Activists protest detention of female migrants

A group of activists gathered outside the Berks County Residential Center on Tuesday to mark International Women’s Day by calling for the U.S. to end the practice of detaining immigrants seeking asylum.

The Shut Down Berks Coalition held a rally outside the Bern Township facility, with people singing songs about freedom and waving brightly colored signs. Their message was a demand that the center be shuttered, and the women being held there released immediately.

“No form of detention is acceptable or humane — it has to end in Berks and beyond,” organizers of the protest said.

Federal officials confirmed last month that the Berks County Residential Center is housing asylum seekers once again.

Berks County manages the facility in Bern Township and is reimbursed by the federal government. In return, Immigration and Customs Enforcement leases office space and provides about $1 million in annual revenue to the county.

The center, which was first opened in 2001, had been one of three in the U.S. where families seeking asylum were held.

The center sat empty for nearly a year following a decision by President Joe Biden that his administration was no longer interested in detaining families. But then ICE and county officials forged a new contract last summer for the site that turned it into a facility that holds migrant women.

ICE officials said that transformation was officially completed in January.

The Shut Down Berks Coalition has called on the Biden administration to immediately release the women and permanently close the center.

“The Biden administration has not followed through on its promises to end the expansion of immigration prisons,” the organization said. “The Shut Down Berks Coalition and the Berks County residents have witnessed the damage caused by this prison in their own backyard.”