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  • An ex-Philly City Council aide from a prominent political family is accused of sexual harassment

    An ex-Philly City Council aide from a prominent political family is accused of sexual harassment

    After Sharif Street Jr. got into a highly public fight at Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s 2024 inauguration ceremony, his boss, City Councilmember Jim Harrity, extended him some grace.

    Harrity, who credits Street Jr.’s father, State Sen. Sharif Street (D., Philadelphia), with giving him a second chance earlier in his own career, kept the junior Street on staff as a special assistant, saying the incident was a lapse in judgment.

    But according to another staff member in Harrity’s office, it was not the only transgression.

    Shanelle Davis, a former constituent services representative, filed a federal lawsuit last week against the city claiming that she told supervisors months before the inauguration fight that Street Jr. had sexually harassed her while she was at work, including twice grabbing her and making sexualized comments about her body.

    She said in the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, that no action was taken and Street Jr. remained on staff.

    Davis is seeking unspecified damages from the city, which she claims violated state and federal laws related to gender-based discrimination. Street Jr. is not named as a defendant in the suit, but he is mentioned throughout the 13-page filing.

    Davis’ complaint portrays a dysfunctional workplace environment in the City Hall office, including an alleged physical altercation between Street Jr. and another staffer for which no one was reprimanded. Davis, who is Black, claimed another colleague in Harrity’s office made racist comments, including hurling the N-word toward her.

    Davis, who was hired in late 2022, said in the lawsuit that she was fired for underperforming at her job about a year later, after Harrity won reelection.

    Her attorney did not respond to a request for comment Monday. Street Jr. did not respond to calls seeking comment.

    Harrity, a Democrat who represents the city at-large and was a longtime aide to the elder Street, said in a statement that he “categorically denounce[s] workplace harassment, or any conduct that undermines a respectful and professional work environment.”

    He declined to comment further, citing the ongoing legal proceedings. A spokesperson for the city law department also declined to comment.

    The lawsuit is the latest legal trouble involving Sharif Street Jr., 26, who over the last three years has pleaded guilty to criminal offenses in Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Delaware Counties. In August, his employment with the city was terminated the week he pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the inauguration assault and another incident.

    City Councilmember Jim Harrity speaks to colleagues on during a Council session in September.

    Street Jr. comes from one of Philadelphia’s most well-known political families. His grandfather is former Mayor John F. Street, his mother is Common Pleas Court Judge Sierra Thomas Street, and his father is a state senator and the former head of the state Democratic Party who is now running for a seat in Congress.

    Anthony Campisi, a spokesperson for the elder Sharif Street’s congressional campaign, said the state senator had “no knowledge” of the sexual harassment allegations.

    “Sharif loves his son unconditionally and has supported his son through personal troubles, like so many parents across Philadelphia,” Campisi said. “That being said, Sharif unequivocally condemns sexual harassment in all its forms and is looking for the legal process to play out.”

    City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, who took over as leader of the chamber in 2024, declined to comment. Under City Council rules, individual members are responsible for hiring and terminating their own employees.

    State Senator Sharif Street (D., Phila.)is in the state House chamber as Gov. Josh Shapiro makes his annual budget proposal Feb. 3, 2026.

    Street Jr. was arrested several times over three years while working in City Hall as an assistant in Harrity’s office, court records show. Davis’ lawsuit comes about six months after Street Jr.’s employment in Harrity’s office ended, according to payroll records.

    In January 2024, Street Jr. punched a security guard at the entrance to Parker’s inauguration ceremony at the Met Philadelphia on North Broad Street. He told The Inquirer at the time that he was defending his grandfather, the former mayor, whom he said the guard had grabbed because they were trying to enter at a back entrance without waiting in line.

    “I saw my grandfather get grabbed and I just sort of blacked out,” Street Jr. said. His father defended him at the time, saying the security guard had initiated the altercation.

    Later that month, Street Jr. was charged in connection with a hit-and-run from the previous August that left a 14-year-old injured.

    The two cases were consolidated in Common Pleas Court, and Street Jr. pleaded guilty in August to charges of assault and causing an accident that resulted in an injury. According to prosecutors, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail.

    Four months later, when he was no longer working in city government, Street Jr. was briefly jailed in Delaware County following what police in Upper Darby described as a “prolonged struggle” during a traffic stop. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, a summary offense.

  • Former Villanova professor says she was fired after accusing the law school of racial discrimination

    Former Villanova professor says she was fired after accusing the law school of racial discrimination

    A former Villanova professor says in a federal lawsuit filed this week she was fired from the Catholic university after accusing its law school of racial discrimination involving one of her students.

    Stephanie Sena, who had been an anti-poverty fellow in the law school and taught at Villanova for more than 20 years, was dismissed in 2024 for what the school said were “student complaints,” according to the lawsuit.

    But Sena’s lawyers say the dismissal was due to her filing an ethics complaint against the school for racial discrimination for comments that administrators made around a decision not to give her student a financial award that would have alleviated her debt, citing a speech the student made at a law school symposium.

    The student, Antionna Fuller, accused Villanova of racial discrimination and failing to appropriately support her with financial aid during a 2021 symposium speech at the university, titled “Shifting the Poverty Lens: Caritas in Focus.” Sena hosted the symposium, during which Fuller also publicly asked for an apology from Villanova.

    “How can you say caritas [which means love and charity in Latin] and Black lives matter with no thought to a Black life in front of you, systematically oppressed by your hands?” Fuller said, according to a video of the speech. “It’s not only hypocritical, but it’s embarrassing. We cannot talk about oppression and white supremacy without acknowledging its very presence here.”

    Homeless advocate creating a shelter from the ground up in Upper Darby

    Her speech drew a standing ovation, but later caused consternation among law school leadership.

