If there’s one thing we must remember as ICE shoves its way into my part of Pennsylvania, it’s how much we need reporters to keep us apprised of what Donald Trump, his Project 2025ers and their GOP supporters have to say.
It’s been three weeks since someone at the Department of Homeland “Security” agency filed deeds for two warehouses — its way of confirming reports that it plans to convert them to concentration camps — but the information this regime’s doling out is as scant as its milk of human kindness.
That’s a big problem. For although ICE has its supporters in deep-red Schuylkill County and reddish Berks County, everyone agrees that the rural townships DHS has designated for these camps can’t handle the demands they’d place on water and sewer systems, emergency responders and health care facilities.
It looked like DHS and ICE handled their expansion the way Trump has operated his real estate business: Buy whatever catches your eye and maybe examine it carefully later.
Reasonable as that theory sounds, ICE tried to squelch it with a memo that New Hampshire GOP Gov. Kelly Ayotte posted on her website on Feb. 13. Spotlight PA and our local media, including the Canary, picked it up on Friday.
The memo doesn’t contain specifics about the 7,500-bed “megacenter” planned for Tremont Township in western Schuylkill County or the 1,500-bed “processing center” 26 miles away for Upper Bern Township in Berks County. But ICE says it did due diligence and plans to “activate” all 24 future facilities in its nationwide “detention reengineering initiative” by Nov. 30
That might sound like breakneck speed, but also on Feb. 13, GOP state Rep. Joanne Stehr told the Sunbury Daily Item that the Tremont prison is expected to have its grand opening this spring – at most four months from now.
At their meeting on Wednesday, Schuylkill County commissioners said they’d heard no such thing from GOP Congressman Dan Meuser, who’s been their conduit to DHS. I asked Stehr’s office how she learned of this timeline but haven’t received a reply.
The memo from ICE states that the new concentration camps would “provide basic needs such as food, clothing, hygiene products, bedding, and recreation,” as well as health care and amenities that include a law library.
But DHS has also said detainees have it pretty good at current ICE facilities, despite numerous reports of abysmal conditions.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro pushed back hardest with a pledge to do all he can to stop the concentration camps.
Democratic Commissioner Gary Hess reaffirmed his opposition to ICE’s plan. While GOP Commissioners Boots Hetherington said he wasn’t happy about it and Larry Padora said he didn’t know enough about it to state a position.
Interestingly, Meuser had told the Lebanon Daily News on Tuesday that he’d visit the concentration camp locations the next day. It would have been nice if he’d dropped by the commissioners’ meeting while he was in the neighborhood, especially since he said DHS was “quite transparent” in daily conversations. (Someone there would have to say an awful lot to make up for its clandestine dealings before the deeds reached the courthouses and its tight-lipped stance since.)
As commissioners’ chair, Padora did read a formal request to Meuser, Fetterman, GOP Sen. Dave McCormick and DHS for written agreements protecting the county from unfunded federal mandates.
He ended the letter by saying he wasn’t stating a political position and that the commissioners remain committed to work with the feds and our congressional delegation collaboratively and in good faith. (Good luck with that, knowing how this regime operates.)
It was heartening that the Reading Eagle reported that Christian Leinbach, a Republican who chairs the Berks County commissioners, isn’t just concerned about how the Upper Bern Township concentration camp would affect the local economy and infrastructure.
“From a humane standpoint,” he said, it should be inspected regularly and provide basics like three meals a day, showers, bathrooms and clean accommodations.
Unfortunately, that county also was also in the dark this past week. Leinbach said that through Meuser, he talked to someone at DHS who agreed to hold a meeting with local officials but wouldn’t set a date.
“The current partial government shutdown could impact when it can be held,” the Eagle said.
Hmmm. Democrats are demanding much-needed reforms to immigration enforcement before approving more DHS funding, but Meuser has said their position is “ridiculous” because ICE is already funded through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill for billionaires. (And for hard-hearted bigots.)
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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