Speaker 1: When an ICE camp comes to town, Tremont, Pennsylvania is unprepared,
Speaker 1: under equipped, and largely unwilling. The same is true for
Speaker 1: many of the other places tapped for similar warehouse jails.
Speaker 1: So far, none of that matters by Fola Acanebee read
Speaker 1: aloud by Mark Leedorf. The rumors started in January. Leaked
Speaker 1: plans suggested Emigration and Customs Enforcement was looking to turn
Speaker 1: warehouses across the U S into massive immigration detention centers.
Speaker 1: One of the largest was planned for Tremont, Pennsylvania, a
Speaker 1: tiny rural township in Skugul County, about one hundred miles
Speaker 1: northwest to Philadelphia. Residents peppered officials with questions during county
Speaker 1: commissioner's meetings. What information did they have? How did they
Speaker 1: plan to respond? Larry Pdora, a Republican in the deep
Speaker 1: red county and leader of the three person commission, wanted
Speaker 1: to kill the rumors. At a late January meeting, he
Speaker 1: paused the lively public comment period to give a firm
Speaker 1: statement there was no evidence ICE was coming to town.
Speaker 1: He said, no deeds recorded, know anything that this facility
Speaker 1: is even being purchased. He was referring to a former
Speaker 1: distribution center for the bankrupt discounter Big Lots. It had
Speaker 1: been identified in the press as a potential site. The
Speaker 1: commissioners had checked the tax assessor's office and asked the
Speaker 1: local Economic Development Organization. They spoke to the offices of
Speaker 1: Governor Josh Shapiro, US Representative Dan Muser, and U S
Speaker 1: Senators Dave McCormick and John Fetterman. None had heard anything
Speaker 1: from ICE, as Padora was unequivocally denying the reports. However,
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, had been
Speaker 1: quietly and quickly working to buy the facility in Tremont,
Speaker 1: a township of two hundred and eighty four that's right
Speaker 1: next to a borough of roughly seventeen hundred also named Tremont.
Speaker 1: A deed had been notarized for almost two weeks. It
Speaker 1: would take effect the day after the hearing. The rumors
Speaker 1: were true. Nobody had confirmation of this beforehand in any way,
Speaker 1: shape or form, Podora said at the first County Commission
Speaker 1: hearing after the deed had been filed. The agency's actions
Speaker 1: seemed to catch Pennsylvania officials at every level on the
Speaker 1: back foot. They say DHS bought the massive empty warehouse
Speaker 1: without informing them, without inviting public comment, and without giving
Speaker 1: any advance notice. The officials appeared shocked by the lack
Speaker 1: of communication from the federal government on such a large
Speaker 1: project and the speed at which it was moving. Flush
Speaker 1: with tens of billions of dollars in funding and a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine deadline to spend it, DHS has been
Speaker 1: moving at breakneck speed to remake America's immigration detention infrastructure.
Speaker 1: Crucial to this effort is a thirty eight point three
Speaker 1: billion dollar plan for ICE to shrink its detention footprint
Speaker 1: to thirty four government owned sites from more than two
Speaker 1: hundred state, county and local jails and private prisons that
Speaker 1: are essentially leased. The agency's rationale is that this will
Speaker 1: make for more efficient operations and faster deportations, and also
Speaker 1: increase the number of beds available. Since the beginning of
Speaker 1: the year, DHS has spent at least one point one
Speaker 1: billion dollars on eleven warehouses across the country. It wants
Speaker 1: to open them by fall. Much more spending is inevitable,
Speaker 1: DHS plans to buy an additional thirteen warehouses, though the
Speaker 1: agency has paused for their purchases for now. And ten
Speaker 1: existing jails. Any and all warehouses will require extensive conversion.
Speaker 1: The empty shells will have to be outfitted with toilets, showers, beds,
Speaker 1: and dining and recreation areas. A preliminary plan sparked alarm
Speaker 1: among immigrant advocates and local jurisdictions. The living quarters appeared
Speaker 1: so tightly packed that there was little room for adequate sanitation, recreation,
Speaker 1: or even exit in an emergency. DHS hasn't commented on
Speaker 1: that early plan or produced a current one for public consumption.
Speaker 1: Despite a growing list of concerns from officials and community
Speaker 1: members who recently learned they're about to play host to
Speaker 1: detention facilities, DHS has released few public details of the plans.
