Springfield Township bans swimming at Rolling Green Park after anti-immigrant rumors

Darby Creek in Delco’s Rolling Green Park is a shallow, sunlit, gravel-banked stream shaded from the road by a canopy of trees.

For years, when it got too hot in the neighborhood, people would wade in or bring inflatable rings to float in. It was a local, unauthorized swimming spot – until the municipality officially banned swimming there earlier this summer.

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

But the neighborhood conversations that sparked the incident also revealed a menacing undercurrent. Fears and rumors about illegal immigrants swimming naked in the creek and leaving trash behind circulated on social media and had long been the subject of public comment during weekly Delaware County Council meetings. The county council does not manage the city park, but residents took their anger out there anyway, threatening council members with violence.

“It was just something that took on a life of its own,” said Jim Byrne, a Springfield town attorney who insisted that the bathing ban had nothing to do with immigrants and never had anything to do with them.

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

On a 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 in a shoe. Both grew up in Media and graduated from Penncrest High School. Pasquay had been swimming in the creek since the ban was passed. She had a theory about why the ban was passed in the first place.

“They don’t care about the creek,” said Pasquay. “They care about the people.”

“There is absolutely nothing to this rumor”

In the spring, residents flocked to Delaware County Council meetings when the county proposed building a home for men with developmental disabilities and a 16-bed psychiatric hospital on the property that once housed Don Guanella. However, the county decided not to pursue the plan due to funding constraints.

But the exciting topics of this debate were only 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, mobilized some residents to protest the Don Guanella plan by falsely claiming that illegal immigrants would be housed at the facility. Some of Alexander’s claims are similar to those of Donald Trump, who frequently speaks on the campaign trail of an “invasion” at the southern border and an immigrant-caused rise in violent crime that is not supported by any evidence.

Alexander and others Residents were also obsessed with a common Republican lie that migrants were crossing the border to vote illegally in U.S. elections. The threat of noncitizen voting has been repeatedly debunked. A report on the 2016 election by the Brennan Center for Justice found that election officials in 42 jurisdictions across the country, including in counties with the highest proportion of noncitizens, assumed 30 cases of suspected noncitizens out of 23.5 million votes cast — representing 0.0001 percent of the 2016 votes in those areas.

But fears that illegal immigrants were taking advantage of Delco’s resources grew so great that in March the Delaware County Council issued an official press release titled “Rumors of Immigrant Housing on Former Don Guanella Property Are False.” (Since March, the council has issued three press releases debunking rumors of immigration to the county.)

“There is absolutely no truth to this rumor,” the press release states. “We urge citizens to be cautious about rumors circulating on blogs and social media.”

But the rumor persisted.

At a meeting in April, a resident told the Delaware County Council, “One of the people from Marple also told me that the county will lie about this in order to house the illegal immigrants – immigrants, newcomers, whatever you want to call them.”

Soon after, Alexander turned his attention to a similar problem. On social media, he said he had seen white vans across the county that he believed—without evidence—were involved in human trafficking. He created a Facebook group, encouraging 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 that he said were left behind by immigrants.

The Inquirer was unable to independently verify the photos. Alexander assumed the people were illegal immigrants based on the photos and videos, but that is not a reliable way to determine a person’s status.

“People are seeing more illegal immigrants just suddenly appearing overnight in the last two months in Delaware County. And then these vans that they’re using to pick people up and drop people off. And then out of the blue you see naked people in creeks? That’s when the situation explodes,” he said.

The idea that the immigrants in Delco are “illegal” is a powerful political slogan, experts say, 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 develop and cannot be determined by looking at someone or hearing them speak Spanish, says 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.)

Activists say anti-immigrant vitriol has also seeped into the daily lives of Spanish-speaking immigrants in Delco, a city that has seen its population grow rapidly since the pandemic began.

“I’m hearing that people are increasingly feeling unwelcome. Not necessarily threats, but a bad tone, denial of services. Just a general feeling of ‘Don’t come in here. You’re not welcome,'” said Layla de Luria, the executive director of Centro de Apoyo Comunitario, a relief organization founded by Latino immigrant women in Delco. “Parents are telling me stories about how they tried to take their children to the park, panicked, turned around and took them straight home.”

De Luria said charged national rhetoric appears to have inflamed the situation. 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 let good people do bad things, because that’s what we’re going to do,” Broomall resident Howard Alexander told the council in April. “We’re going to be there with pitchforks and torches and hot tar and feathers.”

“It had nothing to do with immigrants at all”

In June, Springfield Township, which manages Rolling Green Park, passed a new ordinance at a special council meeting, declaring that “bathing and swimming in township parks is prohibited.” Shortly thereafter, the township posted new signs on the creek’s earthen banks announcing the rule. Township police announced they would have an “increased presence” to monitor violations.

For some local officials, the ban was clearly a response to a practical problem. Byrne, the Springfield Township attorney, said there have been “about 20 or so calls to the police” about problems at the creek since June. (The police department referred the Inquirer to Byrne.) He said township officials issued the ban for benign municipal government reasons.

“I’ve heard people say that, but it had nothing to do with immigrants,” Byrne said. He said councillors and police had heard complaints about large groups at the creeks damming the water for swimming, bathing, changing in full view and going to the toilet on the banks. Park rangers had found rubbish and overflowing bins while cleaning up, he said.

“Everyone is welcome to come to the park and use it according to the park rules,” Byrne said. “That’s why we built a park.”

Even after the municipality banned swimming in local parks, dozens of residents showed up at a Delaware County Council meeting on July 3 to air their grievances, many of which focused on illegal immigration and the local streams. The complaints continued throughout July.

“This immigration thing has to stop. We have to pass laws to get these people out of our country. They are swimming naked in our streams,” said Gary Ryder, a resident of Marple Township.

Although Rolling Green Park is not in her jurisdiction, Delaware County Councilwoman Christine Reuther also saw the creek problem as a practical issue. During a brutally hot summer, people need places to cool off. But the creeks are not safe – there are no lifeguards and the water quality is not tested. She said she has reached out to county officials to discuss the unlikely possibility of building a public swimming pool at Ridley Creek State Park.

“They really ended it”

Regardless of the officials’ intentions, Alexander’s bathing ban was confirmed by the municipality.

“I want to commend Springfield Township and especially their police department. They really put a stop to this,” Alexander wrote on X in July.

In the days that followed, he changed his mind again, spreading conspiracy theories that the CIA tried to assassinate Donald Trump and posting a video to former Don Guanella waking up a man sleeping in a UHaul and asking him if he was involved in human trafficking. (“You all watch a lot of TV,” the man said, adding that he was simply homeless and trying to sleep somewhere where no one would bother him.)

Darby Creek remained peaceful. The creek was so shallow on a recent afternoon at Rolling Green Park that you could see rocks and small fish floating on the bottom. Pete Zangari, 9, was fishing on the bank. His mother, Rebecca Zangari, had been taking him to the park from their home in Clifton Heights once a week since he developed a passion for fishing earlier that summer. Birds chirped in the muggy air.

Zangari had seen a lot of people swimming in June, at the start of a summer of record heat, and had just noticed the new “no swimming” signs. She didn’t like them.

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