Schuylkill and Berks counties are reeling after finally getting some information about ICE’s plans to set up huge immigrant prisons in two vacant warehouses just 26 miles apart.
The buildings are part of the agency’s bulk-buying spree in response to an “emergency” the Trump/Project 2025 administration concocted to win points with racists and xenophobes.
Now our area’s getting a hard look at its depraved indifference. The only people with reason to celebrate are the White House denizens, for-profit prison companies and MAGA fanatics who’d support bombing our own country if Donald Trump ordered it.
Local residents and elected officials have good reason to be upset about the 7,500-bed detention center in Tremont Township in Schuylkill and the one in Upper Bern Township in Berks that reportedly will hold 1,500 detainees.
(For some reason, our own GOP Congressman Dan Meuser could provide more details to Schuylkill’s commissioners than to Berks’.)
Anger and worries about the impact of the future prisons surfaced at recent meetings of both counties’ commissioners.
Because the federal government doesn’t have to pay taxes, Schuylkill and Berks each foresee a high six-figure loss in total annual municipal, school and county revenue. Local emergency services and water and sewer systems are ill-equipped to handle the anticipated influx of people, which residents fear will erode the quality of life in their rural townships. Potential violence from both inmates and ICE is a concern.
Meuser told the Schuylkill commissioners that the Tremont prison would have 2,000 or 2,500 employees. That’s at least as many people as those now living in Tremont Township and the neighboring borough of Tremont. Neither municipality has its own police force.
Some people, including several of us from Schuylkill Indivisible, also decried ICE’s cruelty, from its Gestapo-like agents to the substandard conditions in its current for-profit prisons, which hold respected community members and criminals alike.
Between the $207 million that the agency paid for the two sites and the upgrades needed to accommodate all those inmates, these are long-term investments.
So everyone needs to think about who Trump and his Project 2025ers want to warehouse next.
Secrecy
While some communities convinced property owners not to sell to ICE, we didn’t have enough definitive information to shut the door before the agency could release the horses.
On Christmas Eve, the Washington Post said internal ICE documents listed Tremont as one of 23 possible locations for warehouse conversions – and with expectations for only 500 to 1,500 inmates.
Upper Bern got on the radar in mid-January when a list of site visits appeared on social media. It wasn’t until Jan. 29 that Bloomberg reported on both locations and their planned capacity but noted that its list was based on ICE plans that could change.
Schuylkill commissioners said that before the Tremont deed was filed on Monday, they reached out to Meuser, senators John Fetterman and Dave McCormick and Gov. Josh Shapiro, but nobody could confirm the sale.
By Wednesday, Meuser had presented some specifics.
Meanwhile, the Reading Eagle reported that Berks commissioners said on Thursday they still hadn’t been told what the feds intend to do with Upper Bern. Later Meuser told Spotlight PA and NOTUS that it would be a detention center, but Trump officials didn’t answer all his questions.
That’s highly unusual, according to Rachel Wallace, a Schuylkill County Democrat who’s running for Meuser’s seat and was the Office of Management and Budget’s chief of staff under Joe Biden.
It’s just common courtesy for an administration to let members of Congress know about projects in their backyards, she said.
Of course, this White House has made rudeness its trademark, although you’d think someone there would make an exception for its head cheerleader.
Little recourse
“We just have to work with them,” Meuser said.
Schuylkill Economic Development Corp. President Frank Zukas said the federal government is exempt from local ordinances and zoning regulations as well as taxes.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has spoken out against both facilities and the secrecy surrounding them. While Pennsylvania is looking at legal options, he said, “those options are very slim, given that the federal government is the purchaser,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
As a Schuylkill County resident, I wish the commissioners had tried to stop the Tremont prison, although Democratic Commissioner Gary Hess did express opposition.
Still, I can understand why commissioners for both counties might have doubted ICE would go through with the acquisitions once someone discovered that neither property can accommodate a large prison. But perhaps it’s using the Trump real estate playbook of buying first and doing due diligence later, if ever.
Officials also may have expected the administration to contact them before making the purchases, but it apparently doesn’t care what they or their constituents think.
A good rule of thumb: If you hear this White House is doing something to benefit the American people, be skeptical. But object immediately after hearing about something that seems too awful or hare-brained to be true because it probably is.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
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