Speaker 1: The only concrete outline of the agency's vision beyond the purchases,
Speaker 1: is a four page document three if you don't count
Speaker 1: a page, that's just a picture, that was released by
Speaker 1: the State of New Hampshire, which received it from DHS
Speaker 1: after word got out that ICE was eyeing a facility
Speaker 1: in the state. Facets of the agency's multi billion dollar
Speaker 1: plan have come under scrutiny. According to research from commercial
Speaker 1: real estate firm Costar, The government is paying eleven percent
Speaker 1: to thirteen percent more than other buyers of similar facilities.
Speaker 1: DHS avoided assessing the environmental impact of converting these sites
Speaker 1: until pressured to do so. Some of the facilities sit
Speaker 1: near sensitive locations, including schools, homes, or even chemical storage facilities.
Speaker 1: Many of the host locales don't appear to have the infrastructure,
Speaker 1: emergency services, or labor force to support what's being proposed.
Speaker 1: That includes Schougle County, in a place where roughly seventy
Speaker 1: percent of voters picked Donald Trump in the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four eleve action, a bipartisan grassroots backlash has emerged. DHS
Speaker 1: appears to be spending money without thinking its plans through,
Speaker 1: says Michelle Brunet, the agency's immigration detention ombudsman under President
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. If the goal was cost effectiveness, she says,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be doing this. There are also significant risks
Speaker 1: that come with locking up this many people in converted warehouses,
Speaker 1: ruinous environmental consequences, human suffering and death. They should know this,
Speaker 1: Brune says. DHS didn't directly respond to a detailed request
Speaker 1: for comment from Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Instead, an agency spokesperson recycled
Speaker 1: the statement it has given numerous outlets about the warehouse effort,
Speaker 1: saying it's reviewing agency policies and proposals as part of
Speaker 1: its transition efforts. The spokesperson pointed to DHS Secretary Mark
Speaker 1: Wayne Mullen's testimony during his confirmation hearing, we want to
Speaker 1: work with community leaders. Mullen, who replaced Christy Nome, told
Speaker 1: Congress in March, we want to be good partners. In
Speaker 1: Tremont Township, where DHS purchased the old Big Lots distribution
Speaker 1: center for one hundred and nineteen point five million dollars,
Speaker 1: the experience has been a case study in the agency's
Speaker 1: decision making and communication. DHS wants to detain as many
Speaker 1: as eighty five hundred people in the facility and employ
Speaker 1: two thousand to twenty five hundred workers on site. That
Speaker 1: would make it the second largest community in the county,
Speaker 1: dwarfing the borough and township population, and a threat to
Speaker 1: the local water and sewer system. According to local authorities.
Speaker 1: The building is steps from the area's sole daycare, Yet
Speaker 1: the only communication about how this will be addressed has
Speaker 1: been through sporadic conference calls with Pedora and other local
Speaker 1: officials who've tried to provide updates at County Commission meetings.
Speaker 1: Those updates have recently trickled to a stop. The former
Speaker 1: Big Lots distribution center sits at the top of a mountain.
Speaker 1: It's a massive, white building, set back from a parking
Speaker 1: lot and lined with one hundred and twelve truck loading
Speaker 1: docks and two drive indoors. There are no windows. It's
Speaker 1: a single story, rectangular box with one point two million
Speaker 1: square feet of floor space, the equivalent of roughly eight
Speaker 1: Costco stores or twenty two football fields. The interior configuration
Speaker 1: again think Costco was well suited for Big Lots to
Speaker 1: get its mishmash of products out to its stores quickly.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and two, a year after it opened,
Speaker 1: a distribution industry trade publication touted the facility as state
Speaker 1: of the art, noting it was able to ship out
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand cases of goods a week.
Speaker 1: Big Lots began to struggle, and in twenty twenty the
Speaker 1: company raised cash by selling the warehouse to a real
Speaker 1: estate investment firm. Big Lots then leased back the facility.
Speaker 1: That firm was acquired a year later by Blue Owl Capital.
