Delaware

Delaware lawmakers move to shield immigrant families from federal scrutiny

Published

9 months ago

April 21, 2025

Delaware lawmakers move to shield immigrant families from federal scrutiny

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For 14 years, Maria Jose Nolasco Ramírez has lived in Delaware with her children, quietly navigating everyday life with a growing fear behind the wheel.

For undocumented immigrants like Nolasco Ramírez, driving without a license is often not a choice — it’s a necessity. In many parts of Delaware, especially in rural and suburban areas, public transportation is limited or nonexistent. Parents still need to take their children to school, get to work or attend medical appointments. For years, she took that risk every day.

Nolasco Ramírez came to the U.S from Guatemala after fleeing abuse and seeking safety. She made the journey through the desert, determined to find peace and opportunity for herself and her American children. But in Delaware, like many undocumented immigrants, her lack of legal status limited nearly every part of life: employment, healthcare, homeownership and transportation.

“Con todo eso que se escucha que migración, tienes miedo de salir… más que todo tengo tres hijos … tal vez por un tiempo estén solos. Pero el país de ellos es aquí. Entonces, las oportunidades de ellos están aquí, y para que ellos tengan esas oportunidades, necesitan un apoyo”, ella dijo.

“With all this stuff you hear about immigration, you’re afraid to leave … more than anything, I have three children … maybe they’ll be alone for a while. But their home country is here. Their opportunities are here, and for them to have those opportunities, they need support,” she said.

Her anxiety followed her everywhere, bracing every time she saw flashing lights. Then in 2015, Delaware introduced the Driving Privilege Card, a limited-use driver’s license for undocumented immigrants.

“Antes de que dieran esta licencia para nosotros las personas sin documentos, era bien difícil porque yo tenía ticket atrás ticket atrás ticket, por no tener licencia”, ella dijo. “Estuve en riesgo de terminar presa.”

“Before they gave us undocumented people this license, it was very difficult because I had ticket after ticket after ticket, for not having a license,” she said. “I was at risk of ending up in jail.”

When she finally earned her card, it changed everything.

“Yo me puse con mucho empeño a estudiar, estudiar, estudiar para aprender el examen porque [yo] no tenía mucha idea de todas las reglas de aquí. Cuando yo fui y pasé el examen, fue el día más feliz de mi vida … yo lloré como una niña chiquita”, ella dijo. “[Lo que] pasa por tu mente [son] todos esos años que estuviste manejando con miedo … que siempre que te paraba el policía te decepcionas más. Eran momentos que pensabas que si valía la pena estar aquí.”

“I worked really hard to study, study, study to learn the exam because I didn’t have much of an idea of all the rules here. When I went and passed the exam, it was the happiest day of my life … I cried like a little girl,” she said. “What goes through your mind are all those years you were driving in fear … that every time the police stopped you, you became more disappointed. Those were moments when you wondered if it was worth it to be here.”

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Delaware

MERR responds to dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach

Published

5 minutes ago

January 9, 2026

Press Room

MERR responds to dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach

A dead humpback whale washed up near Bethany Beach on Jan. 8, according to the nonprofit Marine Education Research and Rehabilitation Institute.

The juvenile male was first seen Jan. 6, floating at sea about 2 miles off the Indian River Inlet, a MERR Facebook post said. The bloated 30-foot whale ultimately beached near a private community in the early afternoon of Jan. 8, the post said.

MERR is attempting to coordinate with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control to get equipment to move the whale out of the water and onto the beach to perform a necropsy, the post said. Right now, there isn’t enough information to determine a cause of death.

Delaware saw at least three dead whales last year, in the Indian River Bay, at Delaware Seashore State Park and at Pigeon Point. The first two were humpbacks, while the Pigeon Point whale was a fin whale.

A necropsy on the Delaware Seashore whale found blunt force trauma across its back, indicating it may have been struck by a ship, MERR Director Suzanne Thurman said.

Recently, on Jan. 4, a dead fin whale was found on the bow of a ship at the Gloucester Marine Terminal in New Jersey, which is located in the Port of Philadelphia on the Delaware River.

Shannon Marvel McNaught reports on southern Delaware and beyond. Reach her at smcnaught@gannett.com or on Facebook.

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Delaware

Pa. man accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from Delco cemetery

Published

12 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Pa. man accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from Delco cemetery

A Pennsylvania man is accused of stealing more than 100 skeletons from a cemetery in Delaware County.

Jonathan Gerlach, 34, of Ephrata, Pennsylvania, is charged with abuse of corpse, criminal mischief, burglary and other related offenses, Delaware County District Attorney Tanner Rouse revealed on Thursday, Jan. 8.

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Between November 2025 and Jan. 6, 2026, 26 mausoleums and underground burial sites had been burglarized or desecrated at Mount Moriah Cemetery, which stretches from Yeadon Borough, Pennsylvania, to Philadelphia, investigators said.

As police investigated the thefts, they caught Gerlach desecrating a monument at the cemetery on Tuesday, Jan. 6, according to officials. Gerlach was taken into custody and investigators executed a search warrant at his home in Ephrata.

During the search, investigators recovered 100 human skeletons from Gerlach’s home as well as eight more human remains inside a storage locker, according to Rouse.

“Detectives walked into a horror movie come to life the other night guys,” Rouse said. “This is an unbelievable scene that no one involved – from myself to the detectives to the medical examiners that are now trying to piece together what they are looking at, quite literally – none of them have ever seen anything like this before.”

Rouse said some of the stolen skeletons are hundreds of years old.

“We are trying to figure out exactly what we are looking at,” Rouse said. “We quite simply at this juncture are not able to date and identify all of them.”

Rouse also said some of the skeletons are of infants and children.

“It is truly, in the most literal sense of the word, horrific,” Rouse said. “I grieve for those who are upset by this who are going through it who are trying to figure out if it is in fact their loved one or their child because we found remains that we believe to be months old infants among those that he had collected. Our hearts go out to every family that is impacted by this.”

Sources also told NBC10 the thefts are related to a similar case in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Investigators said they are looking at Gerlach’s online community — including his social media groups and Facebook page — to determine if people were buying, selling, or trading the remains.

Gerlach is currently in custody at the Delaware County Prison after failing to post $1 million bail. Online court records don’t list an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

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