    Sena found out that law school dean Mark Alexander, in a letter to the scholarship committee, asked that Fuller not receive the debt relief award because she “maliciously maligned” the law school, according to the suit.

    Sena‘s lawsuit alleges that then-law school vice dean Michael Risch said after the student’s speech that the student was “lucky” to have gotten into the law school and that she would not be there if she were white.

    Villanova said in a statement Wednesday that Sena’s lawsuit “lacks merit” and that the university “will vigorously defend against these baseless allegations.”

    “We look forward to presenting the actual facts surrounding the plaintiff’s separation from Villanova. To be clear, Villanova University does not tolerate discrimination or retaliation of any kind, and the allegations in Plaintiff’s lawsuit are contrary to our written policies and conflict with the core values of our University.”

    Sena, 46, of Media, declined to comment.

    Fuller, 29, who now lives with her mother in the South, said in an interview Wednesday that she feels both relieved and anxious about seeing the issue aired publicly.

    “I am happy, at least relieved, that truth is coming out,” said Fuller, who graduated summa cum laude from the University of South Carolina and got her Villanova law degree in 2022. “I’ve been in such an isolated place and just carrying this trauma for so long.”

    She said she sought therapy after the reaction she got to her speech from Villanova administrators and last year wrote a book, I Almost Sued My Law School, about her journey as a first-generation, low-income Black student. She no longer wants to practice law, she said, and is still figuring out her next steps.

    But she said she was grateful to Sena, whom, during the symposium speech, she called “my hero, advocate, and my friend.”

    “She was the first person to publicly stand up for me,” Fuller said.

    Stephanie Sena stands at site of an encampment along Kensington Avenue in 2021.

    Fallout from symposium speech

    Sena, a longtime activist who has worked to help people experiencing homelessness and opened a homeless shelter in Upper Darby in 2022, was fired in 2016 from her job as an adjunct professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after defending students who accused a classmate of rape. She sued PAFA and the case ended in a confidential settlement.

    She also led activists in lawsuits against the city in 2021 over its intentions to remove homeless people in a Kensington encampment. In 2023, the head of Norristown’s municipal council planned to bus homeless people to Villanova’s campus because of Sena’s advocacy for the homeless in Norristown. Villanova at the time was criticized for not defending Sena and making a stronger response.

    Sena was hired to teach at Villanova in 2003 and began to work at the law school in 2020, serving as a full-time faculty member and anti poverty fellow. She was also an adjunct professor at Villanova’s Center for Peace and Justice.

    In her lawsuit against Villanova, Sena asserts that law school leadership met with her in 2022, several months after Fuller’s symposium speech, and asked her if she had known what Fuller planned to say. Matthew Saleh, former assistant dean for admissions, told her it would be harder to attract Black students to the school because of the speech, according to the suit. Risch, the vice dean, made the comment about Fuller not being at Villanova if she had been white, the suit says.

    Saleh, who now is the senior associate dean of enrollment management and financial aid at Rutgers’ law school, said in an interview that he does not recall making that comment and that he doesn’t think it’s even the case that Fuller’s speech would hurt recruiting.

    “That would not have even come to my mind,” he said. “I couldn’t reasonably see a way that it would impact recruiting.”

    Sena “objected to the race discriminatory and retaliatory comments” made to her in that meeting, according to the suit.

    In October 2023, she complained again about the comments in an email to two administrators who headed diversity, equity, and inclusion at Villanova, according to the lawsuit complaint. Then came the award committee meeting on Jan. 30, 2024, where the dean in a letter argued against Fuller’s receiving the award, according to the suit.

    Students who were in the award committee meeting and were upset about the law school dean’s reaction approached Sena and asked what they could do, according to the suit. Sena said the students, who are not named in her lawsuit, could contact the diversity, equity, and inclusion office and file a climate complaint.

    Sena, according to the suit, complained again one day after the award committee meeting that Villanova “had engaged in a dangerous pattern of race discrimination” and filed an ethics complaint with the university. She also expressed her concerns in an email to faculty and in a meeting with a law professor, who told her the students had committed an ethics violation by revealing confidential details of the awards meeting they were in, according to the suit.

    After filing the complaint, Sena said in her lawsuit, she was “treated differently,” “unjustly criticized,” and “blamed for issues outside her control.”

    In June 2024, human resources informed her that she was under investigation after students said she had pressured them to file complaints against the deans, which Sena denied, the suit said.

    She was fired July 30, 2024, even though, the suit said, she had no prior performance or disciplinary issues and had received awards and promotions. She is seeking damages including economic loss, compensatory and punitive, and attorneys’ fees and costs.

    An apology and acknowledgement

    During the symposium, Fuller had said she wished Villanova would apologize and acknowledge what happened. She said that the school had given her $15,000 in financial aid toward her annual $65,000 cost, but that she subsequently learned other students had gotten more, even though her mother worked multiple jobs as a nurse’s aide to support the family.

    “I was confused,” she told the audience. “How can a student with seemingly the most need graduate with the most debt?”

    She learned of a free-tuition public interest scholarship that Villanova awards to incoming students and sought it after she was enrolled, she said. She was turned down repeatedly, she said, even though Villanova had recently awarded its largest group of the scholarships.

    “Am I invisible?” she asked. “To walk into this law school building every day, to be surrounded by wealth and prestige, while struggling and burdened with debt, and while expected to perform like those who are not feels inhumane.”

    She said during the speech she would graduate with almost $200,000 in student debt. Villanova officials, she said Wednesday, later accused her of exaggerating because she was including her undergraduate debt, too, and maintained that the total was really $160,000 — $126,000 of which was from the law school.