Speaker 1: In early twenty twenty five, months after filing for bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: Big Lots closed the warehouse and laid off all five
Speaker 1: hundred and five employees. Esthetics and liveability weren't chief among
Speaker 1: the concerns for Big Lots when it built the facility. Still,
Speaker 1: it wasn't an easy project. The company had to clear
Speaker 1: twenty six feet of mountaintop where the warehouse sits, carefully
Speaker 1: coordinating the explosive blasts to avoid disturbing a series of
Speaker 1: disused mines hundreds of feet below, and an aircraft fuel
Speaker 1: line that divides the property. It timed construction to avoid
Speaker 1: the brutal winter conditions that affect the mountain. Years of
Speaker 1: planning and preparation, conversations with local and state officials, and
Speaker 1: engagement with the local community all went into getting the
Speaker 1: facility open. The federal government originally said it would need
Speaker 1: four months to convert the building into a detention center.
Speaker 1: Pallets and racks once lined the space up to its
Speaker 1: forty foot ceilings, ICE wants to install rigid walls and doors.
Speaker 1: According to internal agency plans seen by BusinessWeek, Immigration detention
Speaker 1: facilities need laundry and medical services, areas, space for food
Speaker 1: prep and dining, and housing. Big Lots didn't need hundreds
Speaker 1: of toilets for discounted furniture home goods, and the employees
Speaker 1: to pass with sorting and storing them didn't need to
Speaker 1: shower daily on site, exercise outdoors, or be fed three
Speaker 1: square meals. In its statement to Business Week, the agency
Speaker 1: said it evaluated the facilities to help minimize environmental impacts,
Speaker 1: including potential impacts to protected species, sensitive natural resources, and
Speaker 1: valued cultural resources. ICE expects people to be in its
Speaker 1: mega facilities for as long as sixty days, though recent
Speaker 1: data shows people are routinely detained for longer. Within hours
Speaker 1: of Trump's inauguration in January twenty twenty five, DHS began
Speaker 1: taking steps to achieve a goal of deporting one million
Speaker 1: people a year. Immediately it became clear that reaching that
Speaker 1: goal would require mass arrests. Despite saying it was focused
Speaker 1: on criminals, often referred to as the worst of the
Speaker 1: worst by agency officials, the government would need to sweep
Speaker 1: up law abiding residents, children, and people attending their immigration hearings.
Speaker 1: DHS still fell short the first year, but the arrests
Speaker 1: it made did let to record levels of detention, in
Speaker 1: part because of the time and resources it can take
Speaker 1: to deport a single person. There are roughly sixty six
Speaker 1: thousand people in ICE custody, down from a record seventy
Speaker 1: three thousand in January. During the Biden administration, the highest
Speaker 1: number of people detained by ICE at any given time
Speaker 1: was about thirty nine thousand. To address the newly created
Speaker 1: need for detention space, the Trump administration quickly built a
Speaker 1: large tent camp at the Fort Bliss Army Base in
Speaker 1: El Paso, Texas. For now, the immigration detention center at
Speaker 1: Fort Bliss is the largest in the US, with room
Speaker 1: for five thousand beds. It cost one point twenty six
Speaker 1: billion dollars and has so far been a disaster. In
Speaker 1: less than a year of operations, the camp has never
Speaker 1: come close to its five thousand person capacity. It has
Speaker 1: dealt with a measles outbreak and accusations from detainees of
Speaker 1: inhumane conditions, and at least three incarcerated people have died recently.
Speaker 1: The federal government replaced the contractor originally tasked with overseeing
Speaker 1: the site, a tiny Virginia company called Acquisition Logistics. If
Speaker 1: filled to capacity, the four biggest proposed warehouse jails, including Tremont,
Speaker 1: would each be among the largest detention facilities of any
Speaker 1: kind in the US, yet DHS has historically struggled to
Speaker 1: operate jails holding more than two thousand people. The smaller
Speaker 1: facilities run better, says Claire Trickler McNulty, an assistant director
Speaker 1: at ICE during the first Trump administration and under Biden.
Speaker 1: Big facilities are hard to staff adequately, especially in rural areas.
Speaker 1: The logistics for food and medical care are hard to manage.
