Being blue in a red part of Pennsylvania isn’t always fun, but it’s downright sickening to watch the Trump/Project 2025 regime foist an ICE “megacenter” on my county’s countryside.
But in the past week or so, there have been glimmers of hope that common decency and common sense might prevail. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro met with local leaders and reaffirmed that he’ll do everything in his power to stop this concentration camp planned for Tremont Township in Schuylkill County and a smaller one 26 miles away in Berks County. Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s Republican governor successfully rebuffed one there.
And Malcolm Kenyatta, a state rep and Democratic National Committee vice chair, gave local party members a much needed-lift with a message all patriots should hear: We can make great strides by standing up for a good cause – or obstructing a bad one.
For it’s been looking bad here.
Predictably, our own GOP Congressman and Trump/Project 2025 cheerleader Dan Meuser has deferred to the feds while trying to convince constituents that these immigrant torture centers offer some kind of upside for anyone besides the contractors the Department of Homeland “Security” agency ends up hiring.
I’ve shaken my head over reports that ICE and DHS want to open the Tremont concentration camp this Spring. Political leanings aside, everyone who knows the area says it lacks the infrastructure, health care facilities and emergency response services needed to accommodate 7,500 prisoners. And that means serious problems for the community and abysmal conditions for the inmates, many of whose only crimes are starting businesses or working at low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want.
I’ve also been disappointed that Schuylkill County’s majority commissioners, Republicans Larry Padora and Boots Hetherington, have refused to oppose the ICE project. Instead, they’re crossing their fingers that Meuser and DHS, whose stealth while expanding its concentration camp network has only been exceeded by its brutality on America’s streets, might make this terrible situation … less terrible.
Good luck with that. Even after DHS finally deigned to meet virtually on Monday with various officials from Schuylkill and Berks, numerous issues remained unresolved.
It was heartening to see Shapiro push back at the White House on Thursday at a news conference following his own, in-person meeting in Leesport.
Padora appeared to shrug off the governor’s efforts. “If he’s successful or not successful, that’s on the governor of the state,” he told the Canary. “I have to plan for what affects Schuylkill County.”
But Schuylkill County Democratic Commissioner Gary Hess, who has emphasized that he opposes illegal immigration but is “totally against” the concentration camp, said he appreciates Shapiro’s help in trying to stop it.
Really, the governor deserves our thanks for trying both to prevent the havoc and misery this concentration camp would cause and to protect us from its owner.
“I’m extremely concerned about human rights abuses that we’ve seen from ICE all across this country, and I do not want that coming here to Pennsylvania,” he said, adding that Republican and Democratic officials also said that during his meeting with them.
So what about us?
During his speech to the Schuylkill County Democratic Committee last weekend, Kenyatta said the White House and its allies essentially shifted health care funding to ICE for buildings to “warehouse people like an Amazon package.”
But he added that quality health care, decent-paying jobs and home ownership don’t have to be out of reach.
“We can do that,” he said. “And a part of the way we do it is to dispute, to dismiss, to ignore the nonsense and the noise that tells us the path forward is to hate each other.”
Another part is to stop waiting for a savior to fix the mess we’re in now and instead band together to preserve the principles that made our country great.
The civil rights and women’s suffrage movements owe their success not only to their leaders but also to those working with them, Kenyatta said. “So the history of this country is us always coming together to do hard stuff in the face of obstacles that seem insurmountable.”
It certainly feels like that today. And while we need leaders like Shapiro, we patriots must demand something better than what this corrupt and heartless regime is selling. If we don’t, the regime will keep winning.
Photo: Lisa Von Ahn
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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