    Fuller said Wednesday she had apologized to law school leadership, hugged them at graduation, and thought everything had been resolved. She said she was surprised to hear that the dean wanted to block her access to the debt award, she said.

    “My intent wasn’t to harm, attack or mislead,” Fuller wrote in her book, “but to share my personal experience — my fears and financial anxieties — as part of the larger conversation about finding solutions to reduce poverty, which the conference was centered around.”

    Staff writer Abraham Gutman contributed to this article.

  • Philly federal judges are growing frustrated with ICE policy to detain most undocumented immigrants

    Philly federal judges are growing frustrated with ICE policy to detain most undocumented immigrants

    Federal judges in Philadelphia have been unusually outspoken in recent weeks about what they call the “illegal” policy by ICE of mandating detention for nearly all undocumented immigrants — and have been sharply critical of the “unsound” arguments by government attorneys seeking to justify the approach.

    U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III has overturned the government’s attempts to detain people in six cases over the last two months, writing in one opinion that Immigration and Customs Enforcement “continues to act contrary to law, to spend taxpayer money needlessly, and to waste the scarce resources of the judiciary.”

    And U.S. District Judge Kai N. Scott became the latest jurist to equate the ongoing legal battle with the government to Greek mythology, saying she and her colleagues on the bench have been squaring off with the Justice Department in a manner similar to Heracles’ confrontation with Hydra, the serpentlike monster that grew two heads every time one was chopped off.

    Although the region’s federal judges have “unanimously rejected” the government’s attempts to rationalize ICE detention of immigrants “without cause, without notice, and in clear violation” of federal law, Scott wrote, the government has continued to detain people in the same fashion day after day. And after each rejection, she wrote, “at least two more nearly identical” petitions seeking relief pop up on the court’s docket.

    “The Court writes today with a newfound and personal appreciation of Heracles’ struggles,” she said.

    District Judge Kai N. Scott’s Feb. 4, 2026 memo granting another habeas petition filed by an immigrant, and expressing frustration with the federal government’s arguments.

    The judicial rebukes come as immigration authorities have continued sweeping the nation to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. The number of detained immigrants has exploded — as has the number of court petitions from people seeking immediate release, which are known as habeas petitions.

    The enlarged legal workload has put a corresponding strain on the nation’s U.S. attorney’s offices, which typically defend ICE’s actions in federal court. Prosecutors from the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office, for example, requested an extension in January to handle part of a class-action suit in order to deal with a surge in immigration release petitions.

    “This Office continues to handle an unprecedented volume of emergent immigration habeas petitions, which we continue to prioritize because of the liberty interests at issue,” the letter said.

    And in Minnesota this week, a federal prosecutor said she wished the judge would hold her in contempt so she could get some sleep in jail. Julie Le seemed exasperated when the judge pressed her on why the government had been ignoring his release orders.

    “What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks,” Le said, according to a court transcript.

    Le was subsequently fired.

    The issue at the center of each incident involves ICE’s mandatory detention policy. The policy was rolled out over the summer, and it requires that nearly all undocumented immigrants be held in custody as their cases wind through the country’s backlogged and complex immigration system.

    That upended decades of government practice, which typically allowed people who entered the country illegally, but who were otherwise law-abiding, to at least receive a bond hearing and determine if they could remain in the community as their cases moved forward.

    Jeanne Ottoson with Cooper River Indivisible attends an Immigrant rights groups rally outside the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to defend the New Jersey state ban on immigration-detention contracts on May 1, 2025.

    Some of those detained as a result of the policy have filed habeas petitions, arguing that their detention violates the Constitution. And in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s federal court, judges have granted challenges to the policy at a near-universal rate.

    Still, those decisions have been made on a case-by-case basis, with relief extended only to one petitioner at a time. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is based in New Orleans and is considered one of the country’s most conservative jurisdictions, heard a broader challenge to the policy. A divided 2-1 court ruled Friday that ICE can detain undocumented immigrants the agency is seeking to deport, even those who have been in the country for years.

    The ruling covers only federal courts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and many legal experts expects the matter to ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

    In Philadelphia, Scott’s expression of frustration came this week in response to the release petition of Franklin Leonidas Once Chillogallo. The 24-year-old from Ecuador came to the United States in 2020, lives with his partner and his 6-month-old twin daughters in Upper Darby, and works as a construction worker. He has no criminal history.

    After ICE arrested Once Chillogallo outside his home on Jan. 13, he was held in the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center without the opportunity for an immigration judge to review his case.

    Just as happened in the previous 90 cases, Scott rejected the argument that Once Chillogallo, an immigrant who has been in the country for years, was subject to the same bond rules as those who were caught entering without permission. The judge ordered Once Chillogallo’s release, which took place the following day, according to the court docket.

    In dozens of cases, Philly’s federal judges have found Trump’s mandatory detention policy unlawful

    Inside the federal courthouse Thursday, judges held three hearings on arcane legal questions surrounding habeas petitions.

    Dozens of other habeas petitions remain pending, court records show. In many that were recently decided, judges used terse or brusque language to point out that the government’s interpretation of the law has been repeatedly rejected.

    “Across the board, there is frustration. There is frustration from attorneys. There is frustration from the judges,” said Kimberly Tomczak, an immigration attorney who represented Once Chillogallo. “Nothing seems to be changing on the immigration side in response to the flood of habeas grants across the nation.”

  • The new Norristown school board plans to oust its superintendent, citing poor test scores

    The new Norristown school board plans to oust its superintendent, citing poor test scores

    The Norristown Area School District’s board is moving to oust its superintendent, saying the district needs a new leader to reverse years of poor test scores.

