It took nearly a decade of exposing the patterns of abuse and neglect at the facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania.
Ezras TellalianToday, advocates across the U.S. are celebrating the end of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract with Berks County in Pennsylvania, marking the long-fought closure of the embattled Berks immigration prison . Berks is the fifth immigration prison contract to end under the Biden administration, signaling the growing consensus that ICE’s immigration detention system does not need to exist, and a movement of communities across the country is organizing to end it.
Our group, the Shut Down Berks Coalition, worked tirelessly for nearly a decade to expose the egregious patterns of abuse and neglect inside Berks; to free our immigrant family members, friends, coworkers and neighbors incarcerated inside; and to get the facility closed for good.
Berks began incarcerating immigrants in 2001 as a “family detention center” with close to 100 beds. Family detention centers have a well-documented history of negligence and abuse, including inadequate medical and mental health care, children losing weight, and inappropriate disciplinary tactics, including threats to separate families if children misbehave.
In 2015, the Shut Down Berks Coalition began documenting Berks’s history of abuse, which includes sexual assault, verbal abuse and extreme medical neglect, such as guards and medical staff ignoring instances of fever, vomiting, skin rashes and respiratory illnesses. Cristina, a mother formerly detained with her son at Berks who asked to be identified only by her first name, describes her time at the facility as “very traumatic.
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