The Berks County Prison Board on Wednesday defended its decision to amend a policy last year to increase the amount of time the county will detain someone based on a request from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The board voted unanimously in April to increase the time it would hold someone at the county jail who is accused by ICE of being illegally in the U.S to 24 hours from four hours, with the possibility of detaining them up to 48 hours under extenuating circumstances.
Faced with the possibility of losing more than a quarter of a million dollars in annual federal funding, officials said the move was an attempt to balance compliance with detention requests and the rights of those being detained.
The issue first arose when District Attorney John T. Adams, a member of the prison board, said he received information that the county was in jeopardy of losing about $290,000 a year in federal emergency management funding if it did not comply with President Donald Trump’s priorities on immigration enforcement.
Adams recommended the county change its policy to avoid any potential funding loss.
Crystal Kowalski, a longtime activist who lives in Wyomissing, requested during the board’s monthly meeting Wednesday that board members reconsider the policy change.
She said that given the practices ICE has employed in the months that have followed the decision to fully comply with ICE detention retainers, she is asking the prison board to discontinue holding people beyond their legal release date and time.
Kowalski, who first issued her plea at a commissioners meeting last month, said the board should return to its initial policy to hold individuals for a maximum of four hours, and only if the county is legally required to under the law.
She then read an account from a man who claims he was assaulted by ICE agents.
Alberto Castaneda Mondragon has alleged that agents pulled him from a friend’s car on Jan. 8 outside a St. Paul, Minn., shopping center and threw him to the ground, handcuffed him, punched him and struck his head with a steel baton. He told media outlets that he remembers being dragged into an SUV and taken to a detention facility, where he said he was beaten again.
Kowalski said she has faith in local law enforcement not to do these things, but that ICE has a track record of brutality.
“I feel like, as a county, when we hand these people over to ICE we are responsible for what happens to them when they are in ICE custody,” she said.
Berks Judge Scott Lash, who serves as board chairman, said there is a stark contrast between what is happening in Minnesota and what happens at the county jail. He said the individuals being taken into ICE custody following their release have been charged with a crime or convicted of a crime.
“This is not a 5-year-old child being taken into custody or American citizens who are wrongly targeted,” he said.
Lash said the process is orderly at the jail.
Jail officials have previously explained that the immigration status of people is checked when they are brought into booking and ICE is notified if they are found to be here illegally. They then go before a judge and it is determined whether they go to jail or will be let out on bail.
If they go to the jail, when they are booked in the jail that status is checked a second time and if the jail confirms that status they again notify ICE.
“We don’t have someone coming in with a mask on, we don’t have someone being bullied or abused at the jail,” Lash said. “It is not an indiscriminate thing.”
Lash said he believes the process is much better than the alternative in which ICE may follow the individual into the community to apprehend them.
He also pointed out that while the policy was changed to allow more time for ICE agents to pick up individuals they suspect of being in the country illegally, the practice of alerting the agency is nothing new.
“But I appreciate your concern because we’re all concerned about what’s happening in this country, particularly in Minnesota where it’s out of hand,” Lash said.
Warden Jeffrey Smith reported Wednesday that there are 39 inmates under a detainer at the jail and 11 people were discharged to ICE on detainers in the last 30 days.