At July\u2019s Berks County Prison Board meeting, Judge Scott Lash defended continued cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a \u201cfew bad apples\u201d situation. I respectfully disagree.<\/p>\n
Just a few bad apples can be removed and we\u2019d trust that the tree is healthy. But all evidence points to a problem at the roots.<\/p>\n
Last year, ICE and Department of Homeland Security inspections identified deficiencies in detention facilities but lacked performance measures<\/a> to determine whether inspection programs were working. As recently as June, the Government Accountability Office<\/a> reported that ICE\u2019s newest, largest facility failed to meet key standards, creating safety risks to detainees and staff.<\/p>\n That isn\u2019t a few bad apples, it\u2019s the whole tree.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not saying every ICE employee is a bad person. I\u2019m saying when good people participate in a system that produces harmful outcomes, it doesn\u2019t make the system itself good.<\/p>\n Consider this as a moral question, not just a legal one.<\/p>\n When a system repeatedly fails to protect people in its custody, do we have an obligation to keep helping that system operate? Or do we have an obligation to step back and say, not in our name?<\/p>\n Lash has the authority to decide what role Berks County plays in this system.<\/p>\n He shouldn\u2019t focus on \u201cgood apples\u201d within ICE and instead examine the condition of the whole tree. When dignity, safety, and lives are at stake, \u201cthere are good people in the system\u201d cannot be the moral justification for continuing to participate in it.<\/p>\n Kristin Park<\/p>\n Colebrookdale Township<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At July\u2019s Berks County Prison Board meeting, Judge Scott Lash defended continued cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,5037,1559,28,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-268755","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\/268755","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=268755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}