The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s rumored plan to sell the warehouse in Upper Bern Township is good news, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement remains deeply embedded in Berks County.<\/p>\n
With an additional $38 billion to spend, ICE continues to snatch our friends and neighbors through compliance traps, collateral arrests and directly from Berks County Jail. To date, the jail has handed 96 people to ICE, known for wanton disregard for due process and the rule of law.<\/p>\n
It does this with the collaboration of our county commissioners and prison board, who dismiss the more than 50 deaths in ICE custody since January 2025.They ignore the experience of officials at every level who are refused access to detention centers within their jurisdiction. \u201dWe shouldn\u2019t be in the middle of this,\u201d Clearfield County Commissioner Dave Glass said when denied his legal right to inspect Moshannon Detention Center.<\/p>\n
Even without a local prison camp, Berks is very much in the middle of all this. The people Berks handed to ICE may have been sent to Moshannon, or Louisiana or Texas or New Jersey \u2014 who knows? We do know ICE is rapidly expanding its collaboration with local authorities.<\/p>\n
The relationship between ICE and local governments is starkly divided between those who collaborate with ICE and those who do not. Our commissioners and prison board members must join those who do not and end the voluntary ICE detainer holds at the Berks jail. No detention beyond an inmate\u2019s release date without a judicial warrant.<\/p>\n
Jane Palmer<\/p>\n
Wyomissing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department of Homeland Security\u2019s rumored plan to sell the warehouse in Upper Bern Township is good news,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,5037,1559,28,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-227112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-opinion","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227112","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=227112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}