Speaker 1: A few officials have had success persuading DHS to drop
Speaker 1: plans in their jurisdictions. New Hampshire Governor Kelly Iott got
Speaker 1: then DHS Secretary Nome to scrap plans for a warehouse
Speaker 1: in the state after a February meeting. Mississippi Senator Roger
Speaker 1: Wicker had similar luck. Sellers have also pulled out over
Speaker 1: community opposition. Facility owners in Missouri, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Utah
Speaker 1: got cold feet, though in Salt Lake City the federal
Speaker 1: government was able to purchase a different warehouse. In seven
Speaker 1: other jurisdictions, the plans to buy sites appear to have
Speaker 1: stalled still. DHS owns eleven empty warehouses. It's awarded contracts
Speaker 1: for converting and running just two of them. In Maryland,
Speaker 1: and Arizona. Those contracts, which together could be worth up
Speaker 1: to one point four billion dollars, have been bogged down
Speaker 1: by local concerns about lack of infrastructure or emergency services,
Speaker 1: and proximity to schools and homes. In addition to humanitarian opposition,
Speaker 1: there are also accusations of failures to communicate with local
Speaker 1: officials and to conduct environmental reviews, in some cases, because
Speaker 1: DHS has declared a review isn't necessary on big projects.
Speaker 1: The federal government typically attempts to mitigate such concerns beforehand.
Speaker 1: Not this time. They got this insane amount of money
Speaker 1: and Congress didn't make them put out a public plan.
Speaker 1: Trickler McNulty says, they haven't said why this is a
Speaker 1: good idea. We'll be right back with when an ice
Speaker 1: camp comes to town. Welcome back to when an ice
Speaker 1: camp comes to town. Tremont Borough's main Street, a half
Speaker 1: mile long commercial and residential corridor, has a pizza place, bar,
Speaker 1: post office, and bank. There's a single three way stoplight
Speaker 1: near the main retail attraction, a family dollar store. As
Speaker 1: far as amenities go, there's a small plot of grass
Speaker 1: that serves as a veterans park and memorial The borough's pool,
Speaker 1: in dire need of repairs, has been closed since the
Speaker 1: end of the twenty twenty two season. Residents have formed
Speaker 1: a committee to try to get it reopened, though local
Speaker 1: officials say it would cost two hundred dollars per resident
Speaker 1: to keep it operating. In response to a notice on
Speaker 1: Facebook that the pool would again not be opening in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, one person said, not much left for
Speaker 1: Tremont to offer that attracts taxpayers. Tremont Township, the larger
Speaker 1: and less populous surrounding area, is more rural. It's a
Speaker 1: smattering of homes, a local government building, a gas station
Speaker 1: with a Burger king off, roading areas, and auto repair shops.
Speaker 1: The Big Lots Warehouse was one of the county's biggest
Speaker 1: employers when it was open. Otherwise, not many people work
Speaker 1: in the township or the borough. The average commute time
Speaker 1: to work for residents is nearly thirty minutes, according to
Speaker 1: Census Bureau data. There's a range of feelings about the
Speaker 1: proposed detention facility. Joe and Lara Viscount, retired teachers in
Speaker 1: their fifties who are liberal members of a local Democratic club,
Speaker 1: are opposed to the facility. On every level. They've pressured
Speaker 1: Padora and other local officials to resist the federal government
Speaker 1: and made themselves available to the media. Tremont Borough's mayor,
Speaker 1: Justin Moehler, a Republican, says he's powerless to stop the
Speaker 1: facility and his only concerns are about water and sewage.
Speaker 1: If there's no impact to those systems, he says, then
Speaker 1: it is out of the borough's hands anyway. He one
Speaker 1: hundred percent supports the administration's immigration agenda. By his estimation,
Speaker 1: a lot of residents are excited about the prospect of
Speaker 1: the facility. Joe Viscount disagrees. He attended a spring protest
Speaker 1: where there were he says, sixty to eighty people marching
Speaker 1: against the facility and five or six counter protesters. The
Speaker 1: township and the borough have a combined population of fewer
Speaker 1: than two thousand, roughly a quarter of whom are older
Speaker 1: than sixty five. The facility will need a staff of
Speaker 1: two thousand to twenty five hundred. At the very least,
Speaker 1: the government could produce an independent economic impact study, says
Speaker 1: Breonna del Val, who lives in Skukl County and has
Speaker 1: helped lead some of the local opposition through an organization
Speaker 1: called No Scook Detention. If we can actually confront the
Speaker 1: real impacts, the financial impacts of this, it will help
Speaker 1: us plan, she says. Many residents say they fear it
Speaker 1: will be another idea with terrible consequences for them. Already,
Speaker 1: the area participates in a waste recycling process that can
Speaker 1: begin with a toilet flush in eastern Brooklyn. The waste
Speaker 1: is treated by New York City's sewer system and turned
Speaker 1: into a sludge made of feces, food, and paper fibers.
