From the #ShutDownBerks Coalition (https://www.facebook.com/ShutDownBerksCoalition/):
Five families remain at the family prison, families with a 5 year-old, two 3 year-olds and two 1 year-olds. Children and families who should have never been imprisoned to begin with. So, these families have sued the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (PA DHS) in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for failing to take emergency action to protect them from infection by COVID-19. Now we you need your support for this King’s Bench petition.
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The need for PA DHS to issue an Emergency Removal Order to close the Berks County Detention Center is urgent: COVID-19 is sweeping ICE detention centers in Pennsylvania. PA DHS’s historic lack of action to end family detention has been appalling. But now the department is actively fighting against families in court to keep babies in prison, during a global pandemic. This is how they are choosing to use our tax payer money, and it is horrifying.
“Since we arrived at Berks County Residential Center along with my wife and my two-year-old daughter, my child has been severely sick,” stated one of the detained parents. “We hear about social distancing, but how can we do that when we are all detained together in one building?”
Since 2016, PA DHS has allowed Berks County to operate the detention center under contract with ICE using an expired child care license, despite state law requiring that PA DHS take immediate action to remove children from a facility where “incompetence, negligence, or misconduct” in operating the facility is likely to constitute an “immediate and serious danger to the life or health” of the children.
As documented in the lawsuit, the family prison is not protecting detained families from the coronavirus. The family prison is not testing families or staff for COVID-19, providing adequate personal protective equipment, or sanitizing surfaces in common areas. Most importantly, social distancing under CDC guidelines is impossible for families detained in an enclosed congregate setting with shared bathrooms and communal eating and sleeping areas. A documented history of medical neglect at the family prison heightens the risk that children and parents who fall ill will not receive life saving medical treatment.
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