On June 28th, 2018, Governor Wolf’s staff called a meeting with members of the Shut Down Berks Coalition to discuss the operation of the Berks County Detention Center (BCRC). The Governor’s office continues to claim the Governor has no role or responsibility in overseeing the safety and well-being of families being held in a publicly-owned detention center in Pennsylvania.
This is despite research from Temple Law School that clearly shows that Governor Wolf has the authority to direct PA DHS to issue an emergency removal order to shut down the prison. Neither he nor any of his staff has visited these families to see the conditions. He has never sat down in person with members of the Coalition to learn about the abuses nor is it apparent that his office has read the legal research supplied to his office on many occasions. Children as young as two-weeks-old have been held in inhumane conditions for months and even years. The issue of whether young children should be imprisoned in the state of Pennsylvania should not be controversial: it is both immoral and unlawful.
Every day that Berks is still in operation indicates Pennsylvania’s complicity with a morally bankrupt vision of mass family detention and family separation, including violations of the human rights of immigrant families detained at the prison.
We will not be silent and allow this to continue. We call on the Governor to immediately issue an emergency removal order to close the Berks Detention Center.
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