Speaker 1: The biosludge, equivalent in weight over the course of a
Speaker 1: year to the Washington Monument, is sent by trucks to
Speaker 1: a facility in an adjacent township. It's turned into fertilizer
Speaker 1: on site. This transformation produces a smell that hangs in
Speaker 1: the air in town, even on cold days in the summer.
Speaker 1: Residents say it can be unbearable. People get headaches, children
Speaker 1: can't play outside, and windows remain shut. Lane Mack Junior,
Speaker 1: sixty two, a lifelong Burrow resident, calls the facility the
Speaker 1: ship plant. Up the road. Residents have been living with
Speaker 1: the smell for years. On the other side of town,
Speaker 1: a second facility deals in sludge too. Sometimes material sloshes
Speaker 1: out of transport trucks onto the street, says Joe Viscount.
Speaker 1: The smell forces him and his wife to make calculations
Speaker 1: about their outdoor time. There's actually a third fertilizer facility
Speaker 1: a bit farther away from town. Those projects were sold
Speaker 1: as economic development opportunities, but the two nearby bio solids
Speaker 1: facilities employ roughly twenty people combined. One of the facilities
Speaker 1: pays a two dollars municipal fee per ton of wet
Speaker 1: sludge it receives. According to documents filed with the Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: Department of Environmental Protection, one facility sits outside the township,
Speaker 1: and the other reports activities in three local townships, including Tremont.
Speaker 1: The smell doesn't recognize those political boundaries. Residents haven't heard
Speaker 1: directly from the federal government about the warehouse jail. What's
Speaker 1: clear is the facility won't pay taxes. The Fed's purchase
Speaker 1: of the site will cost the school district and the
Speaker 1: local and county government almost one million dollars in revenue annually,
Speaker 1: compared with what big lots and the subsequent owners paid.
Speaker 1: Neither the township nor the borough has a full time
Speaker 1: police officer. The fire department is volunteer. The emergency medical
Speaker 1: services system is already stretched thin. The closest emergency room
Speaker 1: is a thirty minute drive in its existing facilities. ICE
Speaker 1: relies on local sources for all these services. Regularly, in
Speaker 1: the past five months of operations at Fort Bliss, staff
Speaker 1: called nine to one one nearly once a day. Pedora,
Speaker 1: the Schoukel County Commissioner's leader, is the main conduit between
Speaker 1: the local community and DHS, and that line of communication
Speaker 1: has not been robust. On the first conference call he
Speaker 1: had with federal officials, he says, there were two dozen
Speaker 1: people in a zoom meeting, many from the federal government
Speaker 1: without their cameras. On These faceless federal officials didn't have
Speaker 1: answers to many of the county's basic logistical questions. On
Speaker 1: subsequent calls, the federal government suggested that it would hire
Speaker 1: locally to the extent possible, and that it would consider
Speaker 1: making an annual payment in lieu of taxes to help
Speaker 1: offset the lost tax revenue. Pedora has sought to get
Speaker 1: these assurances in writing. Those informal concessions don't address the
Speaker 1: biggest hurdle to the proposal. The water there simply isn't
Speaker 1: enough of it in the area to support what Ice
Speaker 1: is proposing. Even if Tremont stopped using water altogether, there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough. In twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: the area experienced its worst drought in decades, and the
Speaker 1: water problems were exacerbated in twenty twenty four when the
Speaker 1: borough used roughly sixty percent of its reserves to fight
Speaker 1: a massive fire. Recently, to supplement the supply, the Regional
Speaker 1: Water Authority has hauled water in with trucks and obtained
Speaker 1: permission to tap into a reservoir that the regions stop
Speaker 1: using in the nineteen nineties because of water quality concerns.
Speaker 1: That new source can safely give Tremont an additional seventy
Speaker 1: thousand gallons a day. At capacity, the ICE facility would
Speaker 1: need almost one million gallons of water a day, according
Speaker 1: to the state Department of Environmental Protection. That's one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty times what big lots used. If Ice were
Speaker 1: forced to rely on the big lots amount, it could
Speaker 1: safely detain sixty three people as long as staff didn't
Speaker 1: use the bathroom, wash their hands, or drink any water.
