Popular Honesdale, PA Pizza Restaurant Raided By ICE

Reports indicated that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out a raid on March 19.

The River Reporter out of Narrowsburg, NY (Sullivan County) reports on a raid in nearby Honesdale, PA at the Elegante Restaurant & Pizzeria, with Honesdale Mayor Derek Williams telling the River Reporter that he saw two ICE agents walk into Elegante as he was walking on Main Street.

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Williams said he talked with Elegante's owner, who told him the agents came in "like they owned the place," looking for one person in particular, whom they found and took. He walked around to the back of the building and saw those agents and other agents gathered in the back parking lot.

The Honesdale Borough Police reportedly had no idea the raid was happening until ICE came to the police department and asked them if they knew the man, Williams said. The ICE agents did not tell the owner why they took this person, except to say that they knew his name, said that he was a 'bad person' and that he had a specific tattoo, according to the report.

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Wayne County Sheriff Chris Rosler told the River Reporter he heard from an Elegante employee that one man was brought away because of the gun tattoos on his chest. ICE did not contact the sheriff's office in advance of the raid, Rosler said, as a federal agency, they do not like to work with local departments. shows several men in bulletproof vests with "Police, ICE" and "Police, federal agent" written on the back, standing in the back parking lot of the Elegante building.

Honesdale Mayor Derek Williams went on to say that the general tenor in the town is that when federal law enforcement comes in with that kind of energy, "It's scary for everybody."