From the #ShutDownBerks Coalition (https://www.facebook.com/ShutDownBerksCoalition/):
On October 1st, 2021, Congress Members Madeleine Dean, Mary Gay Scanlon, Dwight Evans and Brendan Boyle sent a letter to President Biden and Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, to immediately terminate the ICE contract held with the Berks County Residential Center. The Shut Down Berks Coalition applauds the Congress Members for publicly denouncing the continued operation of an immigrant prison in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
This letter, led by Representative Dean, came after she joined the Shut Down Berks Coalition at Independence Hall on a National Day of Action against immigrant prisons. These Representatives are the latest elected leaders to join a growing list of community members, organizations, and elected officials on the local, state and now federal level against the immigrant prison in Berks County. Read the letter below!
Dear President Biden,
We urge the President and the Department of Homeland Security to end its contract with the Berks County Residential Center (“Berks Detention Center”) immediately. As members of the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation, we lend our voice to the chorus of more than 50 state officials from throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and nearly 10,000 members of the public whose concerns were ignored.
The recent announcement that the Berks Detention Center will house only women provides no relief to a disastrous situation. There are years of documented incidents of sexual assault in Hutto Detention Center, an all-women’s detention center, to include a survivor of sexual assault who was locked in solitary confinement for 60 hours in retaliation for speaking out. Just last year, in Irwin County Detention Center–another all-women’s detention center– more than 40 women attested to non-consensual, medically invasive gynecological procedures, including forced sterilization.
In response to these actions, in May of this year, The Biden Administration announced it would stop detaining women at Irwin. Sadly, these tragic situations are not unique to Irwin or Hutto. Berks County paid a $75,000 settlement last year to a Honduran woman to avoid trial on her allegations of repeated sexual assault at Berks Detention Center. This incident follows years of documented medical neglect, forced labor, mistreatment, and sexual abuse at detention centers across the country. We unequivocally stand against new plans to detain, process, incarcerate, or subject immigrant women or any other people to federal actions within the facility.
Incarcerating asylum seekers, whether they are women, families, or children, is cruel, inhumane, abusive, and unnecessary. Furthermore, it is a violation not only of American civil liberties, but international human rights. In the midst of a global pandemic, placing women into detention centers that have a demonstrated increased risk of harm and death to detainees and a demonstrated track record of sexual violence is unconscionable.
Berks will have the shameful distinction of being the only women’s immigration detention center in the northeast. The Commonwealth should not be in the business of jailing women who seek asylum or other legal protections when community-based alternatives exist. Furthermore, local elected officials have committed to locate funding to support the facility’s use for non-carceral purposes to provide human services to the surrounding community.
As elected leaders representing the communities of Pennsylvania, we ask the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to terminate the contract between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Berks County in order to end the federal use of the Berks Detention Center. I urge you to work to cancel the contract.
Sincerely,
Madeleine Dean, Member of Congress
Dwight Evans, Member of Congress
Mary Gay Scanlon, Member of Congress
Brendan F. Boyle, Member of Congress
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