Speaker 1: The Tremont system's maximum capacity is four hundred thousand gallons
Speaker 1: per day, but it's capped at a figure below that
Speaker 1: multi state water regulator. On an average day in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, the region used two hundred and eight thousand
Speaker 1: gallons of water. There's no other water in Tremont. DHS
Speaker 1: told Padora in limited conversations with him that it was
Speaker 1: considering trucking in water to the facility. Delivering a million
Speaker 1: gallons of water a day to a facility at the
Speaker 1: top of a mountain strange credulity, says David Hess, who
Speaker 1: headed the Pennsylvania Deep in the early two thousands. Such
Speaker 1: a plan would require roughly one hundred and sixty six
Speaker 1: trucks per day. Every day. They'd be trucking water in
Speaker 1: around the clock. Has says. Even the largest water storage
Speaker 1: tanks on the market would have to be refilled every
Speaker 1: few days, a logistical nightmare, he says, and as water
Speaker 1: comes in, it will need to be taken out. The
Speaker 1: proposed detention center could produce four hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: to one million gallons of sewage daily. The regional water authority,
Speaker 1: authorized to handle five hundred thousand gallons is already at
Speaker 1: eighty percent capacity. Anything above that is at risk of
Speaker 1: being discharged untreated into the nearby Swatara Creek, a tributary
Speaker 1: of the Susquehanna River. The people in surrounding counties drink
Speaker 1: the water at the Immigration tent camp in the Florida Everglades,
Speaker 1: dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, it cost ninety two million dollars to
Speaker 1: haul out less than a year's worth of wastewater that
Speaker 1: was for roughly five hundred detainees. Florida is expected to
Speaker 1: close the facility in part because of the huge costs
Speaker 1: to run it. Implementing a strategy like that at Tremont
Speaker 1: would double the number of trucks coming in and out
Speaker 1: of the facility. Water and sewer isn't rocket science. It's
Speaker 1: basic stuff. Has says the fact that they failed to
Speaker 1: look at this basic stuff. What else are they missing?
Speaker 1: What DHS is or isn't missing is the subject of
Speaker 1: federal suits in at least five of the jurisdictions in
Speaker 1: which it has bought facilities. Maryland sued the agency in
Speaker 1: late February over a proposed fifteen hundred bed warehouse jail
Speaker 1: in the state's panhandle. The law suit accused DHS of
Speaker 1: violating federal law by failing to consider the environmental impact
Speaker 1: of the project instead of conducting a traditional environmental review.
Speaker 1: The agency acknowledged in the lawsuit it did a limited
Speaker 1: review and found the project is not expected to result
Speaker 1: in any significant adverse environmental impacts. That determination, the agency argued,
Speaker 1: eliminated the need for a month's long impact study. It
Speaker 1: conducted the review in one day, the same day it
Speaker 1: completed the purchase of the property. The federal judge overseeing
Speaker 1: the case didn't find the government's argument convincing. He halted
Speaker 1: construction pending a full environmental review. In June, the agency
Speaker 1: released a public comment form to kick off its environmental assessment.
Speaker 1: The suit is ongoing. New Jersey followed Maryland's lead in March,
Speaker 1: suing over a similar facility. It led with the lack
Speaker 1: of environmental review and also accused DHS of violating federal
Speaker 1: immigration law and a law that requires the federal government
Speaker 1: to account for all national, regional, state, and local viewpoints
Speaker 1: for development programs and projects. Days later, Michigan made a
Speaker 1: similar claim. DHS filed its limited review of the Michigan site,
Speaker 1: with finding similar to those from Maryland, more than a
Speaker 1: month after purchasing the site and hours after Michigan filed suit.
Speaker 1: In response, DHS has said Michigan does not have standing
Speaker 1: to bring the lawsuit and that the agency needs detention
Speaker 1: space in the Detroit area. The New Jersey proceedings were
Speaker 1: paused after DHS agreed to begin assessing the environmental impact.
Speaker 1: Arizona raised a challenge as soon as work started on
Speaker 1: a warehouse site there. The state alleges that DHS didn't
Speaker 1: conduct any review at all. Social Circle Georgia, a small
Speaker 1: town fifty miles east of Atlanta, filed the most recent
Speaker 1: suit in mid May. The agency has yet to respond.
