U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has confirmed it's giving up on its plan to use two rural Pennsylvania warehouses to hold thousands of people.
The plan had been held up by a state Department of Environmental Protection order preventing the use of local drinking water and a local sewage system until ICE proved it could meet state laws on safe drinking water and sewage disposal. An ICE lawyer filed paperwork Wednesday withdrawing his agency’s appeal of the order, the Associated Press reported.
The state and local officials had raised concerns that the local water and wastewater services in rural areas of Berks and Schuylkill counties were inadequate to handle the thousands of inhabitants envisioned by the federal agency.
ICE did not say what, if anything, it would ultimately use the warehouses for.
But it told the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in a separate letter that it “has considered the final use it will make of this property, and it hereby informs DEP that it will not be using this property as a detention center.”
The letter, dated last week, was released Wednesday by the DEP and confirmed previous public statements by U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman.
In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said the warehouses “are not suitable for people and converting them to detention centers would have posed serious risks to the health, safety, and infrastructure of the surrounding communities.”
What ICE had planned
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, proposed housing up to 7,500 detainees in a 1.3 million-square-foot former Big Lots warehouse on Rausch Creek Road in Tremont Twp., Schuylkill County.
ICE had been buying warehouses across the U.S. as part of former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s $38 billion plan to rapidly expand detention capacity this year. However, it began retreating from that plan last month.
The Tremont Twp. center would have housed more than 26 times more people than live in the township. The 2020 U.S. Census found Tremont Twp. had 283 residents.
The department also wanted to open a processing center housing up to 1,500 detainees in a 520,000-square-foot warehouse on Mountain Road in Upper Bern Twp., Berks County.
Both would have been part of a $38.3 billion plan to create eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing centers and acquire and renovate 10 centers the agency already operates, according to ICE’s detention re-engineering initiative issued in February.
Noem’s purchases were largely made out of public view and angered communities that were caught by surprise. Some local officials only learned about ICE’s ambitions after the agency bought or leased space for detainees. After Noem was fired, her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, quickly paused the purchase of new warehouses.
Background, community concerns
Plans for the detention centers drew an outcry from many in the surrounding communities.
Concern about the proposed Schuylkill County facility, at a former Big Lots warehouse in Tremont Twp., started on Christmas Eve with a Washington Post story. The newspaper, citing internal ICE documents, reported a Trump administration plan to renovate industrial warehouses nationwide to house immigrant detainees.
The Schuylkill and Berks plans and met with sharp opposition from residents and concern from county officials. Opponents worried about the humanity of warehousing thousands of immigrants.
More than 100 people gathered at Newtown Volunteer Fire Co., in January to share their concerns.
WVIA News spoke to stakeholders and concerned residents again in May, as part of a special series on immigration enforcement.
Schuylkill County Board of Commissioners Chairman Larry Padora refused to say if he was for or against the detention center, saying he wants no part of the partisan political fighting.
But Padora did have concerns about the facilty's impact on his county — particularly the loss of nearly $1 million in property taxes for Schuylkill County, the Pine Grove Area School District and the township.
Padora wrote about his concerns in a letter to Homeland Security and federal legislators, seeking payments in lieu of taxes to cover the lost property tax money and upgrades for security-related equipment.
Shapiro and DEP had already begun their battle by that point, with the governor vowing to “use every tool” available to block both centers.
In June the New York times reported that the federal government intended to drop plans to the Schuylkill and Berks sites and five other locations as immigrant detention centers, citing a document it had obtained.
ICE planned to sell the seven buildings or give them to other agencies to use, the Times reported.
The other warehouses ICE plans to hand off or sell are in Romulus, Mich.; Social Circle and Flowery Branch, Ga.; Salt Lake City; and Roxbury, N.J.
Reaction to latest news
Shapiro, in a post on X, said he was "proud to have stood with local leaders and residents, enforced Pennsylvania law, and worked across agencies to protect people from being held in these warehouses and to protect the surrounding communities."
Miguel E. Andrade, narrative director of the Pennsylvania Immigration Coalition, issued a letter saying the group was "excited" about the news, but still has concerns, including what it called $207 million that "was wasted on the corrupt purchases."
"We also call for this historic level of investment to be put towards meeting the needs of our communities including healthcare, affordable housing, education, safe drinking water, and support for our veterans," Andrade wrote, adding that the group calls on Congress "to divest themselves of those buildings immediately."
"We know an agency with $240 billion of funding and a private army is not simply going away; neither are the problems this charade highlighted in our communities," Andrade wrote.
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This story includes reporting by The Associated Press and WVIA News.