How a Delco creek became the focus of an anti-immigrant conspiracy

Darby Creek in Delco’s Rolling Green Park is a shallow, sun-dappled brook with pebbled banks, shaded from the road by a canopy of trees.

For years, when it got too hot in the neighborhood, people waded in or brought inner tubes to float. It was a local, unauthorized swimming spot — until the township officially banned swimming there earlier this summer.

There were practical reasons for the ban: no lifeguards, no water quality checks, no changing rooms or bathrooms.

But the neighborhood conversations that prompted it also revealed a menacing undercurrent. Fears and rumors about undocumented immigrants swimming naked in the creek and leaving trash behind ricocheted across social media and occupied long stretches of public comment during Delaware County Council’s weekly meetings. The County Council does not manage the municipal park, but residents still directed their ire there, threatening council members with violence.

“That was just something that kind of took on a life of its own,” said Jim Byrne, Springfield Township solicitor, who insisted the swimming ban had nothing to do with immigrants and never did.

The whole episode illustrated how the specter of illegal immigration has gripped residents and lawmakers even thousands of miles from the southern border, and even in parts of public life that seem to have little to do with it.

On a recent muggy afternoon, Darby Creek itself was quiet. Giana Pasquay, 19, and her friend Lucy Baker, 20, sat on a rock by the water, listening to Amy Winehouse on a speaker stuck into a shoe. Both grew up in Media and graduated from Penncrest High School; Pasquay had already been swimming in the creek since the ban. She had a theory as to why it was enacted in the first place.

“It’s not the creek,” Pasquay offered. “It’s the people that they care about.”

Residents began packing Delaware County Council meetings in the spring when the county proposed building a 16-bed mental health facility on land that formerly housed Don Guanella, a home for men with developmental disabilities. The county ultimately decided not to move forward with it because of funding issues.

But the animating issues of that debate were a preview of what was to come.

Charlie Alexander, a general contractor and Marple resident who frequently addresses “concerned citizens” on TikTok, Facebook, and X, rallied some residents to oppose the Don Guanella plan by falsely claiming that undocumented immigrants would be housed at the facility. Some of Alexander’s claims echo those voiced by Donald Trump, who on the campaign trail frequently refers to an “invasion” at the southern border and an immigrant-caused surge in violent crime that is not supported by evidence.

Alexander and other residents were also consumed by a popular GOP falsehood that migrants are crossing the border to vote illegally in U.S. elections. The threat of noncitizen voting has been repeatedly refuted. A Brennan Center for Justice report on the 2016 election found that across 42 jurisdictions nationwide, including those with the highest share of noncitizen residents, election officials estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting out of 23.5 million votes — accounting for 0.0001 percent of the 2016 vote in those areas.

Yet the fear that undocumented immigrants were using resources in Delco became so widespread that the Delaware County Council released an official press release in March titled, “Rumors About the Former Don Guanella Property Housing Immigrants Are Untrue.” (Since March, the council has released three press releases dispelling rumors about immigration in the county.)

“There is absolutely no truth to this rumor,” the release said. “We encourage residents to be cautious of rumors that circulate on blogs and social media.”

But the rumor persisted.

At an April meeting, a resident told the Delaware County Council, “I was also told from one of the people in Marple that the county will lie about this to get the illegal immigrants — immigrants, newcomers, whatever you want to call them — to be housed in there.”

Soon after, Alexander pivoted to what he saw as a related concern. He said on social media that he was seeing white vans around the county, which he believed, without evidence, to be involved in human trafficking. He created a Facebook group in which he encouraged members to take and share photos of “suspicious vans, buses, and vehicles.” He began posting grainy photos and videos of people walking in Rolling Green Park and wading in Delco creeks, alongside close-ups of trash and knives on the ground, which he claimed immigrants left behind.

The Inquirer could not independently verify the photos. Alexander assumed that people were undocumented immigrants based on photos and videos, which is not an accurate way to determine someone’s status.

“People are seeing more illegal immigrants, just kind of suddenly overnight over the last two months, just pop up in Delaware County. And then these vans, where they’re picking people up and they’re dropping them off. And then out of nowhere, you start seeing naked people in creeks? That’s where it blows up,” he said.

