BERKS COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 Reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may no longer move forward with detention centers in Upper Bern Township in Berks County and Tremont Township in Schuylkill County are now drawing reaction from both sides of the aisle.<\/p>\n
Democratic U.S. Sen. John Fetterman reacted to the reports, saying he believes the facilities would have negatively impacted local communities.<\/p>\n
“I appreciate that Secretary Mullin recognized the negative impacts these facilities would have in Pennsylvania \u2014including the direct threat to local economies and infrastructure,” Fetterman said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Republican Congressman Dan Meuser also reacted to the reports, saying local and county leaders worked directly with federal officials from the beginning to address community concerns.<\/p>\n
“Should the initial plan move forward, we secured favorable commitments from [Department of Homeland Security] that would be beneficial to our community. Nevertheless, in an effort to fully cooperate, DHS is engaged in their own evaluation of the sites being developed,” Meuser said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The reaction comes after reports that seven of the 11 warehouses ICE purchased earlier this year are now being considered for sale or transfer to other federal agencies.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security told 69 News it remains focused on using existing detention space with state and county partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERKS COUNTY, Pa. \u2014 Reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may no longer move forward with detention…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,26647,50999,2443,4283,128,130,129,231,45560,12264],"class_list":["post-225594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-dan-meuser","tag-detention-center","tag-ice","tag-john-fetterman","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-tremont-township","tag-upper-bern-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225594","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=225594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}