The United States Government will terminate its contract with the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania.
After years of activism against the Berks County Residential Center, a family immigration center located in Berks County, Pennsylvania, the Joe Biden Administration announced that on January 31, 2023 they will terminate the contract with this center, which will cause their permanent closure.
The Berks Detention Center was for years the only public detention center for immigrant families in the United States. Berks County owns the building and grounds of this center, which were leased to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
At the start of the Biden Administration, the center ceased to function as a detention center for migrant families, signaling its closure. However, after almost a year in January 2022, the center was reopened, but now to serve migrant women.
However, activists and immigrants in the community disagreed and organized to create a campaign in favor of closing these facilities.
Federal authorities recently announced the termination of ICE's contract with Berks County and will provide more details on the closure in the coming weeks. “The government may have finally made the right decision to end immigration detention in Berks County,” said attorney Bridget Cambria, executive director of ALDEA, an organization that provides legal services for immigrants.
On the other hand, Flor González, leader of the migrant organization Make The Road PA explained the following: “This victory belongs to the immigrant families and, more recently, to the detained immigrant women, who shared their stories of humanity, and to the organizers who They never lost hope and never stopped fighting for immigrants to be free and together.”
