Schuylkill County Commissioners are being told to consider the medical needs of detainees at the ICE detention center in Tremont Township and the impact it would have on already-strained local resources.
At last week’s board meeting, the Commissioners heard from a number of residents who expressed these concerns.
The Commissioners say they’ve definitely considered them and have forwarded those concerns to federal officials.
On Feb. 2, the US government completed a $119 million purchase of the former Big Lots Distribution Center where it intends to install a 7,500-bed ICE detention facility.
Schuylkill County Commissioners Chairman Larry Padora tells Coal Region Canary that he’s asked Office of Emergency Management director John Blickley to prepare a report on the available medical and emergency response resources available in the county and specifically, the areas surrounding the planned ICE detention center.
Further, Padora says the Commissioners have already expressed initial concerns regarding these shortcomings in Schuylkill County to federal officials.
During a prolonged public comment period at Wednesday’s meeting, the strained EMS and medical resources in Schuylkill County – plus the impact an ICE detention center would have on them – was the focus of several people.
Steven Moyer, of Mechanicsville, said he’s concerned that detainees could have untreated and undiagnosed infectious diseases – like tuberculosis, RSV, and COVID – because they’ve never had access to medical care prior to being brought to the Tremont Township facility and worried about the risk of them spreading to the rest of the community.
Brianna DelValle, of Orwigsburg, said it’s ICE’s responsibility to provide medical care to its detainees. And sometimes, those needs extend beyond the walls of the detention centers.
She said her own research – which was provided to Coal Region Canary – on DHS data shows that in 2022, there were up to 25,000 detainees housed in detention centers nationwide.
“They’re going to be in our hospitals, in our ERs. They’re going to be using our ambulances,” she told Commissioners. “WE don’t have any idea who detainees are but it’s going to be people that have cancer, diabetes, they’re on dialysis, women who are pregnant … it’s just like us.”
Of those, DelValle said, nearly 1,200 had medical conditions that required hospitalization and more than 2,000 required some form of medical transport, emergency or not.
At those rates, she believed one detainee per day at the Tremont Township facility would require hospitalization and there’d be two medical transports from there daily.
“I’m really concerned about this additional burden. If our ambulances are tied up in Tremont, what does mean for people in Tamaqua. Do we have to just suck it up,” DelValle asked.
Padora agreed with DelValle’s concerns, adding that EMS resources in Tremont and across the county are already strained.
“That is one of our concerns. We’re a rural county,” he said. “EMS is having a hard enough time getting people the way it is.”
FULL COVERAGE
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