Despite all the bad news from Washington, our red part of Pennsylvania had reason to rejoice – cautiously — on Thursday: The New York Times reported that the Department of Homeland Security won’t be inflicting two ICE concentration camps on us after all.
I’m glad that it looks like DHS has given up on Tremont Township in Schuylkill County and Upper Bern Township in adjacent Berks. But the report, which is based on documents the Times obtained, raises new questions: What sort of buyer would pick up these properties if they go on the market? And if the feds decide to use them for something else, would we continue to lose out on tax revenue those buildings would generate from private owners?
It’s clear, though, that we mustn’t forget DHS’s effort to steamroll our communities – or how our own GOP Congressman Dan Meuser played along in hopes of getting a pat on the head from the Trump/Project 2025 regime.
In Schuylkill County, where I live, opposition to the conversion of the former Big Lots warehouse was widespread and nonpartisan.
Some of us were horrified at how ICE prison operators abuse and neglect their inmates, many of whom were swept up indiscriminately and locked up without due process.
But just about everyone, including our three county commissioners, couldn’t believe the U.S. government would even consider plopping a 7,500-bed facility with up to 2,500 employees onto a sparsely populated area with nowhere near the infrastructure needed to handle so many people. (Well, what do you expect from a federal government that didn’t plan its war against Iran?)
What Meuser did and didn’t do
Meuser, who’s constantly promoting the regime and bragging about his ties to it, has nonetheless maintained that DHS kept him in the dark from Christmas Eve, when the Washington Post reported that a Tremont concentration camp was on the drawing board, until Feb. 2, when the deed was filed in the county courthouse.
Maybe so. But somehow GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Gov. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire managed to deter DHS from buying and converting warehouses in their states.
By contrast, Meuser told Spotlight PA and NOTUS after he learned the Pennsylvania warehouses were sold that the only option is to “work with” the feds and “make sure it goes as well as possible.”
He didn’t face the public at county commissioners’ meetings, where the issue was discussed at length. And although he was invited to three town halls where residents could express their concerns, he attended none of them.
MORE: Schuylkill County Schools Get $2 Million in Safety, Mental Health Grant Funding
(His Democratic challenger, Rachel Wallace, held one of the town halls, something he should have done himself.)
Meuser even tried to spin the concentration camps in a blatantly partisan way.
A couple of days before the Times story broke, Spotlight PA published an article stating that he tried to exclude the Democratic commissioners for Schuylkill and Berks counties from a March 12 meeting with ICE and DHS.
In a text to Berks GOP Commissioners’ Chair Christian Leinbach, Meuser said he wanted to limit attendance to “just the Republican commissioners. For a few reasons, you guys know it best and if there’s some positive messaging, I’d like it to come from you all.”
Leinbach complied, but to his credit, Schuylkill Commissioners’ Chair Larry Padora brought Democrat Gary Hess with him. After all, this was a meeting about something that would cause all sorts of problems for our county, not a GOP poker game or political dinner.
Hess told me he’d learned that Meuser visited the courthouse and conferred with the two Republican commissioners, whom he then took on a tour to the Tremont warehouse. When Hess said he should have been included, Padora told him about the DHS-ICE meeting and said he wanted him there.
In these and subsequent meetings, Hess saw no attempts at positive messaging. “We were trying to get information on what [the feds] would do,” he said.
I mentioned the article at Wednesday’s commissioners’ meeting and asked Padora and fellow GOP Commissioner Boots Hetherington why they even listen to Meuser, who should be supporting his constituents instead of Donald Trump and his Project 2025ers.
“It was Congressman Meuser that has facilitated all the conversations with DHS,” Padora replied. “… We inundated DHS with every concern anybody brought to us about the township, the municipality, the tax rates, the water rates, the sewer, the impact on the local community, that they can’t transport trucks through Tremont Borough or Tremont Township, that they can only use [Interstate] 81 for any of their trucking.”
Of course, the Shapiro administration also played a major role by halting both projects until DHS could demonstrate compliance with environmental regulations for water and sewer services.
Even after the Times story broke, Meuser was still doing PR for the concentration camp and himself. “Should the initial plan move forward, we secured favorable commitments from DHS that would be beneficial to our community,” he told the Canary. “Nevertheless, in an effort to fully cooperate, DHS is engaged in their own evaluation of the sites being developed.”
Wallace takes a different view. “I don’t know how he can say with a straight face that [the concentration camp] would be good for Tremont or Schuylkill County,” she said.
Bad moves by DHS
DHS didn’t come right out and confirm that it’s scrapping its concentration camp plans here and at five locations in other states. But it did say it’s “moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING [its caps] detention space with our state and county partners” and that detainees “should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense.”
Based on what we’ve seen here, DHS officials deserve any blame for the mess they’re trying to extricate themselves from. Rather than seek input from the communities, they blindsided them and paid $207 million for two properties that are obviously not equipped to house thousands of people.
Or maybe the regime didn’t care. Responding to the Times article, DHS served up its usual mix of xenophobia and hate, along with its usual claim of being “singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.” This despite reports of ICE quotas that have led to numerous kidnappings of immigrants with no criminal record.
The Times article indicates DHS’s new approach stems not from common decency but from some long overdue common sense. Thanks to those who resisted the concentration camps, the regime finally admitted that its cruel and idiotic plan is more trouble than it’s worth.
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.
Want to be a columnist with Coal Region Canary? Contact us at newscanary@gmail.com.
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