    The move to replace Superintendent Christopher Dormer, who has led the Montgomery County district since 2018 and whose contract expires June 30, comes after five new members were elected to the nine-person school board in November. The board voted unanimously Jan. 20 to give Dormer notice they would not renew his contract.

    Some community members expressed shock at the decision to part ways with Dormer, who is also the president of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators. Dormer has been a vocal advocate for increasing funding to Norristown, which is considered underfunded by the state, and where nearly three-quarters of students are economically disadvantaged.

    Jeremiah Lemke, who joined the Norristown school board in December and is now its president, acknowledged Dormer as “a leader statewide” in advocating for a new school funding system and a superintendent who has done “many good things for the district.” But, he said at the Jan. 20 meeting, test scores are a concern.

    “Student achievement in Norristown hasn’t been winning, under Mr. Dormer, for years, not months, but years — seven to be exact,“ Lemke said in an emailed statement Wednesday. ”If the Eagles didn’t win for seven years, regardless of what positive developments happened in the organization, there would be no questions asked when the head coach was replaced.“

    Norristown, a majority Hispanic district, enrolls about 8,000 students.

    About 28% of Norristown’s third-through-eighth graders scored proficient or above in English language arts on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment standardized tests last year, compared to 48.5% statewide. In math, 27.4% of Norristown students were proficient, compared to 41.7% statewide.

    Over the last few years, changes in Norristown’s test scores have largely tracked Pennsylvania’s as a whole, with ELA scores sliding, and math scores improving. In 2023, 30.7% of Norristown students scored proficient in ELA, compared to 53.7% of students at the state level. In math, 21.6% of Norristown students scored proficient in 2023, compared to 39.4% statewide.

    In a message to staff and families after the Jan. 20 vote, Dormer said he was proud of what the district had accomplished during his tenure — “including consecutive years with minimal to no tax increases, the sizable and significant additions in staffing after years of reductions, the sustained investment in new instructional resources and educational opportunities after years of unaffordability, the development and implementation of our facilities master plan after decades of deferred maintenance, and the commitment to the principles of equity, inclusion, and belonging as we navigated a worldwide pandemic and an increasingly politically divided country.”

    Dormer, who began his career in education as an educational assistant in the Lower Merion School District, spent 13 years as a teacher, coach, and athletic director in the Upper Darby School District before moving into administration in 2005. He became Upper Darby High School’s principal in 2008, a role he held for five years, and came to Norristown in 2016.

    Performance reviews on the district’s website show Dormer was rated “proficient” by the board in 2021-22 and 2022-23. More recent reviews were not listed online.

    On Wednesday, Dormer declined to comment.

    Lemke — who works for a Philadelphia nonprofit, Jounce Partners, that has coached charter school leaders to improve teacher performance — said in a statement Wednesday that the decision was “thoughtful, reflective, data-informed, and unanimous, amongst new and continuing board members.”

    The board last week voted to approve a $79,500 contract with Alma Advisory Group, a Chicago-based firm, to conduct a national search for a new superintendent.

    Jordan Alexander, another new school board member, said during that board meeting that members “often have to make decisions that are very unpopular.”

    “I’m gonna be honest, I wasn’t so sold,” Alexander said. A former Norristown student, Alexander said that when Dormer “came to the scene, the pride did go up, and it was a breath of fresh air.”

    But “we cannot advocate ourselves to be the best if our performance does not reflect that,” Alexander said.

    Community reaction to the ouster

    Some community members accused the board of a predetermined decision.

    “Staff were not aware of these changes … the community was not aware, or anybody. You guys just threw it out there,” Ericka Wharton, a parent and leader of a Norristown community center, told the board at last week’s meeting. Wharton warned the decision could create instability, including a decline in student achievement.

    Carmina Taylor, a local advocate, told the board that community members deserved “a full explanation with dates and details that led to your decision.”

    “This decision is short-sighted, abrupt, without consideration as to how the students will be impacted by this major shift in leadership,” said Taylor, co-founder of the Movement for Black and Brown Lives in Montgomery County.

    The election of the new board came after infighting in the local Democratic Party. Chris Jaramillo, the former board president, lost the local Democratic Party’s endorsement for reelection last year. Jaramillo had opposed a tax break for a senior affordable housing development. Last week, the new board voted to rescind a November district policy that restricted tax abatements, saying it would replace it.

    Jaramillo is also a co-founder of the Movement for Black and Brown Lives in Montgomery County. In an interview Wednesday, he described the board’s new leaders as inexperienced and questioned how it could quickly replace Dormer without causing disruption.

    “I don’t think it’s a sound decision,” said Jaramillo. He said he worried the board would pick someone “without any sort of knowledge of how diverse Norristown and its surrounding area are.”

    Taylor said Wednesday she wasn’t speaking on behalf of Jaramillo. She accused the board of “plotting” to remove Dormer.

    “How in the world, if they didn’t have a sense of what they wanted to do, could they have even attempted to do that in the last 45 days?” said Taylor, who has filed a complaint with the school board, alleging insufficient transparency.

    Lemke said it is “categorially false” that the board acted too quickly and without transparency. “Once we were installed, we had a short time period in which to make a decision because we knew that if we didn’t renew his contract it would not be a quick task to do a national search for a superintendent,” he said.

    Taylor noted that while the district’s test scores “are bad,” Norristown has only been receiving additional state money under a new formula intended to remedy constitutional underfunding for the past two years. (The budget proposed by Gov. Josh Shapiro Tuesday would give underfunded districts their third installment of a nine-year plan.)

    “It’s not enough to address the systemic issue, period,” she said.

