READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Commissioners are continuing to address the proposed ICE facility in Upper Bern Township, as they have pledged to do since finding out about the project at the beginning of this month.<\/p>\n
A 520,000-square-foot warehouse at 2301 Mountain Road in Upper Bern Township was sold to the U.S. government on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for $87.4 million.<\/p>\n
At their weekly meeting Thursday morning, the commissioners stated they have been in meetings with members of the Department of Homeland Security and are waiting for many questions to be answered.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Dante Santoni Jr. said there is a lot happening with regards to the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019re going to stay on top of it,\u201d Santoni said. \u201cWe are working with Department of Homeland Security at the federal level, working with the local people, and working with the governor’s office at the state level. We are doing everything to make sure -that at the very minimum- we get more information as to what’s coming and what they’re going to be doing with that facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioner Christian Y. Leinbach said this past weekend he had a meeting with representatives from the National Association of Counties (Naco) to specifically talk to them about immigration issues, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE and warehouses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI gave them all of the information that I have and we have a follow-up that we\u2019re scheduling where they\u2019re going to provide additional information,\u201d Leinbach reported.<\/p>\n
Leinbach also said the commissioners have had conversations with public officials and the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of questions,\u201d Leinbach said, “and I would say the only two things since our last commissioners meeting that I have (learned) is that the Berks County facility is to be a processing facility, not a detention center. The second thing is that the intent on sewer is to do an on-site system.”<\/p>\n
Upper Bern Township Supervisors have specifically raised concerns about sewage capacity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know that there was anything else definitive,\u201d Leinbach added. \u201cThere’s to be another call where we hope to get some specific answers to questions.<\/p>\n
The commissioners have pledged to be as transparent as possible with the public on any information they receive.<\/p>\n
In other business, the commissioners praised Chief Administrative Officer Kevin S. Barnhardt and his administrative team for working with the Lackawanna County Commissioners to get them to join the regional efforts to open a youth detention center in Berks County.<\/p>\n
Berks is also working with the Lehigh and Dauphin counties to open the regional facility.<\/p>\n
Barnhardt said his team recently traveled to Scranton to meet with the Lackawanna County Board of Commissioners.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all struggle with violent juvenile crime, and we certainly can’t have our own standalone juvenile detention center because of the numbers just don’t justify it,\u201d Barnhardt said. \u201cWithin the next week or two, we should have a final document in place, as well with Lehigh County. We received support from Dauphin County about two weeks ago, so we’re closing the loop and we’re moving ahead with architects for final design and renovation documents to get us up and running for the new and improved regional youth detention center.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou and your team have really been leading this effort and I’m excited about what you’ve been able to accomplish so far,\u201d Leinbach said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 The Berks County Commissioners are continuing to address the proposed ICE facility in Upper Bern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,10200,58365,23070,51294,41295,58367,51292,128,130,129,58366,44153],"class_list":["post-124445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-christian-y-leinbach","tag-dante-santoni-jr","tag-department-of-homeland-security","tag-ice-facility","tag-kevin-s-barnhardt","tag-lackawanna-county-board-of-commissioners","tag-national-association-of-counties","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-upper-bern-township-berks-county","tag-youth-detention-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124445","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=124445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}