Residents near two rural Pennsylvania communities could see major losses with the placement of local ICE detention facilities.
Two Pennsylvania townships may face financial hardships after the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased a pair of warehouses to serve as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainment facility in Berks and Schuylkill Counties.
Coal Region Canary published last week that Tremont, a rural community located one hour north of Harrisburg, is expected to lose $195,000 annually, or 60% of its property tax budget since DHS purchased a former Big Lots warehouse to convert to a detainment depot.
Lebanon Daily News reported that the facility generated close to $1 million a year for Schuylkill County, the local township and the Pine Grove School District.
A facility in Upper Bern, Berks County, meanwhile generated $828,000 in tax revenue for the county, township and Hamburg Area School District.
“There’s a lot of money we lose,” supervisor Larry Bender, a Tremont Township supervisor, said last week. “It’s a significant portion of the Township budget. That’s the only thing we had in our township is Big Lots. We’ll have to watch whatever we do, whatever we spend.”
The former Big Lots warehouse is expected to house approximately 7,500 detainees, making it one of the largest ICE detention facilities in the country when it is fully operational.
“While I have been clear in my support for the enforcement of federal immigration law, this decision will do significant damage to these local tax bases, set back decades-long efforts to boost economic development, and place undue burdens on limited existing infrastructure in these communities,” US Sen. John Fetterman wrote in a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Fetterman noted that the Tremont warehouse and the Upper Bern facility don’t have adequate infrastructure to handle the influx of detainees.
Coal Region Canary pointed out in follow-up reporting that the former Big Lots warehouse is connected to the region’s public water and sewer systems, which was designed to handle a couple hundred people working on a shift at a time.
When combined with the Berks County detention center, which is expected to house 1,500 people, both communities are slated to lose $1.6 million in local tax revenue each year they remain operational.
“This loss of vital tax dollars compounds concerns over the ability of these municipalities to meet the infrastructure needs of these facilities and would place undue strain upon the budgets of local governments and school districts in the region,” Fetterman said.
Over the weekend, the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee voted unanimously to condemn ICE’s actions across the country, and Gov. Josh Shapiro took time to criticize the new detention centers while speaking in Philadelphia on Friday.
“ The federal government did not give us any advance notice,” Shapiro said. “I am strongly opposed to the purchase of this warehouse that frankly should be used for economic development in Berks County.”
He added, “ This is not what we need anywhere in Pennsylvania, and I think the secretive way in which the federal government went about this undermines the trust with the people of Pennsylvania here.”
