“Human Rights Advocates, Hunger Strikers, Gather to Tell Wolf: “Free People Now!”” by joepiette2 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
The Berks Family Residential Center of Leesport, PA, better known as the Berks Family Detention Center, was officially cleared of all detainees as of Wednesday, March 3, when the last family, a mother and her three children, were released. However, the building itself was not shut down and could theoretically begin taking in new families. This news brought along a mixed response as multiple groups voiced their thoughts on the progressive change.
The center, established in 2001 for use by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), has long been the topic of disdain from the public as the immigration reform movement has grown in recent years. Like many ICE facilities, claims of cruel treatment and inhumane practice were at the core of most calls for the center to shutdown, but Berks also carried with it a long history of sexual assault as recent as this past year. It is for these reasons that public discontent related to the facility has been growing.
At the center of this discontent is the Shut Down Berks Coalition, an organization that, according to their Facebook Page of nearly 7,000 followers, is “a group of organizations and individuals fighting to close the Berks family prison in Pennsylvania and end the practice of imprisoning immigrant families in the U.S.”
Tonya Wenger of the coalition, and a leading member of their around 800-member Interfaith Witness branch, described how the group had been doing “monthly vigils in front of the detention center,” and were engaged in protests “all over the state and country, in New England and in Washington, D.C.”
“We had helped coordinate visitation programs for the detainees before ICE made it next to impossible to do that,” said Wenger. “Now we want [Senator Bob Casey] to publicly call for Biden to shut the center down… along with two other facilities [in Texas].”
“Governor Tom Wolf should do the same; he has the chance to do that,” said Wenger. The SDBC had made this past week of March 1 their Week of Action, devoted to attempting to contact Senator Casey, Governor Wolf and President Biden. A more detailed plan of action for the coalition can be found in their March 1 press release, published after the news broke.
Senator Casey voiced some sympathy for the cause on Sunday, Feb. 28 via Twitter, calling the decision “a long overdue step to deliver justice to vulnerable migrant families, including children.” He continued, suggesting that “the next step is to permanently close the center so that no future family or child is forced to go through what these families have endured.” Senator Casey has not yet responded to further requests for comment.
The two ICE detention centers in Texas, the Karnes County Residential Center and South Texas Family Residential Center, have become the new centers of attention for immigration reform. A handful of reports had been addressed by the Washington Post after the Berks decision suggesting that these two facilities would also be releasing their residents and would become rapid processing hubs for COVID-19 testing and vaccination. However, such change has not been made official and has thus left reform groups at exceedingly high levels of anticipation. For now, the attention has turned to the Biden administration to see if this pattern of reform will continue.
Matthew Shimkonis is a second-year History major with a minor in Journalism. MS925373@wcupa.edu