  • Philly schools virtual for Tuesday, and here’s what other districts are doing as road conditions remain iffy

    Philly schools virtual for Tuesday, and here’s what other districts are doing as road conditions remain iffy

    Philadelphia school buildings won’t be open Tuesday as road conditions remain rough in many places after the weekend’s significant winter storm.

    After Mayor Cherelle L. Parker told residents city offices and courts would be closed Tuesday, Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. affirmed the virtual learning call for schools.

    “Given the conditions of the roads and the issues that the mayor and others have talked about, and out of an abundance of caution,” district offices will remain closed Tuesday, and after-school programs and athletics are also closed, Watlington said.

    The superintendent prioritizes in-person learning, he said, but Tuesday “and any subsequent inclement weather days will be remote learning days.”

    Philly snow updates: Wind and cold following storm; 3 people in Lehigh die while shoveling; updated totals and what’s next

    The district sent students’ Chromebooks home with them Friday.

    Philadelphia schools had already planned half days Thursday and Friday for report card conferences.

    Virtual instruction, closures and delays beyond Philly

    Districts around the region were starting to make similar calls.

    Haddon Heights, in South Jersey, had already called a two-hour delay.

    The Cheltenham School District is also going virtual.

    “After consulting with my team, many roads remain unpassable and are likely to refreeze after dusk, making bussing on Tuesday too risky,” Superintendent Brian Scriven told families in a message Monday afternoon.

    Schools have increasingly been turning to online instruction during winter storms, though some districts use a different calculus on when to go virtual. New Jersey schools do not allow for virtual instruction.

    Scriven said Cheltenham administrators were “hopeful schools will return to normal operations as soon as possible,” and would communicate any additional schedule changes before Wednesday.

    Upper Darby schools also announced virtual instruction.

    “Unfortunately, we are going to need another day to continue to remove snow and ice,” Superintendent Dan McGarry told families Monday afternoon.

    Officials with the Centennial School District in Bucks County also said they would have virtual instruction, telling community members in a message that “conditions remain challenging, and our facilities personnel are hard at work clearing lots and entryways.” Central Bucks also called a remote learning day.

    The Colonial School District, meanwhile, announced a second traditional snow day Tuesday.

    “More work needs to be completed on our secondary roads to make it safe for our students to travel on Wednesday,” Superintendent Michael Christian said in a message to families. In the event of more inclement weather, Christian said, the district would have virtual instruction.

    Camden schools will also be closed on Tuesday. So will Cherry Hill, Winslow, Woodbury, and Washington Township, among others.

  • People are dying in Trump’s squalid concentration camps

    People are dying in Trump’s squalid concentration camps

    In the sweltering August heat of the West Texas desert, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — through a $1.2 billion private contract that was awarded under some strange circumstances — in 2025 opened up a large tent city detention camp near El Paso to take some of the thousands swept up in Donald Trump’s mass deportation raids.

    It took just a matter of days for horror stories to begin leaking out of the sprawling camp on the grounds of Fort Bliss.

    A Cuban refugee identified as Isaac, a pseudonym, told investigators from a coalition of human rights groups that guards had violently assaulted him as part of a campaign to convince him and other detainees to be dumped in Mexico rather than to contest their deportation.

    Isaac told the groups’ lawyers in a sworn declaration that “the guards hit my head” and “slammed it against the wall approximately ten times” before grabbing and crushing his testicles, then handcuffing him and putting him on a bus with 20 other detainees that was driven to the border. They were told, according to Isaac, “If we don’t want to go to Mexico, then we would either be sent to a jail cell in El Salvador or Africa.”

    Isaac’s complaints echoed other nightmarish tales that attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a web of immigrant rights groups gleaned in 45 interviews with detainees that were cited in a December letter pleading with ICE to shut down what has become the largest internment camp in the United States.

    This undated photo provided by Jeanette Pagan-Lopez shows Geraldo Lunas Campos with his three children. Lunas Campos died Jan. 3 at an ICE detention facility in El Paso, Texas.

    The implication was that if the Trump regime did not act, things at Camp East Montana would get worse.

    They did.

    Over a 33-day stretch that straddled the arrival of the new year, three ICE detainees at the Texas camp died under murky circumstances. One of the cases — the Jan. 3 death of 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos, also a Cuban immigrant — was on Wednesday ruled a homicide by the county medical examiner, citing efforts by camp guards to restrain him. The medical examiner wrote in his report that Campos died from “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.”

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has continued to maintain that Campos’ death was “a suicide,” and that any encounter he had with guards was an effort to prevent him from taking his own life. Two fellow detainees who reported seeing guards choking Campos have now received deportation notices. The mother of two of Campos’ children told the New York Times, “He was being abused and beaten and choked to death.”

    The alleged killing of Campos is arguably the worst example of what many critics predicted when Trump won the presidency in 2024, behind supporters waving placards, “Mass Deportation Now.” The squalid, hastily erected tent city in the Texas desert is the flagship of what experts describe as a growing network of concentration camps. And now, one year into Trump’s second term, people are dying in them.

    “It’s everything that we warned it would be, even before it opened,” Haddy Gassama, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU who’s been working on the issues around Camp East Montana, told me this week. “I think their goal is still to put 5,000 people in this space with inadequate healthcare, inadequate food, and inadequate recreation.”

    The high-profile, increasingly violent immigration raids that have been taking place in Minneapolis, Chicago, and other U.S. cities have swelled the number of detainees in ICE custody to more than 73,000, an all-time record. DHS is currently planning a large-scale 2026 expansion of its gulag archipelago that would even include repurposing remote rural warehouses for holding human beings.

