The U.S. Government plans to convert Big Lots in Tremont Township into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility. Larry Bender, one of Tremont Township’s supervisors, confirmed Tuesday the plans to purchase for former distribution center.
Bender says that last week, the township’s tax collector, Nicole Bender, received a letter from Charles Jones Tax Search Division requesting the township’s tax certifications for the over 1-million-square-foot warehouse located at 50 Rausch Creek Road. The letter stated the sale of the facility to the United States of America, with an estimated settlement date of Dec. 26. The warehouse was previously owned by Big Lots.
Bender said he forwarded the letter to the county to look into — the township has not heard back as of Tuesday.
Word first began to spread about the possibility of an ICE processing facility coming to Schuylkill County in late December, when a Washington Post report identified Tremont as one of 23 communities nationwide where ICE plans to renovate industrial warehouses and use them as temporary holding places for immigrant detainees, capable of cumulatively holding 80,000 detainees at a time.
The plan, as proposed in a draft solicitation obtained by the Post, would be to create seven large detention centers capable of holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each and 16 smaller processing facilities, which would hold 500 to 1,500 people each.
The original draft solicitation identified Tremont as a site for the latter.
Tremont Township itself consists of less than 300 residents, according to the 2020 census.
Jennifer Devine, a 30-year resident of Frailey Township, which neighbors Tremont Township, says she is “livid” over the news.
“I’m against what they are doing with these immigration detention centers,” Devine said.
Devine says she has concerns about how detained individuals will be treated in the facility, and whether some of them will be brought there for the wrong reasons.
Moreover, she — and other residents who have reached out to the township, Larry Bender says — is concerned that the Kids-R-Kids Child Care Center is located less than 300 yards from the warehouse.
“Nobody wants it, we don’t want it,” Larry Bender said.
The township profits off of the warehouse’s property taxes — Larry Bender says losing Big Lots means the Township would be looking at a loss of $400,000 a year. Local governments cannot tax federally-owned land.
This is a developing story.