{"id":118382,"date":"2026-02-19T20:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/118382\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T20:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T20:36:10","slug":"berks-officials-still-waiting-for-information-about-ice-facility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/118382\/","title":{"rendered":"Berks officials still waiting for information about ICE facility"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Berks County commissioners on Thursday said they have still not received much information about a planned ICE processing center in Upper Bern Township<\/a>, but they are eagerly awaiting learning details about the facility.<\/p>\n

During their weekly meeting, Commissioner Christian Leinbach said he shared his concerns<\/a> with U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser last week about the plan to convert a warehouse into a 1,500-person ICE processing center.<\/p>\n

Leinbach said Meuser, a Republican who represents the district that includes the warehouse, helped put him in touch with an official from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. During that phone call last Friday, Leinbach asked for a meeting to be held with DHS and local officials, he said.<\/p>\n

The DHS official committed to holding such a meeting, however a date has not yet been set. The current partial government shutdown could impact when it can be held.<\/p>\n

Leinbach said he would also like a public meeting to be held, but said the DHS official would not commit to that request at this time.<\/p>\n

The idea behind holding a meeting, Leinbach said, is to share with federal officials concerns held by local officials over the potential impact of the ICE facility<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI continue to have concerns,\u201d he said. \u201cAgain, I think there is little understanding of how this facility could impact the local economy and infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leinbach said he also has concerns about how ICE operates, particularly given the events of recent months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have concerns around transparency when it comes to humane treatment,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I say humane treatment, and I talk to people on both sides, I\u2019m not talking about a luxury hotel environment. I\u2019m talking about an environment common to what we have at our jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leinbach said he wants to make sure the facility would operate in a respectful manner, providing things like three meals a day, showers, bathrooms and clean accommodations. He said the site should be inspected on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose things, from a humane standpoint, are what we need to happen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Leinbach said he hopes to learn more about the impact of ICE facilities and how other counties are dealing with them during the annual National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Washington, where he was heading later Thursday.<\/p>\n

He said he has a meeting scheduled Sunday afternoon with NACO staff who deal with immigration issues to try to get as much information as he can and to find out what counties are doing.<\/p>\n

Leinbach warned that Pennsylvania is different from most other states in that counties do not have the authority to issue permits or zoning regulations, with those responsibilities falling to municipalities. That means some of the answers he receives may not apply to what is happening in Berks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big thing I continue to tell people is that the county does not control the permits,\u201d he said. \u201cIt really weakens any kind of power that we would have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Berks County commissioners on Thursday said they have still not received much information about a planned ICE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,52152,182,139,28,128,130,129,706],"class_list":["post-118382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-ice-warehouse","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}