    In such a large population of detainees, some deaths would be inevitable, but the current ongoing spike in fatalities has shocked and alarmed experts. The sixth ICE detainee death of 2026 took place on Sunday, which is a rate of one every three days. That extrapolates to more than 120 deaths over a year, which would be more than 10 times the rate in the last year of the Biden administration, when only 11 detainees perished.

    That Jan. 18 fatality also occurred at Camp East Montana, when Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, of Nicaragua, died of what government officials called a “presumed suicide.” Unlike Campos, the autopsy on Diaz will not be done by the county medical examiner, but by government doctors at an Army medical center. Diaz was one of many migrants swept up in the current ICE operation in Minnesota.

    The third recent death tied to the Texas concentration camp — Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemala, who was taken to an El Paso hospital — was determined by an autopsy to have been caused by complications of alcohol-related liver disease.

    That the majority of ICE custody deaths are linked to medical causes doesn’t necessarily exonerate either the agency or its private contractors. A 2024 report by Physicians for Human Rights that looked at 52 deaths in ICE custody from 2017 to 2021, or during Trump’s first term, found that 95% were preventable, or possibly preventable, if appropriate medical care had been provided.

    This column on U.S. concentration camps is the one I hoped I’d never write | Will Bunch

    One such medical death occurred here in Philadelphia earlier this month when Parady La, a 46-year-old Cambodian refugee who lived in Upper Darby, died after he was taken from the city’s federal detention center to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. ICE said La was suffering from severe drug withdrawal symptoms, but family members are questioning whether the feds paid enough attention to his illness, or even administered the right treatment.

    Human rights watchers insist that the spike in ICE detention deaths cannot be viewed as a coincidence, but as an outgrowth of problems that include not only medical neglect but also squalid conditions, substandard food, rancid water, and patterns of physical and sexual abuse by guards. They say the problems are not new, but have substantially worsened as the Trump regime hastily expands its networks of detention centers and camps.

    In December, another Camp East Montana detainee — Thomas, also a pseudonym — told human rights lawyers that “he was beaten by officers so severely he sustained injuries across his body, lost consciousness, and had to be taken to a hospital in an ambulance.” Like his fellow detainee Isaac, he alleged guards grabbed his testicles and crushed them.

    Gassama, the ACLU attorney, said the horrific track record of ICE detention raises all kinds of red flags about its current plans, aided by its $175 billion windfall in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that was signed last year, to house as many as 80,000 detainees in a new network of revamped warehouses. “You can only imagine what a remodeled warehouse would be like to detain people, human beings, long term,” she said.

    It’s true that — as right-wing pundits are always quick to point out — the U.S. mass deportation regime offers nothing that comes close to the death camps Nazi Germany established at the end of the Holocaust. But experts like author Andrea Pitzer say the similarities to concentration camps that Adolf Hitler set up for his political enemies after taking power in 1933 are too many to ignore.

    History has shown again and again that rounding up masses of people based on their identity strips them of their basic humanity. And that becomes the sick justification for violent abuse, neglect, endemic disease, and, ultimately, death.

    The most famous victim of the Nazi Holocaust, the teenage diarist Anne Frank, wasn’t killed in a gas chamber, but died from typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was the result of unsanitary conditions and medical neglect.

    Now, people are dying in record numbers in “the camps” on sunbaked U.S. soil. This is shameful beyond words.

    In this photo provided by the National Archives, Japanese Americans, including American Legion members and Boy Scouts, participate in Memorial Day services at the Manzanar Relocation Center, an internment camp in Manzanar, Calif., in May 1942.

    These human rights abuses now occurring at Camp East Montana are also a tragic echo of the longer arc of history of its Fort Bliss location. In 1942, thousands of detainees — mostly Japanese Americans, with some people of German or Italian descent — were shipped from the West Coast to be held in a barbed-wire camp under constant watch by armed guards. Over the course of World War II, some 1,862 Japanese Americans died in the broader network of internment camps, many from harsh conditions.

    More than four decades later, America formally apologized for this gross injustice. This time, we need to stop it before it comes to that.

  • Don Was will celebrate Bob Weir and play the Grateful Dead’s ‘Blues for Allah’ with his new band in Ardmore

    Don Was will celebrate Bob Weir and play the Grateful Dead’s ‘Blues for Allah’ with his new band in Ardmore

    Don Was’ show with the Pan-Detroit Ensemble at Ardmore Music Hall on Wednesday was always going to be, in part, a tribute to the music of the Grateful Dead.

    Along with digging deep into the rugged, funky sounds of their hometown — as the bassist and Grammy-winning producer and his bandmates do on their new album, Groove in the Face of Adversity — the date will also include a performance of the Dead’s 1975 album, Blues for Allah, in its entirety.

    But now the Dead community is reeling from the loss of Bob Weir, the singer-guitarist who cofounded the Dead in 1965 and became a torch bearer for the band’s music in the decades since Jerry Garcia died in 1995.

    So when Was and his eight-piece band return to the Main Line venue where they played in June at the Music Hall’s annual “Unlimited Devotion” Dead celebration, the show will be an opportunity for Philly Dead fans to mourn Weir, who died Saturday at 78.

    It will also serve as a celebration of the short-shorts-wearing rhythm guitarist and vocalist who sang many of the psychedelic rock band’s most beloved songs, including “Sugar Magnolia,” “Truckin’,” and Blues for Allah’s “The Music Never Stopped.”

    Was is president of the esteemed Blue Note Records jazz label and the former coleader of art-pop band Was (Not Was), best known for the hit “Walk the Dinosaur.” His long list of production credits includes Bonnie Raitt, the Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and many others.

    He also toured extensively with Weir, playing double bass with Wolf Bros, the band formed in 2018 whose repertoire mixed country and jazz with the Dead’s mystical roots-music blend.