The idea that the immigrant population of Delco is “illegal” is a powerful political rallying cry, experts said, but sheds little light on people’s actual status in an extraordinarily complicated immigration system. Legal status is a continuum that can take years to play out, and cannot be determined by looking at someone or hearing him or her speak Spanish, said Cathryn Miller-Wilson, executive director of HIAS Pennsylvania, which provides legal and social services to immigrants and refugees in the state. (HIAS PA is one of Alexander’s frequent targets.)

The anti-immigrant vitriol trickled into everyday life for Spanish-speaking immigrants in Delco, a population that has grown significantly since the start of the pandemic, advocates said.

“What I hear is an uptick in feeling un-welcomed. Not necessarily threats but poor tones of voice, refusal of service. Just sort of a general sense of, ‘Don’t come in here. You’re not welcome,’” said Layla de Luria, the executive director of Centro de Apoyo Comunitario, a direct service organization founded by Latina immigrant women in Delco. “I have parents tell me stories about trying to take their kids to the park, feeling panicky, turning around and taking them right home.”

De Luria said that charged national rhetoric seemed to be stoking it. Delco is historically red, but has been controlled by Democrats since 2020. At county council meetings in the spring and summer, residents sometimes threatened officials.

“Don’t make good people do bad things, ‘cause we’ll do it,” Howard Alexander of Broomall told the council in April. “We’ll be there with pitchforks and torches and hot tar and feathers.”

In June, Springfield Township, which manages Rolling Green Park, passed a new ordinance at a special Board of Commissioners meeting. From then on, there would be “no bathing or swimming in township parks.” Soon after, the township erected new signs on the dirt banks of the creek stating the rule. Township police announced they would have “an increased presence” to monitor violations.

To some local officials, the ban was a clear response to a practical issue. Byrne, the Springfield Township solicitor, said there had been “around 20 or so police calls” since June about problems at the creek. (The police department referred The Inquirer to Byrne.) He said township officials enacted the ban for benign reasons of municipal governance.

“I’ve heard people say that, but it had nothing at all to do with immigrants,” Byrne said. He said township commissioners and police had heard complaints about large groups at the creeks, damming up the water to swim, bathing, changing their clothes in public view, and going to the bathroom on the banks. Park crews would find trash and overflowing trash cans when they went to clean it, he said.

“Everybody’s welcome to come to the park and use it in accordance with the park rules,” Byrne said. “That’s why we built a park.”

Even after the township banned swimming in the local parks, scores of residents showed up to a July 3 Delaware County Council meeting to air their grievances, many of which focused on illegal immigration and the local creeks. The complaints continued through July.

“This immigration stuff, you gotta stop. You gotta legislate, get these people out of our country. They’re swimming in our creeks, naked,” said Gary Ryder, a resident of Marple Township.

Though Rolling Green Park is not under her jurisdiction, Delaware County Council member Christine Reuther also saw the creek issue as a practical one. During a brutally hot summer, people need places to get cool. But the creeks aren’t safe — they don’t have lifeguards and the water quality is not tested. She said she had reached out to county officials about the long shot possibility of creating a public swimming pool in Ridley Creek State Park.

Regardless of officials’ intentions, Alexander was validated by the township’s ban on swimming.

“I want to commend Springfield Township and especially their police department. They’ve truly shut this down,” Alexander wrote on X in July.

In the days after, he pivoted once again. He shared conspiracies that the CIA attempted to assassinate Trump and posted a video at the former Don Guanella in which he woke up a man sleeping in a UHaul and asked him about whether he was engaged in human trafficking. (”Y’all watch a lot of TV,” the man said, adding that he was just homeless and trying to sleep somewhere no one would bother him.)

Darby Creek stayed peaceful. The creek was shallow enough at Rolling Green Park on a recent afternoon to see stones and small fish swimming at the bottom. Pete Zangari, 9, fished on the bank. His mother, Rebecca Zangari, had been bringing him to the park once a week from their home in Clifton Heights since he became enamored with fishing earlier in the summer. Birds chirped in the steamy air.

Zangari had seen lots of people swimming in June, the start of a summer of record heat waves, and had just registered the new “No Swimming” signs. She didn’t like them.

“That’s one way to cool off without having to pay for anything,” she said. “People should be able to cool off. It’s water.”