“There’s an exorbitant number of victims of sexual violence in this facility … an exorbitant number of victims of domestic and inter familial violence,” Aldea executive director Bridget Cambria told WESA. “And these are all women that were brave enough to speak about it with immigration officials and asylum officers, which is really hard for a teen or young person to do.”
Following years of local activism, county officials were informed that their Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract would end come Jan. 31, 2023. Berks detained migrant families for many years, but was then emptied by the Biden administration in the spring of 2021. There were hopes it would remain empty, but the administration then began to detain single women there.
Following the announcement of that the site’s contract will end, the pressure is now focusing on ensuring these women can be released. Unfortunately, an immigration prison’s closure is not a guarantee of freedom for the people inside. Following news that this past spring that the administration would no longer be using the disreputable Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama, detained migrants were just moved elsewhere. Nearly a dozen were moved to a GEO Group-operated prison in Louisiana with its own “history of neglect and reported abuses,” The Advocate reported.
“We’re not done,” Make the Road PA leader Armando Jimenez told WESA about women detained at Berks. “We’re not going to finish until every woman here is free and not transferred to another location.”
The Shut Down Berks Coalition and Detention Watch Network said in a joint statement that this is the fourth contract that the Biden administration has terminated. Advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, had last year urged the closure of dozens of sites, citing patterns of abusive conditions and reduced population levels due to the pandemic and other factors. There’s now also a push to turn Berks into a building that can aid people rather than hurt them, by providing “human services,” WESA reported.
“There’s lots of ideas, there’s lots of need, and ultimately it should be the Berks County people, the residents of Berks County, who have a say in what that facility is used for, because they know what’s best for their own communities,” Shut Down Berks Coalition member Jasmine Rivera said in the report.
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