    Don Was (at right) with Bob Weir performing together as Wolf Bros in 2018.

    Weir played Philadelphia stages with the Dead or one of their many offshoots over 70 times — including a record 57 concerts at the Spectrum in South Philly before it closed in 2009. His last Philly show was a Wolf Bros gig at the Met in September 2023.

    Was learned of Weir’s death shortly before going on stage in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Saturday, and broke the news to a crowd full of Deadheads.

    “I told them the story Bobby told me about the night Jerry died,” Was said, talking on Monday from New York, where he and the stellar Pan-Detroit Ensemble, which includes saxophonist David McMurray and powerhouse vocalist Steffanie Christi’an, were set to play the Blue Note before heading to Philly.

    “Bobby was in New Hampshire with [his side project] Ratdog [in 1995]. He told me, ’You go up there and play, man. The way you deal with grief is you go up there and make some good music for everybody.’

    “So that’s what we’re going to do for Bobby. We’re going to play a soulful show, as soulful as we can. [In Ann Arbor] I hung out with the audience afterwards, and everybody had their story about some encounter with Bob over the last 60 years. It was almost like a wake. It might just be that this tour is about bringing some comfort to people who suffered a loss. Even if you’re just a fan. Bobby is like a family member to people.”

    Was first saw the Dead in Detroit in 1972. “I always dug them,” he says, “and being a jazz head, I understood the method of improvisation. But I never got in a car and followed them around, so I don’t think you could have called me a Deadhead then.”

    You could now, as well as a key player in the enduring band’s long, strange post-Garcia afterlife. In 2015, while producing guitarist John Mayer in Los Angeles, Was introduced Weir and Dead drummer Mickey Hart to Mayer, who was boundlessly enthusiastic about Garcia and the band.

    “John waxed eloquent about his love of the Grateful Dead,” recalls Was, 73. “And those guys were just kind of bowled over by it. … And that turned into Dead & Company.”

    Wolf Bros was inspired by a dream of Weir’s. The singer and guitarist was a frequent collaborator with bassist Rob Wasserman, who had introduced Weir to Was in the 1990s.

    After Wasserman died in 2016, Weir called Was. “He said he had a dream where Wasserman said the reason he had introduced Bobby to me,” said Was, “was so I could take Rob’s place after he was gone. So he asked me if I wanted to start a trio with him and [drummer] Jay Lane. And I said, ‘Yeah, of course.’”

    Playing with Wolf Bros “changed everything for me,” Was says. Weir was “utterly fearless about suspending self-consciousness and playing freely in the moment without regret.”

    “There’s a tremendous allure to those songs, and to play them the way Bobby wanted to, which was with a beginner’s mind every night and just have a completely different adventure with a song every time you play it.”

    Don Was and the Pan Detroit Ensemble play Ardmore Music Hall on Wednesday, performing music from their album “Groove in the Face of Adversity” and also playing the Grateful Dead’s 1975 album “Blues for Allah” in its entirety.

    As head of Blue Note, Was is excited about the young artists on the storied home of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. He name-checks Joel Ross, Melissa Aldana, Paul Cornish, and Upper Darby native saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

    “They all have records coming out this year, and they’re all blowing my mind,” Was said. “People who see Immanuel Wilkins will be talking about seeing him the way they talk about seeing Coltrane. They still be listening 60 or 70 years from now.”

    On Groove in the Face of Adversity, Was and the PDE bring a loose, expansive sensibility to a wide range of material, from Hank Williams’ honky-tonk “I Ain’t Got Nuthin’ But Time“ to Cameo’s 1978 funk workout “Insane.”

    Most powerful is “This Is My Country,” the Curtis Mayfield title track from a 1968 album by the Impressions that stands as a statement of defiant patriotism in the face of oppression. “I realized it’s tragically more relevant now than it was in 1968,” Was said.

    “I feel an urgency” about playing with the PDE, “especially after Saturday night,” Was said. “I feel like I’m just starting to crack the code about playing bass. I want to play while I can” — he laughs — “while my fingers still work.”

    The PDE sound is more muscular and R&B-powered than the acoustic-based style he played with Weir in Wolf Bros. But Was says they’re connected in not-obvious ways.

    “When I first started to play with Bobby, I was haunted by Phil,” he said, speaking of bassist Phil Lesh, who died in 2024. “But I can’t play like Phil. Nobody can play like Phil. It was putting me in stylistic limbo. And then I quickly realized the most Grateful Dead thing you can do with a song is be yourself. Be who you are.

    “So that’s what our band does. We play like us. In the music business, we tend to think of anything that’s different as a marketing problem. But in fact, being different is your superpower. I’ve tried to impart that to artists on Blue Note and people I’ve produced. To be as different as you can be: That’s the only chance you’ve got!”

    Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble at Ardmore Music Hall, 23 E. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, at 8 p.m. Wednesday. ardmoremusichall.com.

  • A woman died in an early-morning fire in Ogontz

    A woman died in an early-morning fire in Ogontz

    Philadelphia firefighters pulled a 60-year-old woman away from a burning building where she was trapped early Thursday morning, but she later died at a hospital.

    The fire department responded to the blaze around 4:45 a.m. on the 6200 block of Ogontz Avenue in North Philadelphia. Firefighters arrived to find a heavy fire scorching throughout the two-story rowhouse.

    About 60 firefighters, medics, and support staff were at the scene, officials said. Upon searching the house, firefighters found an unresponsive woman, who did not survive. The Medical Examiner’s Office will soon determine the cause of death, with the Fire Marshal’s Office investigating the cause of the fire.

    There have been at least two deadly fires in the area over the last month, in addition to Thursday. Additionally, two people were rescued and survived a fire in South Philadelphia Wednesday, according to CBS.

