaitlin Mueller.

Patrick Bono, Springdales’s new manager, said he is updating the website and will be making public reports and meeting minutes more accessible.

“I’m working on that goal of transparency for you and for everyone in the borough,” he said, addressing Jackson.

Before public comment, Council President Mike Ziencik said there had been discussion about lifting the three-minute limit on public comment. For now, though, the green LED clock atop the dais starts ticking once the mic is engaged.

“We will not interrupt you, we will not look at you like you have a third eyeball,” Ziencik said. “We will give you your full three minutes.”

This story was originally published by Pittsburgh’s Public Source and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.