the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to use a warehouse in the township to hold 1,500 people as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center<\/a>, took the lead in organizing a protest outside Meuser\u2019s district office at the Hamburg Municipal Center.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s not about politics \u2014 it\u2019s about the issues,\u201d Deborah Miller, chairwoman of ICE Out Upper Bern, said.<\/p>\n
The 527,000-square-foot building at 3501 Mountain Road is one of 23 sites across the country ICE has tapped to become warehouse-based immigration detention centers. It was purchased in late January by the federal government for $87.4 million.<\/p>\n
If the plan proceeds, Miller said, it will deprive local communities of $828,000 in critical tax revenue, place unsustainable demands on local infrastructure, disrupt the daily lives of local residents, overwhelm emergency services, create traffic issues and lead to declining property values for its neighbors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are here today to let Dan Meuser know that we are unhappy with the proposed ICE detention center that he has facilitated for months,\u201d she told the crowd at the Hamburg protest.<\/p>\n
Miller said Meuser was scheduled to speak at the Upper Bern Township Supervisors\u2019 April meeting but cancelled that appearance. Since then, she said, countless phone calls, postcards, letters and texts to Meuser with concerns about the facility have gone unanswered.<\/p>\n
\u201cIsn\u2019t that a responsibility of an elected federal congressman\u2026to provide answers on federal government projects within his district?\u201d Miller asked.<\/p>\n
In addition to the strain the detention center would have on the communities surrounding the facility, several speakers at the event shared concerns about who is going to be housed at the facility or in what conditions they will be held.<\/p>\n
Nancy Omaha Boy said individuals detained by ICE are entitled to due process under the U.S. Constitution but there have been well-documented instances where these rights were violated.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Constitution, it very specifically says that all people in the U.S. have the right to due process,\u201d she said. \u201cIt does not say people with green cards, people with passports, people who are citizens \u2014 those words are not in the Constitution. What we are seeing over and over again is the deterioration of these rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Omaha Boy said she is also worried about reports of ICE detention centers where conditions are \u201cinhumane and cruel.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have no access to clean water, no access to proper health care and insufficient access to food,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do not want something like that in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Patty Torres, an executive director of Make the Road Pennsylvania, said there is fear among Latinos living in the 9th Congressional District that an ICE facility in Berks will bring an increased ICE presence in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know the proposed detention centers are being placed in rural communities but the impact of these facilities will be felt far beyond,\u201d she said. \u201cThe immigrants who live in cities like Reading, Hazleton, Bethlehem and Allentown will face increased fear, family separation and economic destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres said for those reasons, those living in these rural communities and those living in urban communities must unite together to stop the opening of the detention center.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cost and the consequences will be borne by working families across the region,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we urge Congressman Meuser to listen to the communities that will be affected and reject the expansion of immigrant detention.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around noon Monday, just after the bells of a nearby church stopped ringing, a group of around 60…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,5523,60980,52152,182,883,803,2941,139,434,28,50,128,130,129,231,706,2943],"class_list":["post-208594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-carbon-county","tag-ice-detention","tag-ice-warehouse","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-luzerne-county","tag-monroe-county","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-top-stories-reg","tag-wyoming-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208594","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=208594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}