    Earlier this week, Bucks County officials confirmed the death of a third person related to the Bristol Health & Rehab Center fire, which claimed the lives of two other people and injured 20 others. Days before the Bristol fire, a deadly fire in Upper Darby killed one person, critically injured another, and left a firefighter and a handful of others with less-severe injuries.

  • ‘She was amazing’: Woman allegedly stabbed to death by mother in Upper Darby remembered by loved ones

    ‘She was amazing’: Woman allegedly stabbed to death by mother in Upper Darby remembered by loved ones

    When Nicole Lauria met Daniele Grovola more than a decade ago, it was clear that the little girl from Upper Darby would one day become a star employee at her karaoke company.

    “She was amazing,” said Lauria, the owner of Lucky Music Productions. “A lot of people use the phrase, ‘She lit up a room.’ But she really did.”

    Tragedy struck the Grovola family days before Christmas.

    Daniele Grovola, 23, was found with fatal stab wounds in her family home in Secane the morning of Dec. 23.

    Police arrested the young woman’s mother, Diane Grovola, 57, whom they have accused of stabbing her daughter to death in the home. Her husband, John, Daniele Grovola’s father, discovered the horrific scene as he arrived home from an overnight shift at the airport, authorities said.

    Friends of Daniele Grovola are shocked by a crime they are struggling to understand.

    Photo of Daniele Grovola.

    In the week since Grovola’s death, they have launched a fundraiser to support her father and cover the young woman’s funeral costs. The money will also go toward veterinary bills for the family’s dog, Ezra, which police suspect Grovola’s mother also stabbed that morning.

    And loved ones are sharing memories of Daniele Grovola, who brought joy and warmth to those she encountered.

    Lauria met John Grovola around 15 years ago, when he made the leap from singing karaoke to joining Lucky Music as an equipment manager and DJ. The company hosts events at venues throughout Delaware County and Philadelphia.

    Grovola soon began to bring around his daughter, who took a fast interest in her father’s work.

    The father and daughter were “immensely close,” Lauria said. Following in her father’s footsteps, Daniele Grovola eventually joined Lucky Music herself, managing the company’s DJ equipment.

    She was training to become a bar trivia host before she died.

    Her radiant personality shone on the job, according to Lauria, including at a karaoke party the company hosted in 2024 for children who had disabilities and were on the autism spectrum.

    “[Daniele] was just amazing at encouraging them to sing, helping them to feel positive about themselves,” Lauria said. “She was just a warm person.”

    Hailey Geller, 23, said she and Grovola had been best friends since the third grade. The girls went on to attend Upper Darby High School together.

    “She was never a bother,” Geller said. “She was really good to me, and I was good to her.”

    Hailey Geller with Daniele Grovola and her father, John.

    Grovola had her quirks, Geller said, amusing friends with her obsession with Sharpies. The girls would spend afternoons at the mall, where Grovola would hunt for multicolored markers to use in her artwork.

    She was an avid fan of anime shows, Geller added, and, as a music lover, adored her headphones.

    Geller said Grovola was always there to confide in. In recent months, however, some of Grovola’s comments about her home life had concerned her.

    Grovola told Geller that her mother had been “in and out” of local crisis centers. And Grovola described her mother as having “mental issues,” Geller said, once disclosing she had locked herself in the basement to avoid her.

    Still, Geller believes Grovola did not share the complete story of possible tensions with her mother. Police have yet to identify a motive in the killing and continue to investigate.

    Friends like Lauria said those who knew the Grovola family did not suspect such a crime was possible.

    “It makes no sense,” Lauria said. “[Daniele] was a great daughter to her mother … loved her mother very much. This just came out of nowhere.”

  • Delaware County woman accused of stabbing daughter to death days before Christmas charged with first-degree murder

    Delaware County woman accused of stabbing daughter to death days before Christmas charged with first-degree murder

    A Delaware County woman was charged with first-degree murder for allegedly stabbing her 23-year-old daughter to death in their Upper Darby Township home two days before Christmas, authorities say.

    Police found Diane Grovola, 57, naked, covered in blood, and suffering self-inflicted stab wounds when they responded to a 911 call at the family residence that morning, according to the affidavit of probable cause in her arrest.

    Grovola’s daughter was in an upstairs bedroom with knife wounds to her face, chest, legs, and back. Her eyes were open but she was unresponsive, the affidavit says. She was pronounced dead shortly after.

    “Sorry, I should have stabbed myself first,” Grovola told officers as they placed her in wrist restraints, according to the affidavit.

    Grovola’s husband, the young woman’s father, was first to discover the distressing scene.

    The man arrived at the home on South Bishop Avenue in the Secane section around 6:30 a.m. after returning from a shift at Philadelphia International Airport, the affidavit says. He had stopped at McDonald’s to get breakfast for his family.

    Once inside, the man was greeted by the family dog, which had suffered knife wounds to its abdomen and “got blood on his clothing,” according to the affidavit.

    He found his wife seated on the living room sofa with a knife in her hand.

    “I stabbed our daughter,” she told him, according to the affidavit.

    As her husband dialed 911, Diane Grovola told him she did not want to live anymore and began to stab herself in the chest, according to the affidavit.

    The operator told the man to flee the residence.

    During that time, Grovola stripped naked and began breaking items in the kitchen until police arrived. They eventually recovered a large stainless-steel knife that appeared to have blood on it, the affidavit says.

    In addition to first-degree murder, prosecutors charged Grovola with third-degree murder, possessing an instrument of a crime, and aggravated cruelty to an animal.

    She is being held in the George W. Hill Correctional Facility and was denied bail, court records show.

    Her arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 6 at 9 a.m.