Speaker 1: Officials in other jurisdictions where DHS has bought warehouses have
Speaker 1: attempted to slow the government by using local powers. Salt
Speaker 1: Lake City officials have taken steps to limit water usage
Speaker 1: by non residential facilities because of drought conditions in the
Speaker 1: region and the potential for the proposed warehouse jail to
Speaker 1: sap water resources. San Antonio changed its zoning rules in
Speaker 1: an attempt to derail the warehouse conversion there at a
Speaker 1: site that faces an elementary school and department complex. El
Speaker 1: Paso's water authorities have also raised questions about the potential
Speaker 1: strains on infrastructure from a proposed facility. Pennsylvania is mounting
Speaker 1: an aggressive defense of its own. The Department of Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection simply shut off the water to the site, as
Speaker 1: well as to another smaller proposed facility in the state.
Speaker 1: A series of March orders cut off access to water
Speaker 1: and sewage until DHS seeks permits and regulatory approvals for
Speaker 1: the project. It also asked the federal government to produce
Speaker 1: its plans for water and sewage management at the site
Speaker 1: within twenty days. On March seventeen, six weeks after DHS
Speaker 1: became the owner of the Tremont facility, Pennsylvania state officials
Speaker 1: received their first communication from the federal government about the project.
Speaker 1: ICE Assistant Director Keith Inglesby acknowledged the state's environmental orders
Speaker 1: in a letter that requested an extension for submitting the
Speaker 1: water and sewage plans. ICE will not be able to
Speaker 1: meet the twenty day deadline for delivering these plans to
Speaker 1: d EP because it has not finalized them yet, the
Speaker 1: letter read. The agency sought a meeting with state officials
Speaker 1: to discuss a path forward, and asked the regulator to
Speaker 1: at least let it use water at the levels Big
Speaker 1: Lots was using before it vacated. DP refused both requests.
Speaker 1: At DHS, there's been internal scrutiny of the almost forty
Speaker 1: billion dollar effort. DHS's Office of Inspector General has announced
Speaker 1: its doing an audit of ICE's push for more detention
Speaker 1: space that seeks to figure out whether the purchases meet
Speaker 1: ICE's operational need in a cost effective manner. This came
Speaker 1: after a separate internal review of the program soon after
Speaker 1: Mullen took over. ICE has repeatedly pointed to numerous solutions
Speaker 1: that would keep it from creating an adverse impact to
Speaker 1: the water authority infrastructure in the places it plans to
Speaker 1: turn warehouses into detention facilities. It hasn't made any of
Speaker 1: those solutions public in Pennsylvania, it hasn't produced any water
Speaker 1: or sewage plans. It hasn't produced an environmental impact report.
Speaker 1: Yet it's pressing forward its appealing the Pennsylvania environmental orders,
Speaker 1: arguing in part that they suggest unantipathy towards ICE. According
Speaker 1: to the documents, the appeal process could take months. DHS
Speaker 1: also brushed aside the environmental concerns in its statement to
Speaker 1: Business Week, saying those opposed to the project are feigning
Speaker 1: concern to obstruct the president's immigration agenda. None of the
Speaker 1: eleven warehouses bought by DHS are close to ready for occupancy.
Speaker 1: People with knowledge of the process say the next two
Speaker 1: to move forward are likely to be those in San
Speaker 1: Antonio and El Paso, where no legal action has been taken.
Speaker 1: Mullen has not said when DHS will resume buying warehouses.
Speaker 1: On June ninth, Congress passed an additional seventy billion dollars
Speaker 1: in funding for immigration enforcement through twenty twenty nine. On
Speaker 1: top of that, Congress is debating an annual budget appropriation
Speaker 1: that could give ICE even more money. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: government officials and residence in Tremont are waiting. Pedora used
Speaker 1: many of the March Commission meetings to provide Residence with
Speaker 1: updates from his conversations with state officials and with DHS.
Speaker 1: More recently, he's conceded that things are in a holding pattern. Locally,
Speaker 1: there's resignation that if the federal government wants to jam
Speaker 1: this through, it will. This is just another injustice forced
Speaker 1: upon this part of the country for no good reason,
Speaker 1: says del Val of no scoop detention Before that, residents
Speaker 1: are hoping they'll at least get a time line, a
Speaker 1: written plan, and some say in the process or simply
Speaker 1: some notice